How To Make Trail Speed (And Keep It!)

Sometimes getting up to speed on a trail isn't the hardest part. It's actually being able to keep your momentum going in the right direction. I've got a few tips on how to make and keep your trail speed. I've come to what is actually a really good trail for trying to show some of these skills, I think, because this is a relatively nice gradient to begin with, then it flattens off quite a lot. As simple as it is, there's loads of bits and bobs on the trail that are going to try and slow you down. Even once you're up to speed, quite simply with this one, it's just pedaling at the start, actually maintaining your speed is really difficult. If you are losing it and trying to get it again, that is going to be even harder on a flat trail like this where you've then got rocks and bits where you're going to find it very hard to try and pedal over those bits. I think this is one of the skills that separates your beginners from your intermediate riders. Most people can get into a trail with a bit of speed, but actually carrying it all the way through and not having to use your energy to pedal back up to speed separates those two riders. The first thing I'm talking about is wheel placement. That is two things, really. It's line choice, so making sure that you are rounding the corners nicely, but even on the straight, there's obstacles, avoiding the worst of those impacts that you keep your speed. That can sometimes mean the second thing is wheel placement. It's not just line choice. Sometimes you're going to have to unweight or move your wheels to be in unnatural positions so that you don't have to hit the brakes. There's a bit of a combo of skills definitely going on here because you've got quite a fast straight, it starts to get rough, and then you've got a fairly treacherous turn here, which is also really flat just there. To carry any speed through that corner and get in there, your line choice has got to be good because you see how polished that route is. It's been dry here for a little while now, but it's completely polished where people are slipping off that. Then you're straight into an off-camber route and then the corner. I want to make sure that I'm on the right line. There really isn't much choice here. I'm across the middle, and then I'm moving into my unweighting, which I will talk about in a second, but it's definitely getting your line choice first and then getting up and over this bit. You don't want to slam into it because if you do that, you could slide again and then lose any of your speed you're going to carry out of this corner. I've gone backwards up the track to talk about the simpler parts here as well. Coming in, I'm trying to get as much pedal power in at the start because I will then carry that pretty much for, I would say, at least 100 meters. If you don't pedal hard enough and coming slow, you're just not going to find the space to then pick it up. Coming in, obviously, I'm putting the power down as much as I can. I'm not the most powerful guy by any means, but I'm also shifting down the cassette as quick as I can so I'm in the meat of the gears, and also knowing that as I drop down this bit, I'm going to go faster. I'll probably be almost one gear too hard coming over the top that will then pay off on the next bit. Then I'm also going into the combo of skills, making sure my cadence is right, putting the power down. I'm on flat pedals, so I do find that you probably, or I feel like I have to put more effort in because I know it's not as easy to unweight with flat pedals. It takes a bit more pre-planning, but I'll get into the unweighting in a second. Obviously, I start with pedaling, it's basic, but then pumping is the next really important part. I've done loads of skills videos on this, but if you don't know much about it, it's all about trying to generate speed from the trail, and you need good transitions for that. That's why I'm stood here. I'm stood right next to a really good one. It's nice and steep. It's also got a nice whippy transition at the bottom. I'm just trying to make myself heavy in the bottom there, and that is going to shoot me forward, particularly on this one because it is so good. When I'm looking further down the track, obviously, if it smooths out, I can get back on the pedals, great, but there's even nice small pumps to be had here that aren't going to make as much speed. It's not going to feel like a big whoosh like that one is, but it's still really important to pump these transitions where you can find them. A great place to practice your pumping is on a set of jumps when you have a few in a row. Really aim to try and squash your bike into the compression of the landing. It's going to force you to be accurate with where you land, which will make you smooth, and then aggressive to squash the bike as hard as you can to generate speed. I've done the hard part already. I've generated the speed. You can see into this first turn, it is or it can be tempting to go inside on corners. If this was a steeper track, I might be tempted to try it because you're riding less far. Is that proper English? I mean, you're covering less ground, so it's going to be quicker, but because it's such a flat, bumpy exit, I need to carry speed all the way around this corner. You can see wide is going to help me to do that, but you do end up going really close to the inside that route leant over. You can see the almost drift marks going around because the faster you can get around this corner, it will make a huge amount of difference to your average speed, but also how much effort you have to put in down that next straight. Hopefully, you've made some speed with your pedaling, your pumping, and now you're trying to maintain it so you don't have to do that all over again and try and replace that lost speed. Line choice and unweighting now become really important. They both work together. All of this stuff does. You've probably worked that already. Actually, what you're trying to do is take away impacts. This is a good example here where you've got a few routes and a few angles to the routes as well. If you just slam into these, it is going to slow you down. There's a risk of them obviously bumping you off the line and slipping pedals and things as well. Actually, I'm thinking more about trying to keep my A to B speed and my momentum. If I hit these, it's going to be uncomfortable, and those impacts are going to slow me down. Two choices there. You either change your line to go around them, but here, that's going to involve quite a wiggle. As much as maybe I don't have to brake, you're just going to scrub off a bit of speed having to turn the bike right then left again. The second option then is to unweight and just stay on the same line, but just take out the impacts. That is just a really simple case of a really small bunny hop. Sometimes it's quite hard for me to tell you exactly what I'm going to do until I get here and realize my speed. I'm looking at obviously the trail in front of me, and then I might think, well, now I'll hit this one, and then I'll bump up and unweight over this one, or I might realize I'm going quick enough, and I can do a really nice hop and completely miss these out. Go from that spot all the way over and get the backside of this route, which also hopefully might become a small pump. I'll have a go, and hopefully, you'll see what I decide to do. Actually, yes, it was pretty easy to do a little hop and miss out the worst of it. Good news, you can just do little hops, and it makes you low speed. Obviously, the downside is if you have to do it all the time, it is actually really tiring to be able to pump the bike in and get the hop. It is sometimes well worth doing. Sometimes it isn't because it's too tiring, and sometimes it won't work. This section is much longer, and I've got a rise coming into it. There's no way at this speed I can do a 15-foot bunny hop and clear all these routes. Now, it becomes a bit subjective. I'll decide where and when I need to do this, and again, try and avoid the worst of the impacts, but some of them I will have to take, and they will slow me down a little bit. Two mini hops kind of works. I could actually hear the clutch of my mech slapping. I know there's one reasonably hard impact there, and it does slow me down. I'm then into a really flat, horrible section. It doesn't work perfectly, but I felt like that was probably as good as I can do it to carry a bit of speed, and then I'll have to get back on the pedals. I'll go into this next section. I'll show you a little bit on how you can actually gap sections of the trail to make speed as well. Here, you've got a reasonable-sized roller that you hit quite quick if you've got all that right, because it does take 30 things to go right. You're pedaling, you're pumping, all those things to even carry enough speed to get here. If you lose it anywhere on that trail, you'll find it really difficult to pick it back up, but you can hit this quick. Then, like I say, you are going up quite a long way. Even if you squash this really hard, you're then dropping into this hole, and there's one impact there. Obviously, if you can do a nice hop to gap this section and land in the back of here, not only are you taking this impact out, you're up here and you're dropping down and in to a pump, and that will make a big difference to this whole next straight. I am talking a lot about, obviously, speed, and this isn't always about being the fastest or racing or trying to get down this trail from top to bottom in the shortest time possible. It is as much about being smooth and carrying what you started with. In this case, it will be really fast, but there are lots of examples like this where it'll just make it easier and smoother, and yes, your average speed will be better. Right, shifting into a couple of harder gears straight away before I start concentrating on the pump and trying to stay off the brakes, but there's a few good pumping spots there. That's where you need to unweight over the route, and now I've got to pedal as hard as I can because I've run out of gradient completely here. Nice hop there to the gap. Still pretty physical. It is still fairly physical, that, when you've got to hop and pump all the way. Wheel placement sounds a lot like I'm talking about line choice, which I am, but I also sometimes think that you need to place your wheels separately to be on the right line. An extreme example of that is a really, really tight alpine switchback where on occasion, you might have to endo the back wheel around because obviously, your rear wheel turns a tighter corner, a tighter apex, so your rear wheel is going to be too far inside, even if your front wheel goes all the way around. Another example is this, where you've got to sometimes hit this first berm hard and overturn or even possibly push your bike into a drift so you then get wide enough because otherwise, that corner is pointing towards these logs that have been put here to stop the Strava lines. Actually, you run out of camber here. If you don't turn hard enough, you're going to find it really difficult to get up here. You're just going to come here and then you've squared off that corner, you've lost all your speed. In this case, I'm going to work extra hard to make sure my wheels are over there and get in the meat of that berm. Bike setup can play a part in carrying speed as well and trail bikes are the ultimate bikes. We're trying to find and keep speed on your flatter, less gnarly trails because this carry spectral is 150 mil travel rear, 160 front, 29er, super lightweight, so really efficient, but also you have to work it hard to make the speed. Suspension setup comes into this as well. Obviously, if you had a Baja truck, those things, there's massive suspension, they're just bombing along and the wheels are doing this and the truck is staying quite level, then that is the ultimate way of carrying your speed. Obviously, we don't have thousands of horsepower. This is a human-powered machine. There's a compromise on having the world's plushest suspension versus actually being able to have poppy suspension. A trail bike is great for that where you can use your suspension to soak up bumps, but also it's not so wallowy, even like a downhill bike, where it's harder to pick up off the ground or even pump. Get your bike set up nicely with a sag. Like I say, even the style of bike, a trail bike, is perfect for learning how to carry speed and making you a better and smoother ride for doing it. There's my tips for not only making your speed, but trying to keep it as well. Pedaling, pumping, unweighting, line choice, wheel placement, and bike setup. Jump into the comments down below if you've got any questions and all that, and I will jump in there as well and try and answer them. Bye. I'm heading for a cup of tea.