Yesterday I 'competed' in my second bike trials comp. It was fantastic,
for the first time in my life I got the chance to hop around on old cars
which was a lot of fun. They really suck your energy with their
suspension. It's good though because it forces you not to do too many
messy little correcting hops.
I rode intermediate again which I think suits me well. Most of the
lines are 'cleanable' but I never come close to getting a perfect run of
zeros. For those of you who were wondering, the scoring in bike trials
is from 0 to 5, 0 being the best. You get a point when you 'dab' (put
your foot down) and an instant 5 for both feet down...so naturally I got
a few 5's. 🙂 They counted a dab on the unicycle as touching the
obstacles with your hands as well as feet. We had to finish a little
early and didn't finish our 2nd and 3rd rounds. My score was 32. We
ended up doing all 10 zones first time around then just 5 of them on the
2nd round and 4 on the third.
So for the first round my scores were:
5, 0, 0, 0, 0, 5, 5, 0, 0, 5
And the second round:
0, 1, 1, 0, 0
And finally:
0, 0, 5, 5.
As I said, hopping on the cars and utes was really interesting. I
managed hopping from the bonnet to the roof which I was really happy
with given the 'suck' of the car's suspension. I also almost attempted
a rolling hop to the bonnet but chickened out. 🙁 I've only just
started trying rolling hops to get up to stuff and that would have been
my second obstacle ever rolling hopped onto. I'll try next time there's
a car at a competition though.
We had our own unicycle category (although we both rode intermediate
with the bikes) as I had a mate there who's just starting out at
trials.
After the comp I pedal grabbed (or rather went from pedal grab to crank
grab and then up) an 86cm high (approx 33-34"😉 truck tyre after quite a
few attempts which I was really happy with because it was my second
object I've pedal grabbed to. That was seat in because I haven't yet
worked on seat out.
Next up is the trials demo I'm doing with a couple of other bike guys in
two weeks. It's a pretty big event with flyers and all so I'm really
nervous about it but I'm on holidays so I'll get heaps of practise in.
My hops are only at about 55cm so that's the main thing I really want to
work on. I want to try to make 70cm in two weeks...any chance do you
think? 🙂
Then there's the national trials competition which will be all natural
trials...which is perfect for unicycling on. That's in about 4 weeks I
think. We'll have at least three unicyclists riding in that one. One
of the bike trials guys is going to unicycle in it. He's ridden a
unicycle twice (at both competitions when I had mine there) and is
already getting the hang of it. It's not fair...after about a total of
30 minutes of riding he can ride the thing, hop, do 180's, and yesterday
he landed about a 50cm drop!!
So yeah, lots has been happening lately for me in the world of trials.
I love it!
Here's a video of the competition. Sorry, I've only done a 15MB copy (I
didn't think it would be that big) which is a bit under 2 minutes long.
It has some great bike trials footage though.
Andrew
--
andrew_carter - Two unicycling years old.
HTTP://WWW.UNICYCLIST.COM/GALLERY/ANDREW
andrew_carter (at) mail (dot) com
http://www.unicycles.com.au
Unicycling Tips and Tutorials - http://www.unicycle.2ya.com
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