I had a lie in this morning to try and recover from the past week’s training and then myself and my son went to the track for a play at about 11am.
I was chatting to my son and he said that he wanted to practice his bunny hops before riding so we found a stick and then I showed him the technique of how to bunny hop. He tried a bit and we decided that he needed to learn to manual a bit before he could work on bunny hops.
My son is really liking riding the jump bike so it is now his bike and I will use it to ride to work on as well so we don’t need 2 bikes.
We then marked a 2m distance and he did about 15 minutes of trying to manual the distance and he managed to make it after about 10 minutes of practice. I jointed in a bit too but it was a bit hard as I had clip-less pedals and flat shoes on which was not ideal!
After my son got tired of practicing flat manuals we went tot he track and practiced manuals on the track. We concentrated on the 3rd straight and I got it really dialled and even started to get the tap manual on the last jump which is super smooth and fast 🙂 I have to say that after playing in the 3rd straight for and hour or so and getting the tap manual on the 3rd jump the straight is now my favorite straight on the track 🙂
When we got home I removed the old headset on the club Dialled MX20R and fitted the new one that arrived during the week and got the bike all sorted out. We then took it to the container and swapped it for my Dialled MX20R as I wanted to bring it home to clean it and also take some parts off of it so that I can build up another cruiser to do sprints on!
I am still debating which bike to build up for sprints as I really want to try out the Speedco again with a longer stem before I sell the frame as it is one of the best bikes that I have ridden out of the gate so I want to ride it a bit more to see if it works on the rest of the track as well.
I know that the S&M Steel Panther rides great now so want to see if the Speedco feels better or not before I sell it but so far no-one is really too interested in it so I may as well try riding it again before it sells.
Before I can ride the Speedco I need to buy a new headset as I used the headset that was in the frame on my jump bike so I don’t have another headset at the moment. I will also need to get a set of 20mm to 10mm fork adapters as the only spare set of forks that I have are 20mm and all of my cruiser hubs are 10mm. To get the bike ready I may just steal the headset from my 4x bike temporarily to see if it works and then build the bike up from the parts on my S&M and ride the Speedco this week and maybe even race Peckham on it if I like it. I will be able to tell from training on Tuesday if it is better or not so I will have time to re-build the S&M if needed.
I swapped out the Speedco as I wasn’t able to manual or pump very well on it and I have found the S&M much better for both Manuals and pumping than the Speedco but I want to give the Speedco another chance as it is way better out of the gate than the S&M for some reason. I think that it is because of the frame being way stiffer than the S&M as I can feel the S&M Frame flex when I put all of my weight on my front pedal on the gate which does not happen on the Speedco! I will see how the Speedco feels with a longer stem this week and then decide which frame to race on at the weekend.
I have just installed a brake on the Speedco frame so once I get the headset off of the 4X bike I can build it up ready to take to the track and test out tomorrow afternoon as I am on a half day. I am also going to put the 41×16 on the Speedco to see how that feels too compared to the 36×16 that I have been using for the past year.
My Son is on half term so is staying with me so I will take him top the track and then play cat and mouse with him so that I can get my 6 x full speed laps in with some kind of incentive to go faster 🙂 I have decided that I will have a lie in tomorrow and only train in the afternoon so that I am fresh to do full speed laps. I was going to go to the gym before work but I think I will leave the gym for later in the week!