Got to the track for my first proper BMX track session for well over a year at 12pm today after recovering from my morning walk and getting ready.
After riding from the car park I did 2 pump laps without peddling at all to warm up which turned out to be a bad idea as I hurt my knee on the second one!
Decided to get some first straights done as the pumping was too painful. I have decided that the 180mm cranks that I currently have on the bike are too long as EVERY time I ride the BMX I hurt my knee.
While I was riding today I was taking notice of why this was and it is because at the top of my pedal stroke my knee is bent past its normal range of as I hyperextended this knee when I was 10 or 11 racing bmx and it has got steadily worse over the years! When I was at University we had a Team GB doctor come in and he was amazed that I had only ruined the one knee as my knees are hyperlax (bend too far the wrong way). He also told me which shoulder I dislocated when I was 3 as I had forgotten 🤣
I have a new set of 170mm cranks that were going to go on my son’s bike but I will try them out on my bike for a week or so to see if they help. I have a set of 175mm DXR cranks that I have lent to my friend that I will get back too as I think 170mm will be too short but I want to test 170mm out as I was still getting knee pain with 175mm cranks so wanted to see if the shorter cranks would be better. I have been running 170mm and 172.5mm on my road bikes and I have little to no knee pain so I am hoping that the same will be true for BMX. I know a few guys that race Nationals that have done the same and they are still super fast so its definitely worth a try.
I managed to get 10 full speed first straights in before the knee was too painful so not a bad first session back.
I was surprised how quickly my manuals started to come back today. The first 2 runs I couldn’t even manual the first jump let along the second, the 3rd attempt I got a clean manual on the first jump but got nowhere near on the second jump! Then I bonked the next couple of runs before getting another clean first jump on the 6th run. On the 9th and 10th runs I got both jumps clean. Technically I am still well behind the level that I was at before covid but it is slowly starting to come back and today’s session got me to a point where I am relaxed hitting the jumps at speed and I have also stopped thinking about what I am doing on the jumps and started to rely on muscle memory again which is a good start!
I want to do the same again tomorrow as I want to change the cranks and see what difference that makes to my pedalling speed, knee pain and overall riding as well. The bike also feels like the bars are too low as well so I will do the same session tomorrow too with the bars raised higher to test that too. Then Saturday I have gates at Bristol which will be another learning curve as the gate is new as is the first jump after the gate although apparently it it way better that the double that was right at the bottom of the start hill before so lets see. I am hoping that the new jump will mean that I will hit the second jump fast enough to be able to manual it cleanly which I have never been able to do before!