Track Training: Road trip to Bristol Patchway BMX Track
I woke up at around 4:30 this morning for some reason so led around for an hour messing on my phone and then got up and went to Bristol Patchway BMX track to get used to the first straight before tomorrow’s gates session.
Unfortunately it started hammering down with rain as I got off of the Motorway but I still had a really good session and did around 30 first straights with chilled pumping of the rest of the track as active rest. I really liked the changes that have been made to the track and can’t wait to get on the gate tomorrow. The new first jump is way better then the double at the bottom of the start hill was and it has made the first straight flow again and made it way faster! I still struggle to manual the second jump but with practice I think that will come.
Unfortunately, the wahoo app crashed so I didn’t get the session recorded but I know that I got way faster towards the end of the session and was way more comfortable hitting everything at speed.
I was super happy how the Curtis felt today and I am pretty sure that the 170mm cranks are the way forward for me, especially with the 36t chain ring as well. I didn’t notice the cranks after a while which is a great sign as the 180mm cranks always felt weird. I also didn’t have any knee pain at all which is amazing!
I am going to raise the bars a bit later today to see if that helps with my manuals as the bars feel a bit low and seem to pull my weight over the bars too much. At the moment the bars are pretty low on the steerer tube so so I can add another spacer from above the stem to below it to raise the bars a bit and see if that helps. The other option is to get some S&M Bruiser bars as they are an inch higher than the S&M Cruiser bars that I have on the Curtis at the moment.
As you can see the bike got a bit messy today so will need to be cleaned and oiled etc before gates tomorrow. I also want to take a link out of the chain as it didn’t bother last night and it feels like the back end is a bit long which may also be affecting my manuals.
I am popping out running errands, shopping and getting my 10000 steps in for the day now, but when I get back I will wash the bike, raise the bars and also try and shorten the chain by a link to slam the wheel a bit more.