We’ve been having some remodeling done with our house, so with that and other schedule challenges, I haven’t been out riding much. But despite having the builders and electrician working in the house, I needed to get on my bike and ride. I figured I didn’t need anything too fancy, so I just I rode a number of different lines using combinations of skinnies and pallets.
Skinnies have never been my strength, so over the past year I’ve been really trying to improve my skinny skills. Having multiple ready-made skinny beams available makes it really easy to grab and go. Mixing skinnies into lines with other obstacles also requires you to up your game a bit.
The hardest line on this ride required a drop from a stack of pallets onto a skinny, then riding out the skinny to the end. After what seemed like a million attempts, I finally got it – so stoked! This is definitely a line I need to practice more. Seeing the European UCI riders mixing in skinnies like they’re nothing certainly inspires me to practice these types of lines more often. Maybe one day I’ll amp it up a bit so I’m doing pedalups from skinnies , gaps to skinnies, and all that other crazy stuff those UCI riders do (making it look as easy as walking down the sidewalk).
I’ve also always wanted to be able to do rail gaps, so I practiced some “rail gap” lines as well. Normally I just have two “rails” and hop between them. For this ride, I added in a drop from the stack of pallets to start the rail gaps, making it a little more difficult. Those skinny beams make decent enough “rails” for doing this. Now I just need to finish making a couple more (I have all the parts) and I’ll be able to put together some longer rail gaps.
In addition to the aforementioned skinnies I will soon build, I’ve also scored some new pallets and have been buying materials to build some other cool stuff for the upcoming indoor trials jam. The bonus is that I’ll have them at home before and after the comp!
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