#Downhill #downhillchallenge Was it only August that this was the monthly focus? Feels a lot longer ago. I was playing with rolling on the front again yesterday and had a moment of realisation. It really should have been quite apparent to me, but anyway... Inevitably the bike starts to fall one way or the other. Previously about all I could do was let go the brake and drop the rear to ground. Trying to steer to balance was a failure. Yesterday I realised that, exactly as when rear hopping, I needed to turn the bars away from the direction of fall, or the direction I want to correct toward, - the opposite of normal riding and felt quite unnatural. It certainly didn't turn me into a nose willy king, but I did manage to correct a couple of times, more than ever before. #hopping Of course after each lap downhill I had to go back up. I've been spending a bit of time riding some steep and/or slippery sections recently and it was on a fairly steep track so I played with rear wheel hop/hopping for traction. I managed a few laps where I got 2 or 3 vaguely controlled hops and was actually starting to feel myself hopping the bike sideways underneath me to correct balance (mostly unsuccessfully, but still...). It struck me that it felt a little better when I didn't put as much effort into jumping the bike up, but more just releasing the pressure on it so it could bounce up under me. A bit hard to explain. @Neil Price would you be able to shed some of your wonderful clarity onto basic hopping/hopping for traction some time? EDIT: I should have included - I find one of the hardest but most useful "hops" is the one to get started again after stopping on a steep hill. Usually I can get the first hop and move forward, but then I'm all out of balance and have to stop again. Solving that would be huge.

Posted by Peter Mack at 2021-10-15 22:53:25 UTC