- Hi everyone,
Neil Donoghue here from GMBN,
and to today we are at Bike Park Wales for a challenge.
Now the best mountain bikers in the world
are often the ones that make riding look effortless.
When it comes to covering terrain fast,
the best mountain bike racers are the ones
that just seem to magic speed from the trail,
people like Josh Bryceland,
Brendan Fairclough are two that really spring to mind.
Of course the very best racers need the power
and the fitness to produce the watts through
the cranks to get going,
but the very best,
also produce significant speed from the trail.
Firstly with good line choice that's essential
for getting from A to B in the fastest fashion,
but others, from the trail,
and that is directly from pumping,
that is producing speed by going up and down on the bike,
to produce forward motion, but,
is it as fast as just pedaling down a track?
Lets find out.
(hard rock music)
The trail I rode at Bike Park Wales
is BLACKADDER from the top to Willy Waver.
The short fire road section in the middle
was disregarded from the times,
because it's flat and I had to pedal on both rails.
It's 2.2 kilometers long,
with 220 meters of descending.
Okay,
first run with the pedaling,
there's definitely a bit of
cranking out the gate and there.
(gasps slightly)
You go straight in some quite big jumps
actually where there isn't much space to pedal anyway.
Decent size gap there.
It's a fun trail.
Top of this bit so you'd...
Try and keep those low, and pump.
Right, crank it.
Little bit more it's quite fast in these woods as well.
I overshot that a bit.
Right.
Wheelied over those,
trying to make as much speed as possible,
into the dark woods.
Only managed one pedal there.
(light rock music)
(breathes heavily)
Back off the cranks.
So, just flatten out a little bit here,
but, there are a lot of rollers,
so it will be interesting to see
if I can pump it as fast as I can pedal it.
(light rock music)
It's definitely quite a sprint,
but it's actually quite tiring.
Pro-riders click.
(light rock music)
Getting flat and a little bit.
Cranked it, just a touch.
Braking, then pedaling.
(light rock music)
(breathes heavily)
(brakes squeaking)
Now to round two concentrating on pumping,
let us get all zen and use
the lie of the land to the best ability
of flowing and bombing down the trail.
(hard rock music)
Right time for run two,
couple of cranks at the start so i could
actually get a move in.
And can I clear this still?
Yes.
Right,
I'm really going to have to work hard
on my pumping to clear these top jumps,
not helped by a little case there.
(hard rock music)
Here we go, low, pump.
(gasps loudly)
I feel pretty good actually but can I clear this?
I had to pull quite hard then to clear that,
which means I'm definitely going slower.
(hard rock music)
Tell you what it will be interesting to see,
what my heart rate says at the end.
Will I be working less not pedaling
or more trying to pump really hard?
Feels like you have to read the terrain
a bit better, because,
I don't want to rely,
on pedaling to get back up to speed,
so I need to rail the corners,
and pump everything as hard as possible.
We'll see, because in a minute,
I've got a big gap of doom,
which I'm not worried about.
Everyone one, this is the big one.
(groans loudly)
Made it.
(gasps loudly)
Pull.
I had to pull hard that time to clear those.
Back into smooth stuff,
I will have to pump both in.
(hard rock music)
(breathes heavily)
Feels pretty good so far.
(hard rock music)
(gasps twice loudly)
I love that bit, it's so fast.
Feels quite quick.
I'm still, getting out of breath though.
Alright carry speed, I would normally pedal there.
And here, it's now that it feels like I'm slowing down,
and I've got a flat section, pump.
Couple of little hops there as well,
just over those rocky edges,
so they don't slow me down as much when I hit them.
Now it's slow, so:
pump, pump.
At least a couple of good ones to get you in the air,
try and pump round the bend as well.
(hard rock music)
(gasps slightly)
tried to come out of that, off my brakes early,
worked quite well.
Almost there, heart rate is definitely lower,
or at least it feels it.
(hard rock music)
To the scores well actually, surprisingly,
I think surprisingly I was faster on the run
that I was pumping so no pedal at all
even though some sections it was quite flat.
It was super close on the pumping run
I did a four minutes 13 point three,
pedaling four minutes 13 point four
so, 1/10 of a second in it.
Really close, and actually,
and it does reflect that feeling of being easier pumping
because my heart rate,
max heart rate was 172 compared to 177 on pedaling
which is getting right up there for me
my max is about 182ish
so that's as high as I get really.
Same with average heart rate
was slightly less for the pumping rounds there,
164 compared to 165.
Max speed was fast the pumping believe it or not;
45.7 KM/H compared to 42.3
so actually, quite a lot faster.
Why is that?
Well I think personally where I've done races
where I've snapped a chain or something like that,
you're really concentrating on the trail,
you start really focusing,
not on just going fast and pedaling everywhere,
you've got to use your trail to your best
ability to go fast and that's what
it felt like when I was riding so,
it was less work,
it was easier to ride fast because
my heart rate wasn't as high,
possibly having a bit more fun, and I was faster?
What is, bit of a spanner in the works,
on Garmin using the motorbike dynamics
they can measure your flow,
so the less fluctuations in your speed,
the smoother your riding the lower your score,
and my pedaling run I got a score of 5.1,
but on the pumping run I got a 6.0
so, the Garmin flow score is worse for my pumping run
which is interesting to know so who knows about that?
Oh course I could have done the pumping run chain-less
but I decided not to do that because it's slightly
unrealistic because thats, you know,
obviously we've seen people do that like Aaron Gwin
they've done really well with it.
But we've also done a video on this because it actually
really effects how well your suspension works if your chain
if your chain isn't on there.
So I wanted to keep it fairly equal terms for that
keep my chain on, just rely on pumping,
like I might want to do if I didn't want to pedal.
So, there you go.
Pumping can be faster than pedaling,
and in my opinion be a bit more fun.
Thanks for watching leave me your comments down below
what do you think about the results?
Is it a bit surprising that you can go faster pumping?
I think I need to do a bit more experimenting with this.
If you want to see a video on how to ride and get more flow,
over there for that one.
If you want to see our chain-less challenge
from a few years back, over there for that.
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