- If you know anything about cyclocross,
I'm sure you will know that from time to time in a race
you will need to get off your bike, pick it up, and run.
Emma, what are you wearing?
- [Emma] Well, it's all this jumping on
and off the bikes thing, it's making me nervous.
It just looks a bit dangerous,
so I thought I'd come protected.
- Seriously, you will be absolutely fine.
Although, I'm not entirely sure that if you did
have any issues, that you've necessarily
protected quite the right places.
But anyway, in this video, Emma is gonna learn
how to get off a moving bike, pick it up,
run with it, and then jump back on.
(intense boomy sound effect)
Cyclocross is all about momentum.
It's hard-won, and so you need to try
and conserve it as much as possible.
And the very nature of riding off road
means that there are gonna be times when
you are either quicker to get off and run,
or you simply can't ride the bike at all.
So whilst we're thinking about momentum,
the trick is to actually get off the bike
before you start to slow down, i.e, dismount a moving bike,
and then, similarly, when you finish running,
if you get back on the bike, you do that moving as well,
so again you conserve that hard-won momentum.
You should be absolutely fine, Emma, because you have,
of course, your background in triathlon and duathlon.
- [Emma] Yeah, well you say that, but actually,
in duathlon for example, I was fine at running,
and fine at riding, but the getting on
and off the bike bit, I sucked at it.
Basically I like to approach my bike
like one might approach a skittish horse.
Slowly, and carefully, and with respect,
not just kind of leap onto it willy nilly.
It just looks painful to be honest.
- Well, firstly your bike will appreciate that approach,
but no, it's not painful because
there's actually a really clear, precise technique.
And so once you learn that and get your head around it,
you'll find that there isn't really
all that much risk of any kind of injury at all.
Where you practice is important,
so we are on this really nice, soft forest path.
Grass would do well as well.
Nice and flat so you don't have to worry
about picking up too much speed.
This is gonna be the place, Emma,
where you totally nail getting on and off the bike.
So we need to approach the obstacle at
less than a fast running pace, so a comfortable running pace
because obviously, otherwise, you hit the ground...
- [Emma] Too fast.
- Exactly. - That sounds bad.
- But for learning, we can go slower than that.
You just wanna be slightly above walking pace,
because then you've got a bit more stability on the bike.
You feel a bit more comfortable.
Then what we need to do is put our left pedal
in the six o'clock position.
Now most people will get
off the bike on the left hand side.
It's a good idea simply because
the drive train is on the other side,
so there's less to get caught up in when you're running,
and also when you pick up the bike,
you don't have that resting against your back.
So with our weight on our left leg,
the pedal at six o'clock, we're then gonna
need to unclip our right foot
and swing the right leg round the back.
- [Emma] That's where I start getting worried, but yeah.
- Well, no, don't, because you'll be okay.
Hands on the brake hoods.
If they're on the drops you'll probably find
you're a little bit too low down.
On the hoods you can kind of be
nice and upright and controlled.
On the tops, you've obviously got no brakes
anywhere near it, and so you have no way
of adjusting your speeds to running pace.
But you can be quite stable, because you've also got
the saddle resting against your right thigh there.
The next step is you take your right hand off the lever
and you grab hold of the top tube.
It keeps the bike under nice control,
and it also means that when we get off
we can just pick it straight up,
so it's definitely quicker.
You can actually put quite a bit of weight
through that right hand, so you're not just
resting it all on your arms and your foot.
You can unweight that foot.
Then, are you ready?
You click out and you start running.
Give it a go.
- [Emma] What could possibly go wrong?
- Nothing can go wrong.
Come on, Emma.
Looking good, looking good.
- [Emma] Is this too fast?
- No, perfect, perfect.
That's it.
- [Emma] Oh, I didn't do the hand.
- Well, no, that was a good start.
That was a proper good start.
- [Emma] Probably don't need to slow down.
That's kind of not the point, isn't it?
- You did start to slow down at the end there,
but I thought you were gonna crash into me,
so I was quite pleased in a way.
It's just a case of practicing,
when you get a bit more comfortable
in that position of being on one foot.
- [Emma] Oh, it's not bad, I mean, I didn't die, so...
- No, no, absolutely not.
- [Emma] Don't worry, I won't crash into you
because you look like the least comfy
place to land, to be honest.
- I'm quite pointy.
- [Emma] Right, I'm gonna try again.
I have confidence now.
I almost did it.
- Okay, nice, looking good.
Yeah, perfect.
(beep)
- [Emma] Yeah, that was kind of closer
to nature than I wanted to get.
What went wrong there?
Balance.
- I think you just lost your balance a little bit.
Remember you can still steer to keep your balance.
So I think at this point you just,
I think you panicked a little bit
because you knew you couldn't get that right foot down,
and then you went, whereas actually,
if you'd steered instead of leaning...
Would it be helpful to just practice scooting with the bike?
- [Emma] Yeah.
- So what I mean is, literally like,
you've got your foot on the pedal,
and you kind of start.
(short vocalized heroic melody)
Because then you can kind of steer a little bit.
Nice.
Having your hand on the top tube
is probably, is fair to say, the next step on.
So it's a fairly quick maneuver for you then
to take one hand off the bars and pick up the top tube.
Keep your hands on the bars, I reckon.
- [Emma] Yeah, I think the hands on bars is me.
I just don't feel like I've got
the balance to do one hand and one foot
while that hand is transitioning from here to there.
I just don't, I think it's beyond my balance capability.
- You will definitely be able to get it,
but it probably is something that you need to practice.
So, no, it's fine.
In the short term it's not a problem at all.
Yeah, both hands on the bars is totally cool.
So let's skip the top tube bit.
The next point, I'm gonna bring our obstacle
back in front of us, because we obviously need
to get off for something, so we'll talk timing now, okay?
You basically want to be on your bike as much as possible,
because it's basically more energy efficient
to be freewheeling than it is to be running,
which means getting off as close
to the obstacle as you feel comfortable.
So when you watch the pros do it,
they leave it really late.
I'd give yourself a little bit of grace period,
particularly because you're holding the handlebars,
and so you're gonna need obviously to then take that hand,
put it on the top tube, and then pick up the bike.
- [Emma] Almost.
Uh, oh, my brakes, I'm leaving, oh (beep).
- Just, uh, yeah.
Yeah, brilliant.
- [Emma] More like a hippo than a...
Presumably if you leave it too late and you're
still dismounting when you encounter the obstacle,
that is not optimal.
- No, it's fair to say that would be sub-optimal.
In most instances, you will probably be off the bike
for maybe five meters or so, in which case you'd pick it up
by the top tube, and then run.
You never want to push a cross bike, ideally.
If you're going for any longer, and you're
running up a hill, for example,
then you want to think about putting it on your shoulder.
My frame's a lot bigger than yours,
so I can actually lift it quite easily.
- [Emma] That looks neat.
- Yeah, because it's quite a spacious frame.
So the actual getting it on your shoulder
might require a modification of the technique,
but you can always tell a crossrider
by the way they hold their bike,
because rather than leaving it like this
with the saddle in your helmet
and the front wheel near the floor
and running around like that,
you have it much more neatly...
- [Emma] That does look neat, yeah.
- Now you're looking good.
So you got your hand round the head tube.
That's really good because it keeps the bike
nice and firmly up there at the front.
It keep your back wheel way off the ground,
and also, when you're in a race, and you got rivals,
you can now control the back of the bike,
and you can actually hit them in the face, or block them.
- [Emma] Sneaky.
- Yeah, no, don't do that.
Nice.
You have very nearly graduated from
jumping on and off school for cyclocross.
You've totally nailed it so far.
This one probably, if you'll pardon the pun,
is the biggest hurdle.
First thing to talk about is the fact that
we're not trying to do the high jump here.
We're not trying to set any records for altitude.
- [Emma] That's good because I'm rubbish at high jump.
- Okay, well you only have to jump.
as high as you need to jump.
And then the second thing really, is that actually
the process is in fact less about jumping
and more about speeding up the process
that you do every time you get on your bike.
So swinging your leg over and just jumping in the saddle.
That is what you're doing.
You're just doing it at speed, okay?
So no jumping, that's when there's a recipe for disaster.
We simply are looking to learn that technique
whilst on the move.
So hopefully that sort of reduces
the fear factor a little bit.
- [Emma] The reason it worries me is because
I feel like my saddle is quite high
compared to my leg length, so I feel like
if I don't jump high enough, that it's going to be
worse than jumping too high.
And see, when I get on a bike,
I normally do pedals first because
I can't quite sit on the saddle.
- No, but then that's where the little
kind of hop comes in, and then you just go, oh yeah.
- [Emma] And a bit of coordination (mumbles).
- Yeah, it's like
- [Emma] Oh dear.
- No, you'll be fine.
Okay, you ready?
- [Emma] Yeah, you show me how.
- Okay, right, first of all, start up front.
We hold the handlebars either on the hoods or the tops.
We learned last year that Sven Nys
has one hand on the brake and one hand on the top,
so you could do it like him,
and he's the greatest of all time.
Then, this is the bit that I think
a lot of people don't necessarily learn,
is you push the bike forward, because that means
that your leg, your right leg doesn't have to come as far,
because it's only traveling over the back wheel.
You can probably push it even further in front of you.
Maybe not quite that far.
(laughter)
Like that.
And then, and we can do this from stationary,
we're looking to jump just high enough
so that we land on, like your inner thigh basically,
so don't try and land on your bum, or worse.
You wanna land on your thigh, and then your momentum,
because you're kind of jumping
across the bike as well as forward,
is gonna carry you nicely into the saddle.
So maybe try on the tops so you're having to reach less far.
- [Emma] Ooh, I never ride on tops though.
- No, but you don't have to ride, you just have to get on,
and then immediately you can be back like that.
And we don't even have to be running to start with.
You push the bike forward in front of you,
and then kind of jump after it, okay?
- [Emma] (beep).
- Think of it more in terms of one diagonal motion
as opposed to two separate motions.
- [Emma] The two vectors combining, right.
- Hey, there we go.
That was cool.
Now, all it is a case of is just
adding a little bit more velocity.
So to start with, maybe kind of
leaping forward with a bit more gusto.
And, gusto.
(Emma laughs)
I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone
to learn it in an hour, or two hours, or an afternoon,
but by practicing these basic principles
over and over again, then you'll totally nail it.
You've got the technique, it's just a case of
you kind of practice it, like,
you know, even the top crossriders will be practicing
these techniques, yeah, you know, like
just on the bikes, in training, in the woods,
they'll be practicing getting on and off.
- [Emma] So you're saying I have to practice.
- I think so, and then we'll probably discover that,
like just about every other form of cycling,
you'll totally nail it, you'll become national champ,
and then the rest is history.
- [Emma] I'm a bit tired.
It's been a long afternoon of falling off (beep).
- If you want to see the beginner skills,
which Emma mastered, previous video,
then you can get through to that one just down there.
And otherwise, please give this a quick big thumbs up.
- [Emma] And don't forget to subscribe
by clicking down here.