I’ll try not to ramble, but hey, it’s me. And all my opinions are mine. Not always based on anything other that my perceptions. ;-) Just got us timing chips. Isaac thinks it “looks cool” on his bike while I have another agenda. I’ve been riding against riders with a large variety of skills and age ranges. And I’ve found it difficult to gauge improvements. One race I’ll be racing an older rider and another I’ll be up against “kids” 15-20yrs younger than me. So even if I win, I’m not sure if it’s luck, my mad skeelz or I just wasn’t fast enough to be in the crash that wrapped up everyone else. This is where I believe using the chip to track performance can help. And I think can be used as a training tool for kids to self evaluate. Make the timer the competition! By making the competition by about personal records, it takes the variability of competition out of the equation. Though there will be times when other riders cause you to be slower, little things like being in the way and not hearing my bell to get out of my way, or getting shut out on a cornering move. Young riders (older riders too) might be upset by not finishing as well as they wanted to. But if we remove the other riders from the equation and see that even though we didn’t do as well as we “wanted” based on other riders, but we took 1.5 seconds off our track time?!!!! That’s an AWESOME improvement! I recently raced and on my first lap set a personal record for my gate time and lap times! Felt great about that. Transferred and went to final. On final I hesitated coming down the starting hill. And my lap time also reflected my hesitation. But looking at my time I was forced to think about how that hesitation at the start ended with a 2nd place finish vs 1st. I know I hesitated because of a crash a week before when I got tangled with they rider next to me, and I let up (also theory tested and validated that skipping a single pedal stroke will put you behind). I’ve been told a good gate start is everything if you’re racing to win. And a chip will give you unbiased evaluation of how good your gate really was. Add to it the rest of the lap time and how you felt vs the time. This total picture may help you understand that you felt great because you came off the gate like a rocket was attached to your back side, came out of the corners on fire and flew through the rhythm sections like a fighter jet. Or maybe it felt great because you felt smooth, in control, and didn’t crash or get squirrelly.

Riding BMX can be so casual that it can be easy to forget that when you are racing competitively that you are also an athlete. It’s ok if you don’t exercise outside of riding. Sometimes that is the exercise. Also, if you are just here for the community then fist bumps and high fives is where it’s at. However, if you want to improve standings, learn new skills, be faster on the track or just be more physically fit exercise will get you there faster. Because BMX isn’t as formal about practice as other sports this will require you to do the work on your own. So what exercises do you do? What should you do? And why are you doing it? Here are five exercises that can be done anywhere to get started: 1. Push ups - to help with bike control and pumping 2. Squats - leg mobility and power for pumping and starts 3. Walking Lunges - more power on starts, pedaling out corners and obstacles 4. Jumping jacks - for pedaling, jumping and pumping 5. Bicycles - building core strength for pedaling and general bike control If you do 5-10 repetitions of each exercise 3 times in a row at least twice a week or more you will not only improve your fitness, but will see improvements on the track. What do you do for exercise?