What's a Trials Bike?
I've spoken about how the AJP PR3 feels and handles like a trials bike, but I didn't explain what a trials bike is.
Well, here's what a trials bike does:
I say "does" rather than "is" because these guys aren't on trials bikes - they're on enduro bikes. Trials bikes have a very distinctive shape - basically they have no seat and the whole lot looks like a boomerang on wheels - a distinctive 'V' shape.
The guys in this clip were training for the Erzberg Rodeo - the toughest offroad event in the calendar. Hold on, isn't that Dakar? Well yes, but it's a different kind of tough.
Erzberg is designed to test your toughness and your bike skills - it's the most technically challenging event in the world. You need to ride up hills that you could barely climb up, and you need to ride down cliffs that are more suitable for base-jumping. It's high-adrenaline stuff which looks particularly good on TV.
Dakar is more about endurance. More about toughness. Much less about showing off your bike skills, more about what you've got inside of you. More about where your physical and mental endurance limits are. Enzberg is more about can you climb a cliff - on a bike - then ride over a hundred fallen trees before flying off a ramp and putting the bike into a backflip?
Strangely enough, some people can do both - and do them well. Cyril Despres - factory rider for Gauloises - rides in the Dakar. He started his life as a trials rider - hill climbs, tree trunks and barrels - and he's good at both. Giovanni Sala, factory rider for Repsol. He also rides at Erzberg and Dakar.
So you watch these guys and you think "there is no way I could ever be that good". Definitely not, if that's what you think. If you think you'll never be that good, then it's an absolute guarantee that you'll never be that good.
But if you think "I will be that good". Maybe, just maybe. If you want it enough. If you train enough. If you take enough knocks and shrug them off. Just maybe. Ali was the world champion long before he stepped into the ring. Caesar had conquered Britain long before he set foot on English soil.
Scoff if you must, please feel free. But why not? Suppose, for instance, I had an infinite amount of money. I could get up in the morning and train, train train all day - right outside my house. Every day. Did nothing but train. Didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't do anything except train. I couldn't be that good? Of course I could, so could you.
You can do anything you put your mind to, so we're told. Not quite. You can do anything you work hard enough at learning, and want badly enough, is probably more accurate.
Ever heard of a guy called Lance Armstrong? Won the gruelling Tour de France 7 times. Count them - seven.
In the course of doing so, he beat off cancer - including an extended course of chemotherapy - and a germ cell tumour which threatened to destroy his brain and lungs. He had brain surgery, and other surgery, but still didn't give up. This guy won the Tour de France long before he got on a bike at the start line.
Most of us would have said "uh-oh, cancer. I'm completely fucked now". So, whilst you're scoffing (assuming you were, apologies if you weren't), exactly why can't I aspire to be the best that I can be?
OK, so I'm not a natural rider. I have to work bloody hard at it. Funny, old Winston Churchill wasn't a natural speaker. He had the most almighty stammer, used to get the piss taken out of him something chronic he did. He used to sit in front of a mirror and practice speaking - day after day and night after night - until he turned into one of the best (if not the best) orators the world has ever seen.
That's what dedication and commitment will do for you, provided you want something badly enough.
I don't want to win Dakar, in the "finish first" sense of the word. Getting there in one piece will be a win.
Guy called Akira, on YouTube, also noticed the similarity between Dakar and Ezberg. He ripped off a few bits of Polar's video (the Popcorn one) and mixed it in with some of the footage from the 2006 Enzberg Rodeo:
He's got Cyril Despres and Giovanni Sala in there twice - once at Dakar and once at Enzberg. He's also got Andy Caldecott - who didn't do Erzberg.
By the way, Martin may well be thinking differently nowadays. I was joking him about the stripped down PR4 he had in the workshop - "that's your Dakar bike". Martin thought about this and told me "Nah, I'll use a PR5" (the new 250cc from AJP). That's moved on a little from where we were a few months back - putting his hands over his ears and repeating "I'm not listening, I'm not listening ...".
If anybody was ever going to get to Dakar, it'd be Martin. Balls the size of barrage balloons, and tough. He'd love to go - I'm sure of it - but there's the Missus Martin dimension (she's much less keen).
And then there's Jago as well. That could be 3 bikes to Dakar for AJP.
But could a small bike do it? Well, the recent changes in the course layout would help - as would the additional fuel stops. Nobody's though tof doing it that way.
In 1968, there was only one way to do the high jump. The rules were clear - take off on one foot. Everybody was using a technique called the 'scissor jump' - get the legs over the bar one at a time and, crucially, stay upright.
A young man by the name of Richard Fosbury looked at the problem differently. He ran at the bar diagonallly, then went over it backwards - head first. Madman.
He won the gold medal, and broke the world record, at the 1968 Olympics. Every high jump athlete in the world now uses the "Fosbury Flop".
Maybe, just maybe, our perspective of "could a small bike do this" will one day become the normal way of looking at the problem. Maybe it won't. But a tough-as-boots bike and a tough-as-boots rider. Hmm...
What if Cyril Despres and Gauloises decided that they were entering a 260cc bike to the next Dakar? Would everybody fall about laughing? Or would everybody start to wonder if a small bike might actually be a wise thing to do?
As Dick Fosbury proved. Just because nobody is doing it, that's not because it can't be done.
Well, here's what a trials bike does:
I say "does" rather than "is" because these guys aren't on trials bikes - they're on enduro bikes. Trials bikes have a very distinctive shape - basically they have no seat and the whole lot looks like a boomerang on wheels - a distinctive 'V' shape.
The guys in this clip were training for the Erzberg Rodeo - the toughest offroad event in the calendar. Hold on, isn't that Dakar? Well yes, but it's a different kind of tough.
Erzberg is designed to test your toughness and your bike skills - it's the most technically challenging event in the world. You need to ride up hills that you could barely climb up, and you need to ride down cliffs that are more suitable for base-jumping. It's high-adrenaline stuff which looks particularly good on TV.
Dakar is more about endurance. More about toughness. Much less about showing off your bike skills, more about what you've got inside of you. More about where your physical and mental endurance limits are. Enzberg is more about can you climb a cliff - on a bike - then ride over a hundred fallen trees before flying off a ramp and putting the bike into a backflip?
Strangely enough, some people can do both - and do them well. Cyril Despres - factory rider for Gauloises - rides in the Dakar. He started his life as a trials rider - hill climbs, tree trunks and barrels - and he's good at both. Giovanni Sala, factory rider for Repsol. He also rides at Erzberg and Dakar.
So you watch these guys and you think "there is no way I could ever be that good". Definitely not, if that's what you think. If you think you'll never be that good, then it's an absolute guarantee that you'll never be that good.
But if you think "I will be that good". Maybe, just maybe. If you want it enough. If you train enough. If you take enough knocks and shrug them off. Just maybe. Ali was the world champion long before he stepped into the ring. Caesar had conquered Britain long before he set foot on English soil.
Scoff if you must, please feel free. But why not? Suppose, for instance, I had an infinite amount of money. I could get up in the morning and train, train train all day - right outside my house. Every day. Did nothing but train. Didn't eat, didn't sleep, didn't do anything except train. I couldn't be that good? Of course I could, so could you.
You can do anything you put your mind to, so we're told. Not quite. You can do anything you work hard enough at learning, and want badly enough, is probably more accurate.
Ever heard of a guy called Lance Armstrong? Won the gruelling Tour de France 7 times. Count them - seven.
In the course of doing so, he beat off cancer - including an extended course of chemotherapy - and a germ cell tumour which threatened to destroy his brain and lungs. He had brain surgery, and other surgery, but still didn't give up. This guy won the Tour de France long before he got on a bike at the start line.
Most of us would have said "uh-oh, cancer. I'm completely fucked now". So, whilst you're scoffing (assuming you were, apologies if you weren't), exactly why can't I aspire to be the best that I can be?
OK, so I'm not a natural rider. I have to work bloody hard at it. Funny, old Winston Churchill wasn't a natural speaker. He had the most almighty stammer, used to get the piss taken out of him something chronic he did. He used to sit in front of a mirror and practice speaking - day after day and night after night - until he turned into one of the best (if not the best) orators the world has ever seen.
That's what dedication and commitment will do for you, provided you want something badly enough.
I don't want to win Dakar, in the "finish first" sense of the word. Getting there in one piece will be a win.
Guy called Akira, on YouTube, also noticed the similarity between Dakar and Ezberg. He ripped off a few bits of Polar's video (the Popcorn one) and mixed it in with some of the footage from the 2006 Enzberg Rodeo:
He's got Cyril Despres and Giovanni Sala in there twice - once at Dakar and once at Enzberg. He's also got Andy Caldecott - who didn't do Erzberg.
By the way, Martin may well be thinking differently nowadays. I was joking him about the stripped down PR4 he had in the workshop - "that's your Dakar bike". Martin thought about this and told me "Nah, I'll use a PR5" (the new 250cc from AJP). That's moved on a little from where we were a few months back - putting his hands over his ears and repeating "I'm not listening, I'm not listening ...".
If anybody was ever going to get to Dakar, it'd be Martin. Balls the size of barrage balloons, and tough. He'd love to go - I'm sure of it - but there's the Missus Martin dimension (she's much less keen).
And then there's Jago as well. That could be 3 bikes to Dakar for AJP.
But could a small bike do it? Well, the recent changes in the course layout would help - as would the additional fuel stops. Nobody's though tof doing it that way.
In 1968, there was only one way to do the high jump. The rules were clear - take off on one foot. Everybody was using a technique called the 'scissor jump' - get the legs over the bar one at a time and, crucially, stay upright.
A young man by the name of Richard Fosbury looked at the problem differently. He ran at the bar diagonallly, then went over it backwards - head first. Madman.
He won the gold medal, and broke the world record, at the 1968 Olympics. Every high jump athlete in the world now uses the "Fosbury Flop".
Maybe, just maybe, our perspective of "could a small bike do this" will one day become the normal way of looking at the problem. Maybe it won't. But a tough-as-boots bike and a tough-as-boots rider. Hmm...
What if Cyril Despres and Gauloises decided that they were entering a 260cc bike to the next Dakar? Would everybody fall about laughing? Or would everybody start to wonder if a small bike might actually be a wise thing to do?
As Dick Fosbury proved. Just because nobody is doing it, that's not because it can't be done.
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Friday, December 21, 2007
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