Podcast: The Pros and Cons of the Flow Trail
Singletracks Mountain Bike Podcast
Singletracks.com
4.7 • 574 Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2015
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It seems as if mountain bikers have a love-hate relationship with flow trails and in this episode, we discuss some of the pros and cons of the flow trail. Jim Hodgson joins us and talks about how dissing on flow trails is analogous to enjoying a nice cold IPA. “If you don’t enjoy the most technical trails in the world, then you’re not a true mountain biker.”
Listen in to our full conversation to hear this plus a rundown of some of the best flow trails we’ve ridden.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Something unexpected has arrived in Happy Meal. |
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| 0:16.3 | Until the 2nd of February from 11am includes one pre-selected book or toy whilst it's last. |
| 0:39.7 | Hey everybody. Welcome to the Singlend of February. From 11am, includes one pre-selected book or toy, whilst dots last. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the single tracks podcast. Thanks for joining us. Today we're going to be talking about flow trails, and we've got Jim Hodgson with us. Jim is one of the single tracks writers. You may be familiar with his stuff. He's an outdoor humorist, and you can find his work on Jim Hodgson.com. He's also got a new book out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble called 10,000 Gods. Thanks for joining us, Jim. I'm happy to be here. |
| 0:46.4 | I love you, boys. So we're talking about flow trails, and for mountain bikers who might be just |
| 0:52.3 | getting started and aren't familiar with the term, what |
| 0:54.7 | exactly is a flow trail? I would say a flow trail is a trail that requires minimum braking |
| 1:01.5 | and pedaling. So I'm like to say no braking or pedaling, but I personally prefer my flow |
| 1:06.4 | trails to run a little bit steeper. So trending more towards a more breaking less peddling. But in short, |
| 1:11.8 | it's like a bermed out jump roller lines, sort of similar to one you might find at a downhill resort, |
| 1:17.9 | but we're seeing these built all over the place in national forests and city parks, different degrees. |
| 1:24.2 | And generally, a flow trail can be ridden by anyone, so anybody with any bike can go out |
| 1:30.2 | and roll through this trail. They can roll over the tabletops and the rollers, but the best flow |
| 1:35.1 | trails are designed so that if you're a more advanced rider, you can air out the tabletops, |
| 1:40.6 | double up some of the rollers, and kind of rip through the berms at a faster speed. |
| 1:45.1 | So it's a trail that really kind of caters to all levels of riders and tries to provide a |
| 1:50.9 | really fun experience for people on both ends of the spectrum. |
| 1:54.5 | Yeah, that's a good definition. |
| 1:55.8 | I would just add that kind of like you said, that the emphasis is on maintaining speed both up and down. |
| 2:02.7 | So climbs are rolling. |
... |
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