BRAKING ZONES
HOW TO SESSION TRAILS
With all that weight accelerating you downhill, it’s bound to catch up with you sooner or later, and when it comes to braking zones, the extra weight of an e-bike will work against you. If you time your braking the same as you normally would on a lighter trail bike, then you’ll find that you are constantly overshooting your braking zones and dragging them in corners. Instead, pull the brakes a little earlier and try to extend your braking zone further out, so that you arrive composed and off the brakes for the incoming feature or turn. The way to justify this is to see it as breaking even. After all, you’ve got to that next section quicker than you normally would because of the better acceleration, so pulling your brakes a little earlier to extend your braking zone will mean you are back to where you started time wise. Being so patient on the descents will feel strange at first, but will give you a much smoother experience and keep you fresh for longer.
When we write these articles we normally encourage our readers to get off their bikes and head back up for another shot. Sessioning a difficult section like this will allow you to make better progress by ironing out any mistakes noticed on your previous attempt. However, this is another part of your riding where the weight of the bike will work against you as you won’t want to push up more than once or twice. When we run our e-bike courses at Dirt School we tend to have a couple of runs at a section, then move on to look at something else. We might only do this twice before exiting and heading back up for another run of the same trail. We can then ride through the sections that we looked at the first time, and perhaps stop to look at something else further down. We find that we normally still have time to head back up for a third, and often a full run, of the track and still finish at the same time as we would have with the one run on a normal coaching session. It’s a different way to session trails, but as long as you are clear about what you are trying to achieve on your final full run, you can still make just as much progress.