Mountain Biking - Gap Speed

When you start to do bigger gaps and jumps how do you know what speed you should hit the lip? Is ther a kind of rule of thumb?

The gaps I'm aiming towards are the kind where if you miss the landing your screwed.

Trial and error. When you start doing gaps a lot you can judge speed on your own.

You could use physics to figure it out if you like. But I seriously don't like physics so I can't help much there.

this is another practice situations. Start small and get bigger and bigger progressively.

Or just hit it and screw the consequences.

Trial and error. When you start doing gaps a lot you can judge speed on your own.

You could use physics to figure it out if you like. But I seriously don't like physics so I can't help much there.

this is another practice situations. Start small and get bigger and bigger progressively.

The problem is when you come upon a gap suddenly that you've not had experience with or encountered before. I attempted one along the broken concrete of Lake Shore Drive once and "missed it by --> <-- this much". The results to my rear wheel were not pretty.

But how do you judge then?...

and to be honest I never come up suddenly on anything. I usually do one slow run on a trail before I worry about speed. Too many big drops / gaps here to be flying along and trusting my instincts.

But how do you judge then?...

and to be honest I never come up suddenly on anything. I usually do one slow run on a trail before I worry about speed. Too many big drops / gaps here to be flying along and trusting my instincts.

But where's the adventure in that? ;) I agree, I usually run a trail slowly at first before going at it full speed but there are also times when it will be my one and only pass through that portion of the trail. This often happens on really long distance rides. Admittedly I haven't been doing too many of those recently. Most of my MTBing these days has been on out and back courses as opposed to large multi-state loops. The mishap along LSD is actually on an urban bike/multi-use path. This was 15 years ago and that section of the path along the beach and shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago was fairly deteriorated and consisted mainly of broken up concrete sections. I think it's all been repaired now.

Yeah, I am pretty careful. I scope out most lines before I ride them high speed. My brain needs to work its way around something before I attempt much of anything.

Better to go to fast than go to slow.

Better to go to fast than go to slow.


Exactly, go faster if your not going to run into anything like trees or something. There is math that you could do obviously, but nobody ever does that. If your starting to do bigger gaps but cant judge your speed then are you sure you should be doing them at all?

Better to go to fast than go to slow.

Now that depends. What is the landing like? I know around here there are a few 20' gaps that have a landing of about 5' in length before you run off a cliff or into one if you do not make the turn.
As mentioned before, start with small gaps and work your way up.

:beer:

Casing gaps sucks! As long as you've got the room to land, I'd take a landing without a transition over casing anyway. Casing = for sure crash. Landing hard because of no transition you at least have some chance of riding away from.