Yea, I know - big secret. There is no magic bullet when it comes to riding a road bike, mountain bike or any bike - the more you ride, harder you ride, and the more you push the envelope (without going outside it) - both physically and mentally - the better you will become. Riding a bike with bigger wheels will make about the same difference in overall speed as taking/not taking a huge dump before a ride. There is a local trail here that has some technical features - I have ridden it with both a 26" and a 29" wheeled bike and cleaned it fine on each, I just prefer the 26" - but the thing that really gets my goat is when my skill is related to my bike - I have had people say they could clean a section if they had a bike like mine - totally disregarding the fact that I ride 14 hours + a week and have ridden that particular piece of trail over 100 times.