Trials of an Idiot – A Beginners Story

By Nigel Cooper

Muscle Memory Let's wander off into the world of automotive electronics and fuel injection ECU's. These wonders of the modern world that have largely replaced carbs, at least on 4-strokes, have to work out continuously the exact right amount of fuel that needs to be injected into the engine at any instant in time. Although they use some pretty swift electronics, even so it is simply not possible for them to run an algorithm and calculate in real time this number from the raw inputs. Instead, they use a lookup map; a large table indexed on a key formed from a combination of all of the input values, like air temperature, engine temperature, engine revs, throttle position, oxygen what-not and maybe some others. This may be a bit of an oversimplification as I don't actually work in the automotive industry, but you get the core idea; you can't calculate this stuff in realtime, although I guess they must have to do some realtime interpolation, when the inputs fall between two entries…?

Now, just as the automotive engineers have to run their algorithms many, many times during development, to calculate all of the possible fuel settings needed in every possible combination of weathers, temperatures and throttle positions, and then store them away in the final chip; so we too need to practice, practice and practice again to develop that same memory of body position, weighting, hand and wrist movements and so on, so they are there for instant retrieval when actually trying to ride a section.

The big problem for the beginner is that, well, let's face it, we don't have a friendly "engineer" writing the algorithm for us. We don't actually know how to calculate these settings. So before we can even start storing away precious settings, we need to first develop the algorithm to do that. We can help ourselves by doing some none-riding learning first. Quite how people got started in trials before the advent of the Interweb and YouTube I have no idea, but quite frankly it must have been staggeringly tough! I guess some gifted person with a very stubborn streak and prepared to bash themselves and their bike to pieces got started, and then it was handed down from them through their families and/or friends. There is also no doubt that when we are young, our brains have less existing memories and whatnot clogging them up, so they do form the muscle memory a little quicker, but that shouldn't put off older folks from trying, but it probably will take longer.

So to start with, let's begin with slow tight turns, find every video you can on YouTube and watch it, again and again. Then go out and practice, again and again. Even take your phone with you, if you have one and there's reception where you practice, so you can try a bit then watch a bit, and so on. I have to say I haven't actually done that myself, but it sounds like a good idea!

Lesson 3

I thought I'd got my slow tight turns up to a passable standard, but then that was on hard tarmac. I'm now trying to repeat the feat in front of the watchful eyes of a lady who teaches trials. This is at the back of the car park area at Hookwood, under the pine trees. You could hardly call the ground rough but it proves to be way more tricky than the billiard smooth station car park and I initially fail miserably to even make one complete figure 8 without dabbing. She lets out a long "Hmmmmmm" and sets up a few flags near one of the trees. It looks a trivially simple route but I dab repeatedly trying to get through it.

"You're blipping the clutch in and out and it's upsetting your balance. And try to stop using the front brake and just use the back brake, it unsettles the bike much less".

I try and take these wise words to heart and attempt to keep the clutch just on the biting point, it is an improvement, along with use of the back brake. However, I'm very uncomfortable with my new foot position and lack of hand strength limits how long I can slip the clutch. In addition, she has told me to use 1st gear and I'm paranoid about throwing the thing up in the air and me off the back. Eventually, she is sufficiently happy with my efforts that I'm allowed to progress to the sandpit area, just off from the far end of the car park.

This is a big bowl with steep sides (note; it no longer exists in quite the same way, having been transformed over winter for the 1st round of the 2020 British Championship) and she describes a simple loop that starts at the bottom, goes up one side, round the back and down again. The side I have to go up looks steeper and higher than Everest to me but I assume she has done this before with complete numpties so I have to trust that this is vaguely feasible for someone with no skill and even less confidence. Staggeringly, what I realise, is that the bike will have no problem if only I can let it do its thing. I stall repeatedly at the top of the climb due to not using enough gas and request to change into 2nd, but she wants me to ride slow and 2nd will be too fast I'm told. I keep plugging away and after many attempts finally manage a complete loop without stalling, although there are several dabs. My arms, hands and knees are absolutely collapsing but this woman is relentless. She now wants me to do it in the other direction! I give it my best stab and although I'm tiring fast, the experience I've gained starts to ease things a little and I eventually manage 3 loops in a row. I'm allowed to finish and return to the car park exhausted and sweating, to collapse and drink some water.

Summary

• Try and do some exercise to strengthen forearms, elbows and hand grip. I rapidly developed tennis elbow early on.

• Ignore the front brake and just use the back brake instead. It's also one less control to think about when there is already too much going on.

• Work on that clutch control; holding the clutch at the biting point and using the very smallest of movements to tickle the bike forwards. I've found that at the moment I have to use two fingers on the clutch when I'm really slipping it as I simply don't have enough strength in one.

• In conjunction with the above, also work on throttle control. Just a few degrees of rotation one way or the other may be all that is needed.

This is absolutely and completely nothing like riding a road bike!