By John Ker
WTB¹s Mark Weir, the seven-time champion of the Downieville Downhill and the godfather of the pump track, reports that the miniature mountain park courses that he helped popularize are going mainstream, with at least three municipalities taking steps to add them to their public park systems.
Pump tracks are tiny mountain bike trail systems that are commonly built in mountain biker¹s backyards. They can be built in an area as small as 10 feet by 30 feet, on level ground, using nothing more than shovels. The pump tracks offer steeply banked turns and small roller jumps that riders can use to generate speed by "pumping" their bikes with their arms and legs, alternately pulling up and pushing down on the handlebars (as dictated by the terrain), rather than pedaling. Top riders, such as Brian Lopes, the reigning world 4X mountain bike champion, can reportedly accelerate to speeds in excess of 25 mph by doing repeated laps on a pump track, without any pedaling. Riders like Weir, Lopes and others have found that riding pump tracks helps them to improve their bike-handling skills, get a good full-body workout and have fun all at the same time.
Mark Weir¹s backyard pump track, in Novato, California, has attracted top mountain bike riders from around the world. It has also been featured in Mountain Bike Action (August 2006) and on television. The Home and Garden Network filmed an episode of one of its shows, ³Color Splash,² in Weir¹s backyard this past year, after the show¹s producers learned that Weir¹s neighbors, moms in their 30s and 40s had started riding Weir¹s pump track as an alternative to going to spin classes at local gyms.
Recently, Jonny Moseley, the 1998 Olympic gold medalist in mogul skiing, came to Weir¹s house to film a segment on his pump track for the pilot episode of a yet-to-be-named show being filmed for NBC television
Weir¹s backyard pump track had become so popular with neighbors that he recently began to require that anybody who rode his backyard pump track had to write a letter to the city of Novato asking the city to add a public pump track to its park system. Enough people wrote letters that the city is now planning on adding three pump tracks to the city¹s park system. Weir says that he and his friends will do the construction work for free, once the plan is approved.
Weir also noted that two more municipalities, one on the West Coast and the other in the Midwest, are also taking steps to add pump tracks to their park systems.
Representatives of Mill Valley, California, have been consulting with Weir and other mountain bikers about adding a pump track to that city¹s park system as well.
Elsewhere, community leaders in Plainfield, Illinois, a southwestern suburb of Chicago, have met with a local mountain bike group, the Chicago Area Mountain Bikers West, and are finalizing plans for a proposed mountain bike park, which will include a pump track. The riding area is planned for a plot of Plainfield Park District land adjacent to the frontage road for Interstate 55, according to Kevin Marley, the bike park coordinator of CAMBr West, who has been spearheading the effort. Marley, 37, expects ground to be broken before the start of 2008, and finished by early spring, with the bike club handling the design, construction and maintenance of the bike park. The project has already received $16,000 in funding from three different groups; namely, the Bikes Belong Facilities Grant, the IMBA/Kona Freeride Grant and the REI Grant Program. An additional $3500 was generated via other fund-raising projects. |
