Outside of this year, the last time I really enjoyed riding a bmx bike was when I was a pre-teenager.  For the past four years after finishing college, I decided to jump back into cycling and it started out with road cycling which I found boring because I felt you're just mashing on pedals without a challenge outside of cardio so I transitioned to my first love, doing observed trials...but competitvely, there isn't anything unless you go to Canada so I took thought I'd take on XC and gravity style MTB and they've been my main staple but I got felt my bike handling skills in terms of speed need work so I decided to commit to a few BMX races this year and just loved it because I feel like I found that spark why I love riding a bike!

I've been definitely riding my GT Speed Series Cruiser more than any of my over a dozen mountain bikes.  There's just something special I love about the track.  In MTB, there are trails filled with big drops, crappy jumps and features where you just can't gradually progress up to.  At BMX tracks, it seems you can just do laps getting your techniques, your lines and confidence dialed in.  For example, you can practice in the flat table top jump and work on the mechanics of it and once you feel bored with it, move on to double jumps.  It's great.  

Plus, the races are great because sometimes there aren't enough people in your class so you can be up against faster, more experienced riders and blatantly accept you may not win but there aren't sleeper sandbaggers in the hordes you'll find at a MTB race in many disciplines.  So you feel great for being put up and weighing your salt against the best and accept maybe an obvious loss as an opportunity to get it right.

In less than three minutes of total track time racing, I feel a satisfaction of having put in hours of training.  Losing against the best can definitely be the biggest gain in knowing what it takes to win.