HajiWasAPunk
Member
- Aug 5, 2005
- 807
- 0
Bare with me here....
My son (10 years old, 85 lbs) started riding about 3 months ago on a CRF80. We went to a couple of riding classes and he quickly had the itch to race. After 2 weeks of racing he finished 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in the 4 motos he rode in. He was bottoming out the suspension badly on the bike and complaining that the throttle was pinned and it still wouldn't go fast enough. So I upgraded him to a CR85. We took a couple of weeks off of racing for him to get used to the 2-stroke and the extra power.
After a couple of weeks and some more riding classes, he looked good on it. Not terribly fast in the corners but like he was in control of the bike.
Then he had a bad crash where the bike was sideways going over a jump and we wound up at Urgent Care getting his collar bone x-rayed. It was negative but he had bent the handle bars. 5 days later he was running around like a normal kid again. We rode at our practice track and went to another riding class and he again looked real comfortable. So we signed him up to race on a non points night (thinking it would be less crowded etc).
Well, he got in the race and some kind of fire kicked into him, he was running in 5th place out of about 15 riders. But then he tried to pass another rider on a turn that has a small jump in it and wound up sideways in the air again. He bent the front rim, knocked himself silly. Nothing broken again but he's still sore 4 days later. Is this a typical "learning" process or have I moved him to quickly to the bike? My thought is to get him a private lesson a couple of times to get this jumping sideways thing worked out but I was wondering if anyone else had any similar experiences?
My son (10 years old, 85 lbs) started riding about 3 months ago on a CRF80. We went to a couple of riding classes and he quickly had the itch to race. After 2 weeks of racing he finished 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and 3rd in the 4 motos he rode in. He was bottoming out the suspension badly on the bike and complaining that the throttle was pinned and it still wouldn't go fast enough. So I upgraded him to a CR85. We took a couple of weeks off of racing for him to get used to the 2-stroke and the extra power.
After a couple of weeks and some more riding classes, he looked good on it. Not terribly fast in the corners but like he was in control of the bike.
Then he had a bad crash where the bike was sideways going over a jump and we wound up at Urgent Care getting his collar bone x-rayed. It was negative but he had bent the handle bars. 5 days later he was running around like a normal kid again. We rode at our practice track and went to another riding class and he again looked real comfortable. So we signed him up to race on a non points night (thinking it would be less crowded etc).
Well, he got in the race and some kind of fire kicked into him, he was running in 5th place out of about 15 riders. But then he tried to pass another rider on a turn that has a small jump in it and wound up sideways in the air again. He bent the front rim, knocked himself silly. Nothing broken again but he's still sore 4 days later. Is this a typical "learning" process or have I moved him to quickly to the bike? My thought is to get him a private lesson a couple of times to get this jumping sideways thing worked out but I was wondering if anyone else had any similar experiences?