+1 That's exactly the sort of advice that helped me.

Back in the old days, when I had an 1150GSA (�1 in the swear jar), I had similar problems getting my head around the front always feeling like it’s wanting to washout, so I can empathise with how you're feeling. I’d only ever ridden featherweight trials bikes off road. It was my first experience of riding a heavy bike off road and TBH, initially it wasn’t that pleasurable, until… I realised (well, was told actually) that going faster makes it easier!

When the going gets tough everyone’s natural reaction is to slow down, it’s human nature. The thing is, the amount of stability a bike has is completely dependent on forward motion. As speed increases (to a point) so does stability. Going too slowly will cause the bike to move around more and make it feel a squirrely, especially at the front, which is what you don’t want. A wandering rear end is a lot easier to deal with (which you tend to get more of if you go quicker). I remember at the time, I was given these words of wisdom: “Ride a bit faster than you feel comfortable with – and for god's sake relax.” It helped - a lot.

The other minor issue related to pace on soft ground (with TKCs) is that if you don’t go fast enough, they don’t self-clean very well (which they aren’t great at anyway compared to a dedicated off-road tyre) and you end up riding on what basically amounts to a pair of slicks!

Now I must point out, I’m by no means an off-road expert, far from it, in fact I’m still too slow (but working on it), and would probably class myself as poor to mediocre with a lot more to learn!

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