How Much Air To Put In A Mountain Bike Tire (PSI)

I've been asked quite a few times by a number of people how much air pressure to keep in your mountain bike tire for cross country riding and racing. The answer isn't so black and white. There are a number of factors to consider and most of them depend on the current conditions of the single track.

I never ride with more than 45 psi and never less than 30 psi. If I'm riding on hard packed dirt or pavement, I'll ride a higher psi because the higher the psi, the lower the rolling resistance. However, if there are a lot of rocks and roots or the course is muddy, I'll lower the pressure in the tire to increase the amount of traction. There are a few things to consider that will eventually be common knowledge after one has ridden a lot. Even if the course is dry but has a lot of rocks and roots, you'll not want to have the pressure too high in your tires. The bike tends to bounce a lot in these situations and you'll fatigue faster, even though there is less rolling resistance. You'll have to use your own judgment as to the trade off between the amount of root / rocky sections compared to smooth packed sections of the trail.

Just remember:
High Pressure = Lower Rolling Resistance + More Bounce
Low Pressure = Higher Rolling Resistance + More Traction

Also, it should be noted that I'm speaking about tube tires. Tubeless tires can run at lower pressure without the threat of pinch flats. That's when you hit a root or rock and your tube gets pinched between your rim and the root or rock causing a piercing of the tube.

A little place called IPSwitch

One day, a bunch of friends and me decided it'd be a great idea to go to a park near Virginia Beach that we hadn't ever been to before to check it out. Well, we got there bright and early on a Saturday morning and quickly realized it wasn't all that big and we couldn't really find a trail, per se. However, we did find some entertainment in some small mounds of dirt and a fallen tree, as boys often will. So, since we all made the trip to get there we decided we might as well make the most of it... And that we did. In fact, this little trip turned out to bruise and batter us worse than most days out on the trail. As the video below will attest, there wasn't one guy who didn't take a spill that day.

Perhaps the funniest memory of the ride that day was the aggressiveness at which one of our buddies attacked the jumps. We all showed up and were taking our time warming up by doing some laps around the common area where the dirt mounds were. We had stayed out very late the night before so we were all kind of tired and lazy. But, this particular friend of ours didn't go out with us the night before so he had a little more energy to release. It seemed like as soon as he strapped his helmet on and got on his bike he rode as fast as he could toward one of the dirt mounds and jumped as high as he could. Unfortunately, he got a little sideways in the air and took a crash landing. We had a hard time getting his crashes on video because he would go so fast and fly so far that he'd get out of frame. But, in one scene you can see where his front tube came out of his tire due to one of the spills he had taken. Man that was simply hilarious. I had never and still haven't ever seen someones tube pop out of their tire from crashing or for any other reason, for that matter. The tube didn't actually pop, it just came out of the tire... still inflated! It was HUGE!

Enjoy!

Location: IPSwitch trail (trail used loosely), Virginia Beach, VA

Old mountain bike video from past life

I was combing through some old files during a backup and I came across some old video's I compiled a few years ago. This particular video isn't quite as gripping if you weren't there but it was one of my first videos to edit using primitive editing tools from Microsoft (I know, there was my mistake). We had a visitor from China staying in town for business so we took him mountain biking in Virginia, filmed it and gave him a copy to take home with him to remember his trip. He was very thankful and we all had a blast. This video may be interesting to view for those who live outside the US east coast area as it shows the typical landscape of a south eastern Virginia single track.