There are classic urban fields, courts and natural skateparks all around us. Here, sports evolved and legends earned their name.

Check out the best urban street sport spots, courts and lots.

Basketball – Barry Farm, Washington, DC

Unlike football or hockey, basketball is a true street sport. All you need is a single ball, a hoop and enough guys to get a game going. Solid street courts with high levels of competition are sprinkled across the country, as seen in our Best Streetball Courts feature.

Barry Farm, however, is where the best players call home. Barry Farm is located in the nation’s capitol, and the ballers here don’t often call fouls. The refs only show up for when the George Goodman League takes over for two months every summer.

Stickball – The Streets of the Bronx

So much of America’s sporting heritage has it’s roots in New York. Stickball, a street version of baseball, played with a rubber ball and broomstick, utilizes cars, walls, fences, fire hydrants and anything else that can get in the way.

Stickball first appeared on the streets of NYC in the early 20th century. Although it’s not as popular today, the sport is still played in the outer boroughs, in the shadows of the new billion-dollar stadiums.

Soccer – Times Square, NYC

Soccer may have been invented in the English countryside, but the sport has since gone worldwide, played everywhere from the slums of Rio to the monasteries of Tibet to even Times Square in NYC.

Earlier this year, Street Soccer held its annual championship under the flashing lights and huggable super heroes of busy Times Square. Zimbabwe won, proving soccer really is an international sport.

Skateboarding – Del Mar, California

You can’t skate without the street, and no street is more essential in skate history than the asphalt of Del Mar, California. Skateboarding emerged from SoCal surf culture when surfers started screwing roller skate wheels to the bottom of planks in the 50s.

Nearly two decades later, skateboarding came into its own at a skate competition in a breezy affluent beach town. It was the 1975 Del Mar Nationals, and it was a first glance at things to come. Southern California continues to be a hub of stylish skate activity.

Parkour – London

Parkour is a street sport and London is the city of never-ending streets. The sport didn’t catch on until 2003 with the release of the documentary, Jump London. London is one big free running playground.

From the huge stairs at Wembly Park, to the diving kong tabletops at The Furness, to the various obstacles at Vauxhall Walls – London really does provide infinite lines. Some sports require an entire city to perform, and Parkour is one of them.

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Since there’s no official Parkour league and no such thing as a Parkour record book, we must turn to Guinness World Records’ collection of sport-specific triumphs to determine who among the small group of near-superhuman traceurs have achieved at the highest levels.

Here are the title holders for five of the most jaw-dropping Parkour world records being set.

Fastest Time To Jump Over 10 Bars

“Fastest time to jump over 10 bars” might not have an Adrenaline-fueled ring to it, but when seen with your own eyes, it truly is an astonishing achievement.

Famed UK freerunner Timothy Graham Shieff appeared on the set of Milan Italy’s Lo Show Dei Record show and made it across 10 bars, arranged 7.5 feet apart, in just 6.3 seconds.

As if landing feet first and balancing on bars spaced so far apart isn’t difficult enough, the bars were also arranged to gradually increase in height as Shieff traveled. The highest bar was over 13 feet above the ground.

Even with all the time in the world, jumping these bars would be unspeakably challenging, not to mention nerve-racking. To do it in 6.3 seconds seems downright unworldly.

Farthest Backflip Off A Wall 

On May 24, 2010, 3Run Parkour star Chase Armitage set a new world record on the set of Zheng Da Zong Yi – Guinness World Records Special in Beijing, China by backflipping off a wall and over a car, landing 11 feet, 5 inches away from the wall.

The previous record, also held by Armitage, was set at the UK-based Pinewood Studios in 2009 and measured 9 ft, 11 inches. That means Armitage bested his previous effort by 1.5 feet in just one year.

Farthest Distance Wall Running 

Wall running horizontally for a distance of almost 11.5 feet must be impossible, right? That kind of athleticism has to span past the realm of human capability; it’s the kind of thing made possible by movie magic, we thought? For most people this is true, but not for German traceur Amadei Weiland.

That’s because on July 13, 2012, in Europa Park, Rust, Germany, Weiland set the world record for farthest distance wall running, achieving a span of 11 feet, 5.4 inches. If he ever gets tired of Parkour competitions, this guy’s surely got a bright future in Hollywood action films.

Longest Jump from Feet To Handstand

This video is a display of some real mutant strength and mind-boggling coordination. In November of 2011, German athlete Lukas Steiner set the world record for the longest jump (8.4 feet) from feet to handstand. But, as you’ll plainly see, he doesn’t stop there.

After saddling one world record, Steiner still must have felt a little unfulfilled because he immediately set another for the “longest backflip into a pair of pants”. It’s not the most practical method of getting dressed in the morning but, for an Aventurer, nothing seems more apropos.

Most Backflips Against A Wall In One Minute 

For most, the idea of successfully landing one backflip against a wall is unfathomable enough. For athlete Miguel Marquez, anything less than 28 is now laughable because that’s how many he completed in January of 2009 on the set of Guinness World Records in Madrid, Spain.

Oh, and did we mention he did them all in under one minute? That means he pulled off a perfect backflip about every two seconds — and there was no room for anything other than machine-grade perfection. Had Marquez made even the smallest error, his record-setting pursuit would’ve certainly succumbed to the clock’s ticking hands.

After that kind of upside-down time, we’re guessing the only thing that felt better than making his mark on Guinness history was the feeling of standing upright for longer than the blink of an eye.

Let us know below if you think there are any other top parkour records that deserve to be on this list.

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Parkour symbolizes self-sufficiency and symbiosis in the purest of forms. Athletes apply their raw physical gifts to the world and make it their playground.

Making use of obstacles natural and man-made, they trick not only to heighten awareness of their physical skills, but also to draw attention to a global physical landscape replete with wonder.

In continued celebration and deference to a unique pastime steadily growing in popularity, we’ve compiled five of the most shocking Parkour jumps we could find.

Enjoy these crazy videos as many times as you wish, but please just don’t try to imitate any of the stunts they depict at home, no matter how good you think you are.

House Jump

We wish we knew this jumper’s name so we could call him to ask what was running through his mind before making this St. Petersburg leap, featured on WebUrbanist.

Clearing a gap of approximately 20 feet without the aid of a motorized ride is sensational enough, but doing so while landing a free fall from a rooftop 35-feet above? You don’t see that every day.

Even with the significant padding laid out at the point of impact, this move had to leave some serious bumps and bruises. Of course, the super-sized dose of adrenaline our unnamed daredevil probably felt after landing this almost certainly masked any pain.

Subway Jump

Similar to our infamous near death snow tubing piece, published almost exactly one year ago, this subway jump is such a poor idea that we had to think twice about covering it.

The reason we choose to is to showcase an arguably fantastic physical feat. This stunt, however, is something that would’ve been just as incredible if it were accomplished on a gymnasium mat, where there is never any threat of an oncoming train.

Swing Jumps

While it’s not as heart stopping as the building leap or subway jump, this video was added for the novel stunting apparatus included at its beginning and end. Quite simply, we’ve never seen anyone do such impressive things with a huge wooden seesaw swing.

Also, it’s not so often we see Parkour-esque flipping done over water and the change in environment intrigued us because it signifies a venturing beyond traditional venues.

We dig the swinging bits most but, if you’ve got a few minutes, it’d be a good idea to watch the whole compilation. There’s some pretty impressive footage of one of the athletes clearing a car and other more traditional obstacles that are well executed, standard as they are.

Bull Jump

Talk about a venue change. We can say with total certainty that we have never, in all our months, days, and hours of YouTube video scouring, found any footage of Parkour happening in a bull ring.

Perhaps that’s because most people who are in a bull ring find themselves in close quarters with highly aggressive bulls and are more concerned with their immediate survival than doing sweet jumps. The man in this video is apparently very confident in his abilities.

One thing’s for sure: he doesn’t have to worry about too many imitators cheapening his daring maneuver. Cool as it is, there are less deadly ways to get a standing ovation.

Russian Spider-Man

Do you feel like being shaken to your core? Then watch this video all the way through. It’s the single most petrifying display of Parkour acrobatics we’ve seen anywhere. If you’re anything like us, you’ll be holding your breath from start to finish.

You’ll never look at an apartment complex the same way ever again.

This traceur’s unbelievable balance and skill not only keeps him atop the edges of a rooftop, but allows him to pull of some truly death-defying tricks. Front flips, back flips, twists and leaps against the wind are the reasons Parkour traceurs love doing what they do.

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Sure, every once in a while some truly out of the ordinary permutation will force us to take a step back and remember why seeing these (and so many other) physical spectacles first awed us but, mostly, we’re conditioned to respond by thinking “Okay, that’s cool. Next.”

This should not be. We should never become desensitized to the fantastic, especially not in the world of skateboarding. The more we researched, the more we remembered just how special it is to watch boarders take flight.

In recognition of that feeling and to remind us never to take excellence for granted, here are five of the greatest skateboard jumps in history.

Roof Jump

Pro skater Jeremy Wray pulls one of the most unforgettable stunts of all time jumping the gap between two skyscraping water towers. The move was so gnarly that it appeared on the cover of the venerable Thrasher magazine. 

In an article he did with Jenkem magazine last year, Wray admits that he’s had fewer and fewer endorsement deals and requests for taped stunts over the last few years. We’re scratching our heads trying to figure out why. This guy is one of the best of his generation, and this jump is one of the most impressive (and bone-chilling) of our time.

Great Wall Of China Jump

To most, the Great Wall of China is a landmark: a marvel of construction and tourist attraction recognized the world over. For all-star boarder Danny Way, however, it’s just another obstacle. In 2005, Way traveled to Beijing to undertake the Great Wall of China jump — what many consider to be the most challenging of his shining career.

Planning to coast off a 120-foot-high mega ramp custom built for the 70-foot-wide over-wall gap, Way came to realize the gravity of his task the hard way, taking several nasty spills (things get hairy at the 2:00 mark) before finally achieving the unthinkable. Check out from 2:45 on and you’ll realize why Way’s the ultimate Adventurer.

Grand Canyon Jump

Simply landing a skateboard jump wasn’t enough for Brazilian great Bob Burnquist. He had no interest in coming down using the same hardware he had taking off. In the perfect example of a do-not-ever-try-this stunt, Burnquist had a team of builders construct a mega ramp with a grind rail at the end.

He then asked them to push said ramp up to the edge of a Grand Canyon gorge so he could BASE jump off off the end of the grind rail and let his board fall into a rocky abyss. You need to watch the video to find out what happens next because no words can adequately describe the risk Burnquist took. It looked like he wasn’t going to make it.

Longest Gap Jump

And we’re back to Danny Way. One year before jumping the Great Wall, Way was in Los Angeles setting the Guinness World Record for the longest skateboard ramp jump performed by a professional skateboarder.

On a Mega Ramp at X Games X, Way made it safely across a 79-foot gap. Maybe that’s how he knew he could handle the Great Wall’s 70-feet. Oh, and he also did a 360 while airborne. Just because jumping almost a third of a football field on a skateboard isn’t intense enough.

Highest Ollie

Up until now, most of what we’ve seen has been ramp related (with the exception of Jeremy Wray’s roof jump, but the dude had some serious momentum there). Ollies are a whole different ball game.

Though they’re often one of the first tricks new boarders stumble through, real deal ollying is one of the hardest, most technically demanding skills to master, because it requires practitioners to jump from a totally flat surface, grabbing air with little to no help from physics.

That’s why Aldrin Garcia’s 2011 Guinness World Record-setting 45-inch ollie is so awesome. It’s the least deadly jump on our list, but it may well be the most impressive.

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To grind is to put the metal truck of a skateboard to an object, be it a ledge, handrail, car bumper or anything else, and ride. It’s one of the oldest and most basic tricks of the sport.

There is something incredibly visceral and satisfying about grinding metal directly onto opposing metal or concrete. It’s a true display of brute force and finesse co-existing at once.

Here are the craziest skateboard grinds of all time.

John Cardiel, Ultra-Long 50/50 Grind Down San Francisco Hand Rail

Few people would argue with you if you said that John Cardiel was one of the greatest skaters to ever ride. If you’re a naysayer, all you have to do is witness his grind at the 03:10 mark above and you’ll be convinced. Its simplicity speaks volumes about how easily Cardiel is able to amaze.

He is doing one of the most fundamental skate tricks of all time: a frontside 50-50 grind. Cardiel, however, takes it to this absurdly long rail in San Francisco.

He has that quality that the best athletes have where, when he seems just on the verge of losing control, he always balances out. He’s going ridiculously fast by the time he grinds off the rail and into an intersection, adding even more tension to the already nerve-racking video.

Danny Way Mega Ramp Session

To pick the craziest grind from Danny’s Way’s session on this mega ramp would demean his efforts. Way basically does every fundamental grind, as well as a few tough slides, including the backside lip slide and a few fancier tricks, on this super-sized rail.

He has to fly through the air for about 20 feet just to hit the rail, which is long and arcing, and then catch some more air before landing on the downslope. Way’s style is fluid and he appears utterly weightless, not to mention, effortless, throughout the two-dozen or so tricks he lands.

Stefan Janoski, Switch Kickflip, Crooked Grind Down Handrail

This switch kickflip to crooked grind takes the cake for most burly, technical grind.

Stefan Janoski combines a pretty gnarly trick, crooked grinding down a handrail over stairs, with the added technical element of doing the trick switch and, just for good measure, throwing in a kickflip.

The crooked grind, when it took off during the 90s, became an instant classic and has had incredible staying power.

Skaters have only taken the trick to bigger and bigger rails and ledges as the years go on, and tacked on tricks before it, most commonly kickflips and pop shuvits.

Patrick Melcher, Hurricane 180-Revent Down 15-Stair Handrail

The hurricane is a vastly under-appreciated trick and Patrick Melcher uses it to pull off one of the craziest skateboard grinds we know. It’s basically a 180 into what you would call a fakie smith grind.

Patrick Melcher pays homage to this sorely under-utilized trick by throwing it down a famous 15-stair handrail on Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard at around the 0:40 mark in the video above.

Just in case you weren’t impressed that he could nail this trick down a sizable handrail, he does a 180-revert out of it, which completes the suave look of it.

Brandon Westgate, 50-50 Grind Against Gravity on a Handrail

For some people, grinding down a handrail is difficult enough. Not for Brandon Westgate, however, a rad East Coast skater who never fails to impress in his ability to go big, whether it be with flip tricks, hucks or rails.

At the 03:29 mark, Westgate nails this rail with impressive speed, but going the wrong way. Instead of grinding down it, which seems like child’s play after this, he backside smith grinds up the rail.

Not only would he need some serious speed to pull this off, he needs to ollie up to the railing from a much higher point.

Have any other videos of craziest grinds that should be on this list? Send them to us in the comments below.

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Here are five skateboard tricks that have paved the way for generations of skaters. Not to be forgotten are their inventors, the innovators who gave the sport, and the world, a new trick, only to watch it catch fire and change skateboard history forever.

The Skateboard Ollie

In the late 70s, a kid from small-town Florida by the name of Alan Gelfand – nicknamed “Ollie” – developed a maneuver that forever changed his sport. At the time, the skate scene was dominated by concrete pools and vert ramps.

Skaters mostly did tricks on the coping, and only flying beyond it with the help of a grab to prevent the board from sailing away. The skatepark in Gelfand’s hometown of Hollywood, called Skateboard USA, was typical for its time, except that it had some sections that were over-vertical.

These steep spots helped Gelfand develop his trick: a no-hands aerial skateboard Ollie above the coping. Gelfand’s ollie was a runaway success and made him Stacy Peralta’s very first pick for the original Bones Brigade.

Gelfand’s teammates, among them Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk, would take Gelfand’s maneuver to ever higher and more complex heights, but Gelfand, a race car driver who no longer skates, can lay claim to inventing the most famous and influential skate trick of all time.

Flatground Ollie

After the ollie was developed in pools and verts, legend Rodney Mullen made skateboard history by developing the revolutionary flatground Ollie. No trick is as central to modern skating as the flatground Ollie, a simple adaptation of Alan Gelfand’s no-hands aerials.

Popping the board off the ground without the use of hands is the key to nearly every street skating trick. But unlike the pool riding Z-boys or park rats like Tony Hawk from Southern, California, whose lives seemed destined to be intertwined with skating history, the flatground Ollie was invented by an introverted kid from rural Florida.

Rodney Mullen, after countless hours of practicing freestyle moves in his garage—the only bit of cement near his home in Florida – first busted out his world-changing move in a 1982 contest in Whittier, California.

No one, not even Mullen, thought the trick was particularly compelling, nor could predict the immense influence it would come to have.

But in short order, Mullen, along with virtually every other skateboarder, adopted the Ollie as a fundamental trick. They began flipping the board in the air, jumping down stairs and riding rails and ledges, in the process creating modern skating as we know it.

The Aerial

In the 70s, a band of skaters from the west Los Angeles neighborhoods of Venice of Santa Monica famously started to take advantage of a bad drought. Restrictions on water forced many owners of backyard pools to drain them – and in went the Z-boys.

They scouted neighborhoods for empty pools, hopped over the walls and gave birth to vertical skateboarding. It was one of them, Tony Alva, with his signature punk rock influences and hard-charging style who would fly above the rest and into history.

Legend has it that Alva, skating harder than any of this peers, would push around the pools’ curves with such force that his wheels would hit the fat concrete coping and launch his board above it.

By grabbing the board, Alva could control his flight path, turn 180 degrees and ride back down into the pool. Thus was born the aerial, a maneuver that not only influenced every single skater to come along since, but certainly every board sport, and many other extreme sports, whose athletes fly through the air.

Loop Of Death

Riding the Loop of Death – a full circle – on a skateboard is one of the ultimate expressions of defying gravity, and one of the most difficult.

This enduring challenge was first landed by Duane Peters, a 70s skate legend who, though less known than the Dogtown and Z-boys, helped launch the vert skating movement by pioneering backyard pool skating.

Peters nailed the loop in 1977, at a time when vert skateparks were being built with gobs of money and park builders could dream up fantastical structures like the loop. While the loop may seem a bit gimmicky, it’s still a testpiece for the best vert skaters.

The Skateboard 1080

The other tricks here have an eye to the past, to the titans of skateboarding who influenced generations of skaters. But this one here looks to the future, reminding us that no matter how much we owe to skateboarding’s creators, there will always be new innovators.

In this case, it is 12-year-old Tom Schaar, a grommet shredder from Malibu, California who recently pulled off the world’s first skateboard 1080.

That would be three full rotations, executed out of a mega half-pipe at Woodward skate camp. Schaar’s skateboard trick – long attempted by the biggest names in skating – proves that the sport will never stop evolving.

The post 5 Game-Changing Tricks In Skateboard History: Ollie, 1080 and More appeared first on Adventure Tribes.

But you also need them to be configured in just the right way, and not in a place that is choked with crowds, like most of the downtown areas where plazas holding these obstacles exist. While skaters will always find a place to shred, these perfect conditions come together only rarely.

On these rare occasions, city planners or school designers build a landscape so well-suited to skating that skaters themselves might never have dreamed it up. Here are seven of the most famous skate spots ever to grace the sport of skateboarding.

Brooklyn Banks

What skate spot could be more classic than the Brooklyn Banks? Located underneath the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, the banks are a hidden and forlorn corner of the city, loved by skaters and unknown to everyone else.

It was a perfect accident of civic architecture that created this three-block long expanse of smooth red bricks, complete with a perfectly-banked wall of varying heights, wallride spots, stairs and handrails.

The best skatepark designers could hardly have done a better job. The banks have nourished generations of East Coast skaters whose cities are often lacking for prime skate spots.

Skaters have had to fight, though, to keep the place safe from demolition. They’ve been successful for the most part, but Brooklyn Banks is currently off-limits to skaters while it undergoes a four-year hibernation period so the city can renovate and repaint the bridge.

Love Park

Love park, in Center City, Philadelphia—known for its iconic LOVE scultpture —couldn’t have been better designed for skateboarding. It’s circular construction makes it ideally suited to long lines, and skaters can make use of every staple of street skating obstacle, all made of smooth granite.

There are ledges short and tall, ledges going off of stairs, benches, manual pads, handrails and more. The granite tiles can also be pried up and propped up to make launch ramps.

This compilation of skateable obstacles has made LOVE a skating haven for decades, and as skaters make increasingly creative use of its resources, it has kept up with the evolution of skateboarding.

The main event at the spot, of course, lies at its center: a water fountain surrounded by four long steps, perfect for huge tricks that land in the fountain’s smooth basin.

Burnside Skatepark

Today one of the most recognizable concrete skate parks in the U.S. started as a forsaken coincidence of urban infrastructure. The space underneath the east end of Portland’s Burnside Bridge was out of the way, dirty and forgotten until skaters started building concrete ramps that made the bridge pilings into walls of ad hoc vert ramps.

Eventually, skaters got permission from the city to let their skatepark persist and Burnside’s ramps, bowls, hips and pyramids have only gotten better and better. Skaters who grow up at Burnside learn to skate fast, air big and shred over rough spots and uneven coping.

Lockwood School

Southern California schools are not just centers of academic education, but training centers for generations of skateboarders who have learned their craft at the school grounds. 

At the Lockwood School, the region’s vastness has allowed the building of untold acres of smooth blacktop, equipped with plastic-covered benches and picnic tables, well-suited for grinding and sliding, and ready to be stacked and arranged any which way.

But even better, school architects often built smooth banks at the schoolyard’s edges so that errant basketballs and volleyballs would roll back to playing children.

Of all these SoCal school skate sports, Lockwood Elementary School has held a special place in the annals of the sport, featured heavily in classic skate movies such as Girl and Chocolate’s 1996 “Mouse.”

Hubba Hideout

Demolished by the city of San Francisco two years ago, Hubba Hideout will always remembered as a simple but impactful place that played a major role in the progression of skating.

It’s construction was simple: a set of six stairs flanked by enormous ledges descending at a gentle angle.

The obstacles helped skaters push the limits of ledge height and the tricks that could be done on them. This forced a marriage of technical ledge tricks and daring attempts at big air maneuvers.

Venice Pit

Another famous skate spot long demolished by city leaders – The Pit played an enormous role in the explosion of ledge skating through the 1990s.

The enclosed pavilion on the sand in Venice Beach was covered in an ever-changing layer of florid graffiti and frequented by only skaters and vagrants.

By its last days, the edges of the concrete tables and benches were extremely rounded from years of heavy grinding. It can be hard to see in videos, but the pit’s tight corners made performing lines extra difficult.

Los Angeles High School

Yet another unwittingly perfect creation from Los Angeles Unified School District – this spot holds a place in the street skating hall of fame. The attractions here are the banked planters covered in small, smooth tiles.

The rapid-fire sound of the skateboard wheels rolling over the tiles only adds to this skate spot’s magic.

The famous banks aren’t the biggest, and the stairs and handrail aren’t the tallest, but the overall aura of the orange banks, the smooth tiles and the opportunity for lines that include the banks and the rail make this spot one of the greatest of all time.

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In its honor, we recently featured a Bike Racing Starter Guide for aspiring competitive road bikers.

Road racing, however, isn’t the only option Adventurers can pursue from the back of a bike.

Here is a look at some decidedly different flavors of competitive biking — and how you can get involved.

What Are Your Options?

USA Cycling, the national governing body for professional bike racing in the United States, covers a number of different categories of competition.

Track racing is a variation on road racing in which competitors run multiple laps around an enclosed track inside of a velodrome. You’re still dealing with what are, for all intents and purposes, paved roads in track racing, but you’ve got a much more limited set of variable environmental conditions to be concerned about.

There’s no chance for inclement weather, of course, and the long, endurance-style multi-stage road races — the Tour de France being one example — don’t have an analog in the track racing world. You also see a lot of variety in the different types of track racing competitions, including both individual and team-based challenges.

Mountain bike races are considerably more challenging, as they move the bulk of the racing action to an offroad environment. There are many different competition variants within this category.

Cross-country is one of the more popular options, with all riders typically starting at the same time and racing to finish first along an offroad trail that typically spans upwards of five miles.

Another popular mountain bike competition is downhill. This is a time trial event in which riders compete for the best time as they guide their bike down a steep downhill slope. You’re dealing with higher speeds than you would in cross-country, but also rougher terrain.

Cross-country and downhill mountain biking are perhaps the most popular types of offroad competitions; there are a number of others, though many of them are simply variations on cross-country and/or downhill as they’re defined above, introducing longer distances, slalom-like challenges and multi-stage events.

The final competitive category covered by USA Cycling is cyclo-cross, which is a blend of track racing and offroad racing. Cyclo-cross events are multi-lap races in which the terrain is generally a mixture of paved roads and offroad trails with varying degrees of roughness.

These events also include obstacles that require riders to dismount and carry their bike until the path is clear enough to ride on again, sometimes as many as 30 times in an hour-long race.

Interestingly, cyclo-cross racing has its roots in training programs that bikers would use to keep themselves in shape during the off-season’s cold winter months.

What Will You Need to Compete?

All variations of cycling require very specific types of bicycles.

Even moving from road racing to track racing requires some different equipment, since a track’s controlled environment and always-level surface allows for the use of fixed-gear bikes. Track bicycles also come without brakes and feature narrow, high-pressure tires.

Mountain bikes are essentially the opposite of track bikes. These rides are built for rugged conditions and they come equipped with a gearshift, wider wheels fitted with more durable tires, brakes, front (and typically rear) suspension and a heavier, more durable frame.

There are subtle variations at the pro level within this category to account for different types of offroad events, but many of those features mentioned above carry over.

Cyclo-cross requires a very specific type of bike that falls somewhere between a road racing bike and a mountain bike. Visually, they more closely resemble road race bikes, though they stand apart with a different-sized frame and fat, knobby tires of the sort that are more suitable for offroad racing.

The difference in the frame design has everything to do with cutting down the weight on the bike, since cyclo-cross riders must frequently dismount and carry their rides past obstacles.

Prices vary wildly for these different types of bikes. You might find one for as little as $400, but even a relatively simple fixed-gear track bike can cost you upwards of $1,000 or more.

We’re going to skip specific bike recommendations here. Do some homework. Turn to the great Biking 101 resources that USACycling.com maintains. Just remember that, for the most part, you’re getting a lot less bike when you shop on a restricted budget.

How Do You Get Involved In Competitions?

In the previous feature we looked at USA Cycling, the U.S.-based arm of the global governing organization for competitive biking, Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).

One thing we didn’t touch on, however, is how USA Cycling handles different levels of competitive racers.

Each of the four official USA Cycling competition types — road, track, mountain bike and cyclo-cross — are further broken down into separate skill-dictated categories.

Mountain bike racers are measured in categories 1 through 3 while the rest of the event types are broken into five categories, with the lowest-level competitors ranked in higher-number categories.

Advancement through the lower levels is dictated more by experience than purely by skill level. Moving from category 5 to 4 in road racing, for example, requires the racer to complete a total of 10 mass-start races.

At higher levels, this becomes a point-based system, where skill level comes into play.

Using the road racing example once again, moving from category 4 to 3 requires a racer to compete in at least 25 races in a single year and score a total of ten top 10 finishes in races with 30 or more competitors.

As you might expect, the full set of rules for upgrading from one category to the next in different types of competitions is laid out in full on USACycling.com.

You’ll want to acquaint yourself with the finer details as you zero in on the type of competitions you’d like to participate in.

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All told, riders are looking at more than 2,100 miles of distance to cover, divided up into 20 discrete stages. It’s a challenging race, but it’s also among the most prestigious of the bicycle races on the professional circuit.

If you’re a proper Adrenalist, then you’re reading the news of the race’s progress each day and imagining yourself on the seat of one of those bikes. It’s how you’re wired.

You bear witness to feats of human excellence and then you want to participate in some way. Not everyone can compete in the Tour de France, and it’s probably not the way to go for your first competition.

If competitive biking is something you’re interested in turning into a real pursuit, however, then here are a few tips to get you started.

What Kind of Cyclist Are You?

The first thing you need to figure out is what you’d like to do on the back of your soon-to-be-purchased new bike. Are you a speed demon? Do you want to be able to pull off tricks? Would you prefer a paved road beneath your tires or do you want to cover more rough-and-tumble offroad trails? Perhaps you’re interested in being able to enjoy some mixture of these.

Biking in all its facets is a big category, so we’re just going to focus on one type of competitive cycling: road racing.

Road racing, as the name implies, occurs on proper roads, typically with all riders starting at the same time and the winner being the first to cross the finish line.

No, this is not rocket science to figure out.

It is perhaps most popular in Europe. The birth of road racing as a professional sport can be traced back to the region, circa the late 19th century, and it’s been a component of the Olympic Games since 1896.

What Kinds of Races Can You Look Forward To?

For every big racing event like the Tour de France, there are any number of smaller ones that cover a great deal less time and distance.

We’ll cover how you get involved later on; for now, let’s take a look at the different types of races you might encounter as you take your first crack at competitive cycling.

The shortest of the road races starts and ends in a single day, though some of these will cover more than 100 miles. There are also nighttime variants, such as the Twilight Series weekend held in Athens, Georgia.

This is a bigger event with a more diverse focus on pro cycling, though the centerpiece is the Twilight Criterium, is a multi-lap road race set on a short-distance track.

The next step up are stage races, exemplified by the Tour de France. Unlike a typical single-day race, it’s impossible to judge the overall winner for a stage race based on who crosses the finish line first, since (usually) every stage begins with all riders on equal footing.

Sometimes these are team-based competitions, typically with different legs of the race catering to the strengths of different types of riders.

It’s best to think of a stage race as a series of single day races or individual time trials. In fact, sometimes they’re just that. There are stage winners for each leg, but the overall winner of a stage race is the rider with the lowest cumulative time.

The most challenging race type of them all is the ultra marathon, which combines the single-day race’s focus on endurance with the stage race’s focus on long distance competition.

An ultra marathon is a single stage race, typically lasting for multiple days, in which the winner is the first rider to cross the finish line. The most well-known ultra marathon is the Race Across America, a cross-country journey that typically lasts for about a week.

What Sorts of Skills & Tools Do You Need?

The first and most important thing that you’ll need is, of course, a bicycle. Try to consider where you’ll be riding when you start your shopping. You’re definitely going to want to invest in a racing bike, but track cyclists will need a very different sort of ride than road racers will. Figure out how and where you’d like to compete, and base your purchase on that.

Expect to spend at least $1,500 and probably closer to $2,000 on up for your ride. Bicycles can be purchased for considerably less, but if you’re serious about turning your biking hobby into a professional pursuit on some level, then you’re going to need to invest appropriately in the right equipment.

Once you’ve got your wheels squared away, you’ll have to learn how to bike competitively. Pro cyclists know that conservation of energy and maximizing your endurance is important, especially when it’s a longer race that you’re talking about.

If you just hit the road and start pedaling, you’re quickly going to be outpaced by people who know and understand the sport better than you do.

It’s important to know, for example, when you should stick with the peloton, a word that refers to the main group of riders. When you see a bike race on TV and there’s a giant pack of bikers all moving along together, that’s happening for a very specific reason.

By sticking close together in a group, riders take advantage of the aerodynamic concept of drafting to use less energy than they would to achieve forward momentum when pedaling alone.

It’s an offensive tactic as well, sticking behind a lead rider to conserve your energy and then relying on those reserves to pick up an advantage later on. Sometimes you’ll see a group of riders pull ahead, a formation known as a break. Here, a smaller group works together to pull ahead of the peloton and pick up the lead.

For longer races especially, it’s also important to do some heavy research ahead of time and learn about the route(s) you’ll be riding. Where and when are there climbs? Where is the terrain flat and smooth?

Conserving energy is all well and good, but you don’t win a race by being conservative. The trick is to save your juice for when you really need it, and it’s essential to know the lay of the land if you’re going to be effective in that regard.

How Can You Get Started?

There’s a single organization that covers professional cycling around the glove: Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), based in Aigle, Switzerland. This governing body was established in 1900 and is responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport and issuing the necessary licenses to competitors.

When different races are “officially” classified, both on the amateur and on the professional levels, it’s the UCI that certifies those classifications.

The UCI is the overseer, but there are also smaller groups that together fall under the banner and jurisdiction of the main governing body. In the United States, the national governing body for pro cyclists is USA Cycling, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is where you’ll go if you want to compete on a professional level.

The website lays out in detail exactly what you need to do to get started. The first step is to find your state or region’s USA Cycling local association (LA).

It’s also recommended that you join a local cycling club, so you can pick up the benefit of wisdom from more experienced riders. You’ll eventually need to decide when and where you want to race, but the first step to that is getting your license.

USA Cycling has different types of licenses for different types of race riders and roles, everything from the actual bike-riding competitor to coaches, mechanics, race officials and the like.

For riders looking to compete, there are two options: an annual license, which costs $60 for adults and covers your entry into all USA Cycling races for the year, or a one-day license, which can be purchased for $10 at the site of whichever race you’re looking to enter.

There are additional hoops to jump through for those who wish to race outside the country, but the USA Cycling license is all you’ll really need — aside from your bike! — for local competitions.

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That’s par for the course, regardless of skill or experience level. What’s not so much par for the course is seeking out these moments with seriously dangerous tricks and stunts.

No, that initiative takes a special kind of thrill-seeker who’s more daredevil than the traditional adventurers. One thing is for sure, these thrill-seekers can sure put on one heck of a show.

Here are five of the world’s most dangerous snowboard stunts.

The Train Jump

It may be hard to believe, but what you’re seeing is not the result of hours of computer graphics wizardry. Pro boarder Trevor Jacob and his team traveled to Tahoe to prep for Jacob’s jump over a moving train.

As if considering a snowboard stunt like this isn’t crazy enough, Jacob then went through jumping said train, filling the sizeable footsteps of boarding legends Andy Hetzel and Temple Cummins who were the first snowboarders to jump this (or any) moving rail car in 1996.

Despite the terrifying horn blow at the tail end of the video, Jacob still manages to land his jump–a magnificent achievement for so many reasons.

The Highway Trip

It’s hard to say whether or not this video was inspired by our coverage of this epically daring near-death snow tubing exhibition, and we’re not sure which stunt’s more dangerous.

One thing, however, is for certain: It’s never a good idea to practice snow sports on rock-hard asphalt highways where a tumble taken at 56 miles per hour results in injuries that are a whole lot worse than broken bones.

We’re just thankful he didn’t attempt any ollies after the 0:10 mark. With stakes as high as these and physical mechanics this complex, there’s no room for error or focus on anything but surviving the task at hand.

The Dazzling Trick

Had it not been for its appearance in the widely-circulated 2006 snowboarding compilation film, Draw The Line, Kazuhiro Kokubo’s infamous 900 tailgrab may’ve been the stuff of lore.

Unlike its two predecessors  this list addition has nothing to do with environmental oddities – there are neither trains nor highways.

No, our decision to profile Kokubo’s storied trick that carried him a stunning 57 meters (187 feet) through the air rests solely upon our appreciation of athletes pushing themselves to achieve in the face of their sports’ inherent dangers.

There may not have been an incongruous environmental circumstance affecting Kokubo’s trick, but any mishap that could’ve befallen him while undertaking a feat of such magnitude would’ve been severe.

The Speedy Descent

Most people don’t consider traveling at high speeds to be a stunt. Tradition has it that trickster Adventurers who seek accolades must perform some sort of breathtaking maneuver while going fast in order to gain any notice.

Late snowboarder Darren Powell proves that’s not necessarily the case – as long as you’re going extremely fast.

Powell, a 7-time World Championship Speed Snowboarding winner, set the world record for fastest snowboard run in 1999 when he bulleted down a French Alps Les Arcs ski resort trail at 125 miles per hour.

Yes, you read that right. For reference: our highway snowboarder traveled at a top speed less than half that.

The Avalanche Escape

If you were to look up the phrase “presence of mind,” you should come across this video footage.

Seconds away from being buried alive, this unnamed New Zealand shredder looks completely unphased as he narrowly escapes what looks to be a pretty serious avalanche.

He even throws up his arms in celebration after he’s made it down unscathed, as if in victory.

He must’ve been nervous, but he never let that fear impede his focused performance. Let that be a lesson to all Adventurers: confidence and well-developed skills are the best defense against disaster.

Have any other ridiculous snowboard stunts to share? Send them to us in the comments below.

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