Health and Fitness: Watsonville’s New Pump Track is Worth a Ride

Fitness has a enjoyable new kind. 

At Ramsay Park Pump Observe in Watsonville, that variety is not just fluid but curvy, speedy, lumpy, everyday living-affirming and self-perpetuating all at the very same time. 

And that’s by style and design. 

“Pump track” signifies a new time period for lots of. It describes a thoroughly sculpted circuit of hills, straights, loops and turns built for riders of all designs, measurements and wheeled automobiles, whether BMX bicycles, mountain bikes, skateboards, scooters, roller skates or even wheelchairs. 

The way the track lays out encourages riders to preserve ample momentum to fly around its interwoven loops with up-and-down human body movements—aka “pumping”—and not much pedaling or pushing.

The concept debuted in Boulder, Colorado, in 2004 as a counterpoint to far more difficult and subsequently hazardous skateparks. Watsonville’s own opened in 2021 and can assert the premier, and only paved, illustration of these a observe in Santa Cruz County, with virtually 20,000 square toes of flowing rollers, berms and jumps.

Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship rallied funding for the challenge and helped composition and build the park, with large-time support from 51 volunteers logging 194 hours and sponsors Bell Helmets, Shelton Inc., Sierra Azul Nursery and Delta Bluegrass Co. A video clip on SCMTS’s web page reveals a satisfying timelapse tracking how blank dirt transformed into a rollicking symphony of shapely rises, dips and banked hairpin turns.

SCMTS spokesperson Katy Poniatowski and her colleagues really like how it’s been gained. 

“When I pay a visit to, it is normally swarming with kids and older people who want to improve their cycling techniques,” she suggests. “It obviously crammed a hole.” 

Hydrologists, common contractors and outside the house advisors all collaborated on the structure, surrounded by 8,000 sq. ft of drip-irrigated native plant landscaping. 

“Riding out there is like becoming dropped in the ocean—the alternatives are limitless as much as what directions you can trip, prospects to investigate and techniques to make,” Poniatowski states. 

The city of Watsonville partnered on the endeavor, and its staff members couldn’t be happier with the resident reaction, per Parks and Neighborhood Expert services assistant administrative analyst Jeremy Sanders.

“From little ones getting the education wheels off to the grown ups with their mountain bikes to guys with their longboards, it is greatly cherished by a array of ages,” Sanders suggests. “It [achieves] a person of the factors we appear for when we’re putting our parks with each other: bodily exercise that is pleasurable and demanding at the similar time.”

On two visits, Great Moments noticed a wide spectrum of consumers, with ecstatic youthful peddlers sharing space with enthusiastic 40 somethings unable to have their joy, squealing “Yeeeee” along the way.

6-yr-old Mays Lawrence Fowler of Seaside was between individuals who traveled outside the county to try out the pump park.

Soon after a tentative acclamation period—figuring out the finest methods to seize enough velocity for the taller mounds and requisite bravery to zip by cupped embankments—he was hooked. 

“I definitely favored it as I got truly very good at the turns,” he states. “I was like, ‘Woah, now I get it.’ It was far more and far more fun. I seriously do like all those turns.”

Youthful Fowler’s soaring pleasure is an apt metaphor for the park’s increasing recognition. 

As metropolis staffer Sanders suggests, “Its momentum is really choosing up.”

The Ramsay Park Pump Keep track of is cost-free and open from sunrise to 8pm daily at 32 Harkins Slough Road, Watsonville, santacruztrails.org/jobs/ramsay-park-pumptrack