On Saturday 24 October 2026, Nike marked the return of the Zoom Skylon 11 with Run Up The Balance, a street race across London between four crews. Collective Bikes partnered with Nike to host the Trick Shot checkpoint at the Kennington Park basketball court: six wheelie tricks to identify, one at a time, with up to three Skylon Coins for each crew.
It rained hard. Nobody went home.
Run Up The Balance
The original Nike Zoom Skylon 11 was built for marathon runners, with Zoom Air cushioning. Athene, City Daze, TravsPresents and a crew assembled by Foot Locker started from Jumbi in Peckham and worked through checkpoints in Brixton, Kennington and Bethnal Green, collecting Skylon Coins along the way. Elsewhere on the route, crews played speed chess in Brixton Market, named tracks for DJ Play Piem and took on pad work with Hot Girl Boxing. Most coins at the finish won.
Kennington was ours. We announced the checkpoint on Instagram on 20 October, four days out.
The Trick Shot wheelie challenge
Four Collective riders ran it. RJ rode his C100. Jay and Oli were on C3s. Sol brought the X1, a smaller, quicker frame developed with riders in the UK, the US and Colombia.
Our riders demonstrated the tricks one at a time. After each, the crew named it and locked in its answer before the next began:
- Wheelie
- Death Spin
- Hand Drag
- High Tower
- Steps
- Criss Cross
Five or six correct earned three Skylon Coins. Three or four earned two. One or two earned one. None earned nothing.
To someone who doesn't ride, a wheelie is a wheelie. To a rider, each of those six is a different set of decisions about balance point, rear brake, body position and where the front wheel comes down. The challenge rewarded the crews that watched rather than guessed.
The swerve jam
Alongside the checkpoint, we opened the court to London's bike life community for a swerve jam hosted by Sol, @rr_sols. Nike put up five pairs for the riders who stood out. Style counted as much as difficulty: how a rider carries a wheelie through a swerve, how clean the exit is, how it looks from the side of the court.
“Rain didn’t stop anyone. That’s London — say there’s a jam and people turn up and ride,” said Sol.
Umbrellas went up between runs and came down when it was someone’s turn.
The result
Complex UK covered the race on the day, with hosts Henrie Kwushue, Geoff Owusu and Baggys TV. Its preview on 22 October listed Trick Shot as “a trick memory challenge with Collective Bikes”, and its race report on 29 October said Collective Bikes “braved the rain to lay down the Trick Shot challenge”.
The race finished level. TravsPresents and City Daze tied on Skylon Coins, and a coin toss settled it for TravsPresents.
Collective Bikes and Nike
This wasn’t the first time. In 2019, Nike was involved in an edition of Swerve Sunday, the community event we created. In 2022 we built six custom C100s for Nike FC. In 2024 we worked on Nike Air Max 95 in Milan and two Jordan Brand projects in Paris, from an Air Jordan 4RM editorial shoot to Nigel Sylvester’s event at Foot Locker Barbès. In 2025, Sneaker Freaker covered our work with Jordan Brand on The Fast Lane, and we produced Nike x Foot Locker campaign content across London, Paris and Milan.
We’ve been building our community in London since 2015, and designing our bikes here. That community is the reason projects like this happen.
Printed on RJ’s C100, small enough to miss: Don’t seek happiness. Create it.
That was Saturday.
