With his feet placed firmly on the pedals and his gloves gripping the handlebars, BMX star Alex Donnachie is preparing for the most important ride of his life.

The 22-year-old, who grew up building his own dirt ramps to practice on in the Perthshire village of Burrelton, is preparing to take on the world's best riders at the X Games in Austin, Texas, later this week.

Hosted by sports broadcaster ESPN and watched by millions around the world, the 22nd summer X Games is the biggest event on the extreme sports calendar.

Alex, who remembers watching the X Games on TV as a boy, is the only Scot to be selected to represent his country after being hand-picked by a committee.

"I was very surprised to be invited to the games, it's my first time" says Alex.

"I have an idea of some of the tricks that I could do but it really just depends on the course and on the day, anyone could win really," he adds.

Alex will be competing in the BMX Street event, a type of freestyle riding using urban and public spaces to perform tricks, against 11 other riders from across the world on June 4.

The X Games, which started in Rhode Island in 1995, is the old stomping ground of world renowned stars such as Tony Hawk, Shaun White, Dave Mirra.

This year's field includes a seven-time BMX Street winner who Alex sees as his biggest competition.

Alex admits: "There is a rider called Garrett Reynolds competing, he pretty much always wins the competition.

"He is just so much better than everyone else but he is so good to watch ride."

Although the games are a major milestone in Alex's career, he says his favourite part of the sport is just riding with his friends and making videos.

"I don't really do competitions that often, maybe one every few months," he adds. "I prefer just making videos and filming around the city.

"A few years ago, we did a BSD living for the city thing in Glasgow where we spent most of the year filming in Glasgow. That was really fun."

Using the city as his playground, chances are if you live in Glasgow you may have have caught a glimpse of Alex riding around the streets performing a range of death-defying tricks.

"The best place to ride in Glasgow is a place down on the Clyde River called Clydeside," he says.

"I ride with Kriss Kyle, he's the main person I ride with all the time and then there are a lot of people in the city centre that I ride with like Craig Sime and Jonny Moffat. It's never competitive, it's just for fun."

Since becoming professional at the age of 18, Alex's skills on a bike have gained him sponsorship from big brands such as Monster Energy, shoe company Vans and the Glasgow-based BMX company BSD, which helps to keep him in good stead with an unlimited supply of clothes, shoes and travel.

He even has a bike framed named after him.

"It's good, it helps me travel all the time so I can pretty much go wherever I want," he says.

"It's really good always having fresh clothes and new shoes especially since I always wore Vans before. When I'm riding I always wear the Vans chukka low shoe."

Jetting around the world to discover the streets of different countries is a major part of life as a professional rider and Alex says he is "pretty much never at home".

"I just got home from a BMX trip in Seville, "he says.

"It was really good. It was so hot you couldn't really ride during the day but it was my first time there and it was pretty cool."

Rarely leaving the house without his bike, he has ridden it all over the world on his signature ALVX V2 BSD frame. His travels have seen him go from Los Angeles in the US to Israel and from Portugal to Japan.

"The best place I have been to ride was probably Vancouver and my dream place to go to is Hawaii," he says.

"There's a lot more competition in the USA and it is so much bigger over there, especially in LA. It is just everywhere.

"It is a really cool feeling having a signature frame, especially when I see people in the streets riding it. It's cool because I designed it, it doesn't seem real sometimes.

As a youngster, Alex never thought about becoming a professional, he says was always on his bike and it just happened over time.

"When I was a kid, I would watch the X Games on TV. I never really thought that I would end up going," admits Alex.

"I live three hours of travelling from Unit 23 skatepark in Dumbarton, so when I was a kid we had dirt jumps we made in a place called Burrelton, near Coupar Angus."

He may make grinding down rails and spinning off walls look easy but a lot more work goes into each trick than meets the eye.

"Sometimes a trick can take a few gos, sometimes it can be days, weeks or even months. It takes hours of practising over and over," he says

However, it's not all fun and games taking part in such a dangerous sport and it does come with its fair share of injuries.

"I never do tail whips because I had a bad injury doing it once," confesses Alex.

"My bike landed bar end first on top of my arm on the concrete so it snapped the middle of my arm and made it into an angle where the bone came out my skin," he adds.

"That's the worst injury I have had but I get hurt pretty much every time I ride."

Becoming a professional BMX rider is not the usual career path, something Alex' family are still getting to grips with.

"Most of them don't really understand it, I don't think they really get that it's like a job," says Alex.

"They just still think that I'm a little kid on a bike which I pretty much am but now I get paid so it's different.

"A lot of people always say you're living the dream which is pretty true."