Technical Difficulties: The Clod Delusion

by Antony de Heveningham

There have been many debates or suggestions recently, from areas both without mountain biking and within, about how to get more people into the sport; about how to be more inclusive.

But there’s a huge demographic already within mountain biking, which is denied any sort of representation at all. We’re cropped out of photos, shushed in debates, and sneered at behind our backs. I’m talking, of course, about people who aren’t very good at riding.

Go to any trail centre on a Saturday and you’ll find shoals of us, nose-diving off a one-foot drop like crap downhill salmon. But the MTB industry pretends we don’t exist. While there are countless videos which start with a shot of someone purposefully pulling on goggles, or lazily manualling down a fire road, I’ve not seen any showing someone returning to the house for the third time because they’ve forgotten their SPD shoes.

Gear reviewed by writers who dropped out of engineering school to compete internationally at slopestyle ends up being used by ham-fisted lummoxes. Adverts show sinewy heroes floating majestically over rocks the size of refrigerators, rather than lugubriously toppling over sideways into a patch of nettles. And when the ST editors recently asked me for ride locations, my suggestion of Norfolk as a location was met with embarrassed silence.

Then there are the huge numbers of tutorials that purport to tell you how to get better: the equivalent of those “Get a six-pack in 10 minutes” articles in Men’s Health. Of course, it’s theoretically possible that if you have some good one-to-one coaching, a long dry summer, and zero family or work commitments, this might happen. But for most of us, it’s as likely as a finely chiselled set of abs suddenly surfacing through a wobbly pink sea of accumulated beer fat. Yes, I sometimes do improve, but then I jump back on the bike after a couple of weeks’ break and feel like a chimpanzee trying to use a rotary dial telephone.

You can also try and buy your way to being a better rider, and there’s no doubt that bikes these days are much more capable beasts. The problem is that everyone else has better bikes too. Doing a no-footed stoppie or a Switzerland Squeaker used to be enough to get you on the cover of a magazine; now you need to have a few backflip variations dialled. Trails have also got harder, expectations have increased, and we’re back to square one. Remember those Sideways Cycles adverts with the slogan “Making an arse of yourself on nicer equipment”? Realistically, that sums it up nicely for most of us.

Racing is central to mountain biking’s creation myth, which tells how oily-jeaned gnarmongers hung it all out down the fire roads of Mount Tam in the name of competitiveness. I’ve got nothing against racing – if you want to do it, do it – but isn’t it yet another aspect of mountain biking that mainly reminds most of us how much we suck? When you enter your first race, you realise (usually during the first lap) that while you might once have thought you were reasonably fit, with decent bike handling skills, and possessed of reasonably lightweight and reliable equipment, none of these things are actually true.

Instead, you wheeze round a course that you’re too knackered to enjoy, cursing your limp little uncooked-sausage legs, your bike’s inadequate mud clearance, and the misguided competitive instincts that encouraged you to sign up in the first place. Any attempt to keep up with the fast people at the front means you will end up wearing your arse as a hat inside two hundred metres. If you’re in the vast majority of race-goers, your main contribution to the event will have been to fill out the numbers and cover the organiser’s costs, and you’re unlikely to get anything in return except a free sample of grim energy drink. Yes, I know it’s of the point of racing that only the first few finishers win anything, but deep down I can’t help thinking it’s deeply unfair. Couldn’t us mid-pack mediocrities at least have our efforts acknowledged?

There are some signs that bike manufacturers are starting to heed the plight of Mr and Mrs Klutz. The number of troublesome levers on handlebars is slowly reducing. Shocks no longer come with a negative air chamber the size of a mouse’s lung (although I’ll miss the fun game of trying to guess exactly how many PSI I’ve let out while trying to check the pressure). And the brief blossoming of singlespeed bikes was extremely welcome, giving the perfect combination of undemanding technology and a great excuse for pushing most of the climbs.

On the facilities front, too, clods are better catered for. Back when I started riding, snippets of trail knowledge were passed from rider to rider like messages from the Resistance. Navigation meant buying a fragile novelty tablecloth and unfolding it every 5 minutes to somehow check you weren’t lost. Now it’s simply a matter of following the signs at a trail centre, following the insistent arrow on the beeping jeegaw on your handlebars, or making sure your social media skills are good enough to ingratiate yourself with someone who knows where they’re going, and then getting them to show you all the best spots.

Things are getting better, but we’ve got a long way to go. One day, ride reports will start using sentences like “This bit looked like death on a stick, so we got off and pushed”. “Feeling the stoke” will be replaced by “feeling the fizzle”. Manufacturers will begin offering a warranty against inept Dremel-assisted home mechanicing. Videos will feature riders doing that thing where you press on the front of your helmet and it does a little sweat wee. When these things happen, then we’ll know, brothers and sisters, that we’ve finally arrived.