What is it that sets our sport apart from most of the other sports/hobbies/lifestyles out there? After all, some people don’t even think that mountain biking is a sport anyway. While the cross-country tip of it has some Olympic cred, it doesn’t pop into your normal vox-pop, high street responses when the public are asked what sports they like. Sports to most people involve a team, hitting something, a ball, or all three.Â
I’ve mentioned before how mountain biking is often the sport of the short-on-mates, not-very-coordinated corner of the world, but I think that there’s something very special that makes our sport/hobby/what you will, so different from 90% of other pastimes/obsessions/lifestyles…
That thing is unpredictability. A mountain bike ride is never, ever, the same thing twice. Our playground and sports arena is controlled by nature and is ever-changing. Mountain biking has changing terrain, and changeable weather that usually affects that terrain, yet we just continue on through, adapting to what we see in front of us.
Imagine if a football pitch was a different size every game, or changed slope depending on the weather; or the Boat Race had some random rapids that could take any hapless boat to the bottom of the river without warning.
Mountain biking has the beautiful randomness of nature in its favour (and sometimes against yours). Even the most experienced rider can get taken down by a tiny mistake, a rock that wasn’t there last time or a hidden nub on the track. The trail doesn’t care how sponsored you are, or how flash your bike is, how much money you earn or how popular you are – if you hit a root wrong, or a loose rock takes your front wheel on a journey of its own, you’re probably going down. But if you don’t – then that’s another gift of mountain biking; the ridiculous, ‘Hail Mary’ save that happens once every decade in a game of football, but which seems to happen at least once every bike ride.
When you and I head out for a ride, where we are actually going isn’t normally set in stone. If the wind’s blowing, or we’re feeling fit (or not), then the trails we pick will take that into account. They can also be changed on the fly, depending on the weather, the time or the quality of the cake shops up ahead. Pity the leisure velodrome rider, badmintonist or rower who only ever sees the same surroundings.
And then there are the other riders. The interaction between friends and acquaintances on a ride is a special thing. Inane chatting gets done, of course, but also route suggestions are made, riding tips are swapped and there’s a general sense that we’re all in this together. It’s rarely one rider against another, it’s more about the riding group against the terrain and the weather. Of course, if you fall off in front of the group, then all thoughts of camaraderie are banished until everyone’s had a good laugh. Only then are helping hands offered to get you out of that ditch.
In recent times, the sphere of competition has seen race courses built and armoured to withstand the rain without changing too much, but those surfaces are still slick, tyres are muddy, the wind is blowing and the conditions are anything but repeatable. And while the best riders usually triumph, sometimes those best riders end up on their arses.
Every mountain bike ride is unique. Every time you go out riding is an individual experience, no matter how regular it feels at the time. The trails will never be quite the same level of dry or wet, the seasons will change, the riders will change and the weather – the weather will ALWAYS change.
Enjoy every ride you get. Despite rules on where you can and can’t go, we still get such freedom to choose where, when and how we ride.
This is why, every single ride, you get to look round at the scenery, at your riding pals or at the empty countryside, feel your tyres bite into the turns and you get to think ‘Hell yeah! This is mountain biking!’ rather than ‘Was that lap 43 or 44? Only another 26 to go…’