It’s not always new tyres and perfect corners, OK?
Singletrack World Magazine is 150 issues old. That’s no mean feat, and we wanted to celebrate it by bringing you a few of the behind the scene stories from the years from some of the team who have helped make it happen.
The team behind Singletrack has always been proud of the way our little magazine has been able to compete surprisingly well in a tough market, against competitors and peers who are often way bigger, better staffed and better financed. We’ve managed to do this by being small and agile enough to be able to react to stories and trends quicker than the bigger folks.
Another way of saying ‘small and agile’ though, is ‘badly equipped, underprepared and making things up as we go along’which has meant that under the smooth oak veneer of calm, is often a chipboard IKEA wardrobe about to fall apart at any moment. Here are a few of our favourites…
My Interview: Amanda
I hadn’t been mountain biking for very long when I applied for my job at STW. I was still wearing running shoes with flat pedals, didn’t know about tubeless, could only name 40% of the components on my bike, and I didn’t spend any time correcting this by reading cycling media. I did, however, have over ten years’ experience in a publishing house designing print magazines and digital media for signage screens, so I thought it worth a punt applying for Art Director here.
The weekend prior to my interview I was in Leeds with a friend and she needed to collect her bike from the local bike shop, Garage Bikes. As she paid for her new bearings and service, I pottered around the shelves and found a stash of back copies of Singletrack Magazine. I took the entire pile to the till, and got a response along the lines of ‘got some spare time on your hands?!’, to which I explained that I had an interview for the magazine, so I best find out more about it. I asked that they didn’t tell Singletrack that I had bought out the stock as I planned to appear well-versed in the ways of the magazine, and less like I had just crammed for a test the night before.
Sitting down in the kitchen at Singletrack Towers, Hannah introduced me to Mark, and the first words out of his mouth were ‘Ah, my friend Al mentioned you. Said you bought all his Singletrack mags?’.
It turns out they found it funny, had no issue with my limited knowledge of bikes, and apparently saw something else they liked in me. Given that the interview included questions about music taste and how I take my coffee, I couldn’t really fail. I’d made a strong double espresso and psyched myself up for the interview with some 2004 The Black Keys.
Amanda managed to downplay her skills throughout the interview, to the extent that it took quite a while for us to realise that she hadn’t just been producing four seasonal magazines a year. She’d been producing four seasonal magazines a year for around 250 different garden centres. Which meant she was actually producing 1000+ a year. We reckoned she could probably handle the pace of our six issues.
My interview: Zoe
My “interview” for what it’s worth, was on 18th February 2018. I turned up to the office in a smart suit, paid for three hours in the car park and went into the office. I had clearly never visited before, as I quickly realised I was massively overdressed. I was chatted to for around 45 mins by Sarah Nolan Bell [previous office manager] and then turfed out as everyone was singing happy birthday to Chipps and munching on cake!
My interview: Hannah
For my interview, I pedalled to the office. Before I went in, I stripped off in the carpark and swapped my T-shirt and added a blazer. Mark and Sarah asked me lots of questions about being organised, and I went on my way. That weekend, I was scheduled to ride a Scott 100 with Chipps and his partner (and my friend) Beate. Unbeknown to me, it had been determined that if I didn’t annoy Chipps too much during the course of the weekend, the job would be mine. Thanks to a combination of hot weather and inexperience, I probably came quite close to not getting the job. I don’t remember too much about the event except for an overwhelming feeling of grumpiness as I pushed my bike (or it dragged me) through what I would now consider fun berms, a thunderstorm soaking and feeling very tired. Beate and I both bonked massively, only just made the time cut-off at one stage, got cramp, and had something of a religious moment with some crisps at one of the feed stations. I still have the T-shirt.
My first magazine: Benji
Mark attempted to hand deliver issue 1 to my house (well, my parents’ house). But no one was in. LOLz.
My first enduro: Hannah
I was persuaded to take part in an enduro in France, having never raced an enduro before. The kit list required things I’d never used before – a full face helmet and back protector. The start list was made up almost entirely of professional and sponsored riders. I should probably have realised what was to come. Fresh from the plane (Jerome Clementz built my bike to help speed things along) we went to recce a trail.
I pushed my bike around the entry to the trail (a large limestone drop off between two bushes), and pedalled after everyone who’d disappeared off ahead. Less than 100m later, unused to the field of vision of a full face, I hit a rock in the middle of the trail and went straight over the bars. Three more days of some of the most technical riding I’ve ever done (or walked down) ensued. I should probably go back to France for a rematch.
My first pedalo enduro: Mark
I dislocated my shoulder two days before my first ever press launch in Germany for Trek. A&E said I needed to cancel it as my fracture clinic appointment was set for the same day I was due to fly. I ignored them and went with my arm in a sling, in a lot of pain and unable to carry my own luggage. I couldn’t ride any test bikes, so spent two days riding a pedalo on a local lake while 30 journos were guided around some of the nicest trails in Germany. I read two Terry Pratchett books while singlespeeding on that lake. Later, at an evening social, in lots of pain, I mistook a large gob of wasabi for guacamole and spent half an hour crying in a corner. A waiter spotted me and offered me two blue pills that, in broken English, he said would stop the pain and make me feel much better.
That night I took one pill and woke up 18 hours later. The other pill was gone and my room had been cleaned.
My First Printing Error: Hannah
For our 20th birthday edition of the magazine we decided to make a magazine of two halves, with two front covers looking to the past and the future. It was no simple task deviating from the usual templates, having half the magazine upside down, and having ‘virtual’ page numbers on the printer’s dashboard alongside real page numbers printed on the page. We spent AGES making sure we had it all figured out, even cutting out actual pieces of paper and laying out thumbnails of the articles in order to get it all right. It was all uploaded and looking perfect. Then, the night before it was all due to have the big ‘Go’ button pushed with the printer, a page needed to be swapped. Unfortunately this last minute change unravelled all our careful work, and we ended up printing one section of an article twice, and missing another. We’re never doing a complicated layout like that again, and last minute changes still bring Amanda and I out in a cold sweat.
My first near-mountain rescue incident: Hannah
It is a well known fact that Chipps does not crash. Part of the reason that he has managed to spend a lifetime in mountain bike media is that he hasn’t broken so many bits that he’s had to move into sales, or marketing, or a call centre. He rides to ride again, tomorrow. However, he did crash, once…
Rob ‘Crayons’ Mitchell was still a fairly new addition to the office when he, Chipps and I headed off to the Howgills to write a feature about the fantastic singletrack that reportedly lay on the far side of the hills. It was, I think, to be one of the first magazine features I’d written, with Chipps taking pictures and Rob along to look steezy.
It turned out that the trail was pretty good, but also took Rob and I quite far away from anywhere – probably about as remote as either of us had been with mountain bikes before. It was somewhere near the foot of the descent that Chipps fell off the edge of a waterfall.
It was only a small waterfall, maybe about half a metre or so, but somehow he came to a stop, couldn’t unclip, and then fell down/off the waterfall and ended up with his face in the water, his arms underneath him, and a bag of cameras on his back, while still attached to the bike by one foot. Rob and I clambered down and simultaneously tried to stop Chipps drowning and save the cameras from getting soaked. Chipps also seemed as concerned about the cameras as he did oxygen.
Having got out of the stream (and observed that both Rob and I had failed in Journalism 101 by not taking a picture of Chipps with his face in the stream and his legs in the air), Chipps had a bit of a sit down. It would later become apparent that he was quite busy pretending to be fine and deciding how we were going to get out of the bottom of the large U-shaped valley that we now found ourselves in, many miles from anywhere (including a phone signal). Valiantly, he got back on his bike and with a sort of one legged pedalling action, made his way along the valley floor. Quite some time later we made it to the road, and then on to a pub for food. It was only at this point that Chipps announced that we weren’t going to complete the planned route, but would be pedalling back by the road as gently as possible. It was then that Rob and I realised that Chipps had actually been quite injured, and rather worried that he wouldn’t be able to get himself off the hill and out of the valley.
We did make it back, however, and Chipps had one of his very few injuries to show for it. A massive bruised thigh – thankfully he spared showing us how far up it went. As for Rob and I – we had an early lesson in how easy it is for a ride to go wrong.
Do You Feel Trapped In Your Job?: Charlie
Having only been at STW for a few years, and several of them being Covid years, I don’t have grand tales of sitting on Steve Peat’s shoulders while he rode a shark down some whitewater rapids in the Himalayas… or whatever the other STW folk contribute here. Mine are rather closer to home and reality.
I was at ST Towers, wrapping up after hours on a Friday evening. I packed my bag, called the dog over and made my way to the exit. Set the alarm and went to open the door. Disaster! The door latch knob came off in my hand. I was unable to leave. The dog looked like he was going to poosplode, so I needed to think quickly.
With the knob in my hand I tried jamming it back in, but that was futile. Ah!, the alarm… quick sort the ****ing alarm out. Aaah… what’s the ***ing code? OK, alarm sorted, but still locked in, with no one due in the office ‘til Monday. Can a man survive for three days on energy bar samples and super strength coffee? Is there sufficient toilet roll to sustain such a diet?
To the workshop and I will bloody A-Team my way out of here. What variation of bike tool can be forced into the lock and rotated? Aha, maybe a Stan’s Valve core remover, and a set of pliers for rotational leverage? No, that just broke the valve tool (er if anyone at ST Towers is looking for that tool. Don’t bother. Sorry)
I eventually figured out that if I left via the fire exit, went back in via the front door, then shut the fire exit from the inside, I could then leave via the front door. You got it Charlie, freaking genius… But the front door closed itself and I was trapped inside again. Let’s go again but wedge the door open. I got out and successfully completed my escape from Singletrack Towers.
I know that is not super exciting. But you see, the thing is, I can’t tell you about me and another well known mountain biking Charlie at a Halloween party. Or why “you can’t shit the pants you’re not wearing”.
Burning all the candles: Chipps
The time immediately around September 2007’s deadline was a hard one. We finished the magazine on a Monday night and shipped it to the printers. Matt Letch and I then immediately got into a van we’d previously packed over the weekend with all of Singletrack’s event gear in it and drove to Glasgow, as the Singlespeed World Championships started the following weekend in Aviemore and the Fort William World Championships the week after that. First, though, was a week at Eurobike, which involved leaving that van of gear in Glasgow Airport ready for our return and catching a 4am flight to Zurich, then a train, a ferry and finally a bus to get to the campsite in time for the bike industry’s biggest trade show. We were absolutely fried when we arrived after around 24 hours of travel.
The next morning, we went to the shops and treated ourselves to breakfast ingredients and laid them out on a campsite table. A Dutch bike racer guy we’d met in the bar the night before saw our impromptu picnic and offered to bring his stove over and make some food with us.
“I make a thing with ze old bread and ze eggs. I don’t know how you say in English, but the translation is something like… ‘Flipover bitches’”
“I’m sorry pardon. What?” was our agape reply.
“You know… waking ze schleeping dogs”
French Toast will forevermore be Flipover Bitches in my house.
Freezing all the limbs: Chipps
One July, we went over to the Trough of Bowland to test some bivvy gear. A bunch of us – Dave, Mark, Matt, Benji and myself rode up on to the moors and set up for an evening of camping out. There was a tarp (which Matt nearly set light to when his homemade alcohol stove malfunctioned) which was secured to a high wall with some heavy rocks. Some riders had brought bivvy bags, I’d brought a tiny Terra Nova tent – and Mark had brought a ‘Bikecamper’ tent that used the bike’s front wheel for one end and the handlebars of the stood-up bike at the other end. The tent bit used a single skin design. Fine in the dry, but not so good when a summer storm blew through. The wind was so strong that it dislodged one of the heavy rocks holding the tarp down, narrowly missing the sleeping riders below. And the rain soaked everything.
Mark’s tent, sleeping bag and body were soaked through by the time of the summer sunrise and he could barely string words together. It was clear that he was suffering mild hypothermia and we had to get him off the hill. As we hurriedly packed up at 5am. Matt got him dressed in everyone’s spare jackets and made him run up the hill. ‘Warm yet? No? Run up it again!’
This kind of tough love kept Mark warm enough until we could get him off the hill, and straight into the taxi-drivers’ café in nearby Clitheroe for mugs of tea and bacon sandwiches.
How we laughed. (Much later…)
My first – nope…
Benji (can’t remember anything pre 2012 because children): I vaguely remember me and another journo not being able to stop giggling on a Manitou launch for their new fork that was called R7 (it immediately sounded like Arse Heaven).
My first golf cart near arrest: Chipps
On another Manitou launch, we discovered that the minibar key fit the staff golf buggies. Which led to a night of drag racing, Mexican food and a famous photographer nearly being arrested for flashing. But that’s worth telling another time.
Cheese exchange: Mark
Once, we sold a half page ad in the mag in exchange for a round of Norwegian brown cheese that tasted and looked like earwax. I can’t remember what the brand was but I’ll never forget the taste of that cheese.
