As part of a new head-to-head debate series, Hannah and Chipps agree to disagree on what constitutes ‘mountain biking’ and, by extension, on what should appear in this magazine. We’ve given them a couple of pages to set out their stall.
Hannah: My take is that it’s Singletrack World, not Singletrack Mountain Bike Magazine. The remit is riding offroad, on a range of conveyances. Traditional two-wheeled mountain bikes are part of that – and when the magazine started, all there was. But technology and time move on, and trying to police the pages so that all they contain is what was a mountain bike in 2001 is as narrow (and dull) as making it ‘Singletrack 140/150 travel carbon fibre 29er magazine’.
Chipps: The name change was typographical rather than philosophical. In fact, it was ‘Singletrack mountain bike magazine’ for many, many issues in our newsstand days so that we weren’t confused with motorbike and road cycling magazines and stacked with them. ‘Singletrack’ is a very evocative word that conjures up a riding place (and vibe) specific to mountain biking and it’s meaningless even to many other cycling disciplines. (And we’re ignoring ‘single track road, no passing places’…)
Hannah: Whatever we call ourselves, mountain biking technology has evolved. It has so many niches and branches, I don’t think it’s really about the bike – it’s about what you’re doing with it, where, and why. A shared love of being outside, rolling along and choosing lines away from tarmac is the unifying feature of mountain biking these days. Whether you’re racing against the clock or pootling along, I think there’s a common thread there and that’s what’s to be celebrated and shared.
Chipps: I agree. However, I feel that for most riders, there needs to be a challenge to the riding they do, whether that’s with the terrain, climbing, distance, personal fitness, weather or time. And the best way to achieve that feeling is with a mountain bike, away from roads and towpaths. If you’re riding mountain singletrack on a gravel bike or an e-cargo bike, that’s only because you’ve either mastered ‘Mountain Biking Level 99’ and need more of a challenge, or you’re being ‘quirky’ for the attention.
Hannah: Well, you might be doing it for attention (and if we’re excluding attention seekers, do we skip over all those roosters and shape throwers while we’re at it?) or maybe you’re just riding what you’ve got. If someone is enjoying being out there and seeing what they can do, that’s enough for me to consider it mountain biking. Once you start passing judgement on which bikes are [insert adjective here] ‘enough’, or what is challenging enough, you start excluding people from the fun. And that’s not fun at all. What I think is fun is seeing how so many different people with so many different approaches to riding off-road can share in the same joys. Getting to see the world of mountain biking from another perspective keeps things fresh and helps me appreciate my own riding all the more.
Chipps: What I’ve tried to do with the magazine over the years is to keep it oscillating around a central point of ‘what kinds of riding and bikes are relevant to most readers today?’. If you think about it as a moving line, what I aim to have is a central line of the most common bikes, riders and riding – i.e. the ‘statistical mode’ as a core to the magazine’s content, with regular forays into the extremes – whether that be downhilling, cross-country racing, retro, trials or whatever, but with ‘singletrack mountain biking’ as its core. This gives a line shaped like a heartbeat – a ‘trail biking’ central line with blips up and down to peripheral extremes.
Hannah: Part of what I love is that what might appear to be a peripheral extreme is actually often really relatable – closer to that central line than one might first think. Is the pro-rider/adventurer hitting the trails in some far-off land/race on a trail bike any nearer to the statistical mode than someone who possibly doesn’t look like you, riding a bike that doesn’t look like yours, riding the same sort of trails you ride every weekend? For me, it’s not so much about the tool as about the experiences you have when you’re there – that’s the relevant common ground. And, of course, there is a limit to how many times you can revisit the relatively few photogenic legal UK trails on a trail bike before it all gets a bit vanilla.
Chipps: There are plenty of fantastic trails in the UK! I view it as my job to make sure that each issue of Singletrack (…Mountain Bike Magazine) has features with a balance of the local and the exotic, the relatable and the aspirational. However, through that, there should always be relevance to off-road, singletrack-based mountain biking, as that’s what our readers love to do, and why they subscribe. There are (amazingly, still) some great magazines out there dedicated to bimbling around on fire roads and rail-trails. If you (as a reader) don’t think there are enough great singletrack trails in the UK (and elsewhere), then it’s Singletrack Magazine’s job to show you what you’re missing out on.
Hannah: See, I think that bimbling around on fire roads and rail-trails is mountain biking. The twisty sinew of singletrack might be (for many) the most grin-inducing bit of mountain biking, but all the other bits are fun too – and often what is actually on the doorstep of many readers. At this point I’m going to hand over to @didnthurt of the forum, who summed it up perfectly as far as I’m concerned:
There are only two absolute conditions that must be met for it to be classed as a mountain bike ride in my opinion:
1: Your tyres must touch dirt/mud at some point during the ride.
2: You must have fun during the ride (type 1) or after reminiscing (type 2)
Everything is up for debate.
Chipps: While that may be mountain biking for some people, there’s a difference between that and what those riders and readers would like to read about in a magazine about mountain bikes. Jeremy Clarkson et al presumably all commuted to the Top Gear studios in normal cars at sensible speeds, but no one would ever want to see that in the show. I think we can agree that mountain biking is different things to different people, but I’ll stick fast to what I think should be in our magazine – and for that, I’ll hand over to the title of the magazine these past 23 years: Singletrack.
Over to you… what does ‘mountain biking’ mean to you? You can continue the discussion in the Forum, here:
