And mountainbiking is not a sport unless you race – its a pastime / hobby

that is nice is what that is.

I’m really confusd now.

I ride clipped in on a HT with baggy shorts so is that some kinda XC/baggy cross over.

DOh,

Also heard Extreem XC on Bike Radar, when does XC become summit else?

I like the Trail Riding Tag personally as thats what I do most, ride trails, wether they be trail centres, single track round the locallity or rocky mountain top adventures, it’s all still a trail to me

Woah! This has all got a bit serious hasn’t it?

None of the phrases used so far make me feel indignant but they do make me smile. I laughed when I saw “big mountain riding” used in the context of a bicycle the other day but can’t say it annoyed me. I’ve come across it when referring to heli-skiing in Alaska before but if someone wants to use it to describe what they do of a weekend in Dorset then it doesn’t bother me.

I started this thread mainly as an excuse to post a couple of funny videos. If any of you are interested, Johno Verity (a pro snowboarder/film maker who focuses on the fun aspects of life) was the chap behind “Farmer Jack and the Athertons”.

For those getting irate, try taking yourselves slightly less seriously. Mountain biking just isn’t cool dudes.

TandemJeremy – Member
And mountainbiking is not a sport unless you race – its a pastime / hobby

Posted 1 minute ago #

A dog taking a shit?

Just because its pedantic does not make it wrong. for it to be a sport there must be scoring of some sort

I ride my bike cross country to get to downhill bits.

Surely all the ‘aggressive XC’, ‘Freeride lite’ stuff is all an effort to use language to more precisely describe what we do on our different types of bikes on different types of terrain.

Most times I’ve heard people saying things like ‘rad’, ‘gnarly’ and ‘stoked’, they’ve been knowingly doing it for humourous effect.

Bloody nora.

It’s not just all mountain biking. If someone wants to try and jump off a big cliff, that’s not the same as me doing the Gap or likewise not the same as me on a training run doing a loop in the local woods 3 times.

If you were say, Kona, and you made bikes ranging from the Heihei 21lb XC race machine to the Stinky, how would you talk about them in the brochure? If someone asked you if you wanted a Colier or a Heihei, would you say “who cares, it’s all just mountian biking”? Of course you wouldn’t. Can you really blame a company for trying to describe their products?

You can’t call it marketing rubbish because the bikes are actually different. A bike called ‘trail’ is DIFFERENT from one called ‘freeride’ or ‘XC’. Likewise, a ‘Big Mountain’ ride would probably involve riding up for a couple of thousand meters and then finding a massive descent. Not exactly the local woods, so why give them the same name?

Language is a wonderful thing, and if people want to use metaphor to describe the way they feel then that’s GOOD. If we all said ‘oh I’m quite happy’ when we finished something our conversations would all be really crap (crap – that’s a metaphor btw). Stoked I imagine goes back to steam engines where the more you stoke the fire the faster it goes and the greater sense of energy you get from being nearby.

You’re all a bunch of whining snivelling bitchy bloody idiots. Who apparently know or appreciate language. Fact.

😉

Just seen this on bikeradar, hehe

i am after a replacement frame for radicak xc and occasional lunacy.

‘radicak XC’ – the new niche?

I must admit tho – people talking themselves up through creeping use of this kind of language is very annoying. People who really just ride normal everyday XC but want to boost their ego without actually telling people they ride proper freeride… People thinking they are ‘a bit faster than average’ saying stuff like ‘radical XC’ when they really are just riding local trails at normal speeds.

molgrips, I think that was more my point – it’s not so much having niches that bothers me – I’m actually fine with xc, trail, AM, freeride, 4X and DH as concepts within biking and they are useful, particularly with regard to categorising bikes…

It’s what you’ve said along with further sub-niching of the above where it gets silly…

I ride around the countryside in a big-ish circle, mostly looking at the view. Sometimes just staring vacantly at nothing, sometimes I sit, sometimes I ride it as fast as I can, sometimes I go slowly. I might have another go at something, just to see if I can make less of a hash of it than I did the first time.

I don’t really call it anything.

Looks like we’re all born to be mild! Had a lovely ride and I’m off to aggressively attack some cake.

And mountainbiking is not a sport unless you race – its a pastime / hobby

Rubbish, all a sport requires is physical exertion and an element of competition, be that within a proper race environment or an organised event I dont think it really matters. If someone asks what sports do you do you dont say none, but my hobby is mtbing.

If someone gets pissed and goes down the park for twenty minutes to have a kick-a-bout with mates (jumpers for goal posts) that would obviously be sport, because there would be a points scoring element.

Seems logical.

IT is a sport, its just whether its recreational, amateur or pro.

coffeeking – Member
IT is a sport, its just whether its recreational, amateur or pro.

Information Technology ?

Not like those good old xc’ers who build such good trails. I know lots of those guys, the way they stand around and point out potential obstacles that “could be removed from trails”

one man’s good old xc’er is clearly another man’s c*nt what f*cks with otherwise perfectly acceptable trails.

100

Information Technology ?

Seems I have a problem with IT, more specifically the sticky shift key, yes 🙂

AndyP –

one man’s good old xc’er is clearly another man’s c*nt what f*cks with otherwise perfectly acceptable trails.

Yes and one mans perfectly acceptable trail is another mans fire road, fall line, rabbit run etc

Yes and one mans perfectly acceptable trail is another mans fire road, fall line, rabbit run etc

Agreed. But you don’t usually see some **** digging up a fireroad just because they can’t ride it.

AndyP – Member

Agreed. But you don’t usually see some **** digging up a fireroad just because they can’t ride it.

Posted 3 minutes ago

Never underestimate a ****.

“Coming Through Race Leader”

COCK!

“Coming Through Race Leader”

COCK!

No idea how this fits into the thread. However I have had a few people yell that to me at races 🙂 Though one of them shortly after passing turned round and went “come on lad, you’re doing well, keep it up”. Which was nice, considering he’d just lapped me and I felt pretty crap lol.

Power XC! WTF is it?

I love some of the technical terms used by MBR and WMB,when describing suspension PERFORMANCE
“Blowing through the travel”,makes me giggle,thinking its a bit like”blowing one`s load.”
“Spiking”is surely something to do with hedgehogS,and if you can have “pedal induced bob”,why not pedal induced Brian or Barry?”

Love the way that press release has clearly been crumpled up and thrown in a bin at some point. Those forks look pretty good though.

Oh “Sicklines”.I`m great at them,I used to leave some very “sick lines” on the pavement outside my local,boozer on a regular basis when I was student.

Using the word “super sweet” before everything.

Or “dialled in”.

IT is a sport, its just whether its recreational, amateur or pro

No it’s not. That would be like saying driving is a sport because some people race cars. Cycling is, primarily, a way of getting from A to B; it’s a mode of transport that also happens to be fun and good for you. There is *no* element of competition involved when I’m cycling through the countryside, even when I’m going at what passes for ‘fast’ to me. If it’s a sport to you then great, I wish you luck in your events but there are plenty of us for whom it’s not remotely a sport.

As Andrew said.

ah, baguettes for shinpad.

😆

Jesus there is a lot of utter bollox talked about this hobby. Dirt magazine define this the best, “razzing in the woods”. Thats all it is, forget xc, am, dh, freeride all this marketing bullsh1t. It was all so much simpler (and some might say better) in the late 80’s early 90’s you had a nice steel frame with rigid forks or 40mm (gasp) travel forks and RODE IT. There was none of this techo babble about supension linkages and shocks by people who have not got the first idea about what they are talking about. Suspension technicians in mx and cars have a lot of training/experience but people think they know it all because they have ridden a few bikes and read the mags. Please! Its a bike FFS not a F1. You are pedding a cycle across rough ground, all this “it blows through the stroke too quickly” and such is crap. The only thing that matters is have got the legs? If you haven’t the rest is irrelevant. Its not a 40bhp mx bike but a cycle with a rider putting out 0.25bhp.
The only thing worse is all this “dude” and “stoked” sh1t, is this (like) california? It started with the steve peats of this world and now all the cool “dudes” are doing it. Its bloody britain FFS. Tossers.

@wicked Boy do some people live in the past! Some in the sport need to know all the suspension stuff… for instance; you’re tooling it down some descent and your forks and blowing through their travel and packing up. You’re screwed. You could come to major harm.

There is a pretty big difference between the technical descriptions of what is happening and the marketing babble.

It is part of our sub-culture, just go with the flow; chillax brother.

Note: Riders behind me patently ‘haven’t got the legs’ nor have they been reading any magazines

i just like messing around on bikes.

wicked – Member
Jesus there is a lot of utter bollox talked about this hobby. Dirt magazine define this the best, “razzing in the woods”. Thats all it is, forget xc, am, dh, freeride all this marketing bullsh1t. It was all so much simpler (and some might say better) in the late 80’s early 90’s you had a nice steel frame with rigid forks or 40mm (gasp) travel forks and RODE IT. There was none of this techo babble about supension linkages and shocks by people who have not got the first idea about what they are talking about. Suspension technicians in mx and cars have a lot of training/experience but people think they know it all because they have ridden a few bikes and read the mags. Please! Its a bike FFS not a F1. You are pedding a cycle across rough ground, all this “it blows through the stroke too quickly” and such is crap. The only thing that matters is have got the legs? If you haven’t the rest is irrelevant. Its not a 40bhp mx bike but a cycle with a rider putting out 0.25bhp.
The only thing worse is all this “dude” and “stoked” sh1t, is this (like) california? It started with the steve peats of this world and now all the cool “dudes” are doing it. Its bloody britain FFS. Tossers.

I think you’re the tosser talking bollox mate. Best mountabiking was on rigids? All that matters is have you got the legs? Get on your road bike and get the f*ck off the trails, you’re not needed.

Just for you……

If I could turn back time

😀 Like it!

‘Godfather of mountain biking’

Often self proclaimed, mostly used to describe any one of a number of old blokes in flannel shirts who used to race bikes with nobbly tyres off road and then botched some gears onto them. By that standard my dad invented it on cinder tracks on the outskirts of Manchester about 50 years ago.