I did a course with Jedi in April and after a brief period where I took too much on and crashed a whole load while sorting it out from thinking about it to having it ingrained, it has been the best upgrade ever. As a result I love riding singletrack (who doesn’t) even more than ever – not necessarily super techy stuff but flowing twisty undulating bits.

Anyway; scene set. Today i did a different ride. All bridleways along the NDW, Puttenham, Elstead, just cruising and with very little singletrack. I had nice views, friendly dog walkers, ladies in jodhpurs, deer, foxes, a heron fishing on Cutmill Pond, and I had a great ride.

The question – do you ever do ordinary rides like these any more?

ordinary? never riding a bike is extraordinary regardless of what pigeon hole we think we are in 🙂
this week i have coached 5 days, rode at night, rode during the day for an hour and also rode and coached bmx.
it’s all bikes = all good 🙂

high5!

My local loop (by neccesity really) is mainly double-track, gravel tracks, towpaths and the like. I try and ride it as fast as I can but it often occurs to me that it really couldn’t be described as ‘mountain biking’…..still fun though!

What do you mean by ordinary?
After a long day at work or when I’m in recovery mode, I often can’t be bothered with the concentration required by techy singletrack but rather prefer pootling scenic bridleways, quiet back roads etc.
Its all good stuff but nothing ordinary about it!

That raises an interesting question – what is a mountain bike ride? Is it just every time you swing your leg over a mountain bike? Or is it something more?

For me, I think ‘off-road cycling’ would often be a more apt description. I suspect most roadies spend more time in actual mountains than I do.

mmm mountain biking for me requires there to be at least one proper climb and one downhill that i need to concentrate on
I very rarely ride scenic stuff on a MTB – if i do it is pootling with my kids along canals or flat bridleways – but I do ride road so i do that when I just want to ride
As jedi says its all good.

For me my riding has changed over the years, it used to be more bridleway bashing.. Now it’s more condensed, tech trails, usually covering less distance.
Any long rides are on the road bike, I tend to use this mileage to keep in shape for the offroad riding. What ever riding I do it has to be enjoyable and worthwhile and time efficient .
It’s all bike riding, that’s all good in my world.

I used skills Jedi taught me when out on the road bike last weekend, going round a downhill bend on a Tarmac country lane
And best of all I did it without thinking about it, only afterwards did i realise I’d unconciously done 3 of the things he teaches
It’s all riding innit, the skills are transferable

I don’t care what people class as ‘proper mountain biking’ or ordinary riding. It’s all subjective anyway. So my tuppence is:

– as a teenager I was a roadie and loved spending all day on the bike with mates. Getting in 100+ milers while taking in the scenery (North Downs > Kent > South Downs> Hants) was pretty much what it was about.
– then I started MTBing and spent 7-8 years doing non-stop techie stuff and trail centres. Loved it.
– suddenly reverted to my roadie roots by taking the MTB on all-dayers, mainly roads, BWs and the odd bit of singletrack to link thinks up.
– and now I’m mixing it up, going wherever I want and doing whatever I want.

I think the upshot for me is that I’ve found a way to merge all my road knowledge (routes etc) from my younger days with tons of techie/BW/singletrack stuff and can therefore link up whatever I fancy. Hence just being out there is IMO what counts.

As my missus said to me earlier this year “I know your bike is a Specialized but when I saw it in the shed just now I thought it said Spiritualised.” To which I replied “One and the same 🙂 ”

Didn’t ‘mtb’ originally stand for multi-terrain bike then got rebranded as mountain bike ?
As for “proper” mountain bking, that’s just snobbery (IMO), I can get just as much fun sticking on a set of light wheels/slicks and caning the local lanes and byeways as getting knobblied up and hitting the hills, it’s emjoying the ride that’s important to me, not the numbers on my GPS 😀

high5 iain1775 🙂

some times the riding is a means to an end.Riding gets me out,chin up scenery, air,life in the background…

It’s all riding innit, the skills are transferable

+1, most of my riding is road (only mtb at the weekends in England) but I still find the skills useful on the road 🙂 bikes is bikes.

One of the nicest rides I’ve had this year was just spinning along fireroads, bike paths and occasionally little spots of singletrack in rothirmurcus forest… If I’d known in advance what a nontechnical ride it was, I’d have said it’d be dead boring and count me out. But it was absolutely lovely. So easy to miss these things out.

and I had a great ride.

carrying momentum, cornering smoothly and looking ahead to the right places all transfer to riding any surface, in any conditions at any pace… the skills from a jedi day have helped make every kind of ride more enjoyable as things are just.. easier!

riding makes me grin, bikes are loaded up in the car and i’m already twitching with excitement about going to play on them again today 😀

There’s no such thing as an ordinary ride in Rothiemurchus, especially if it includes a trip to Inshriach Nursery Cafe. Hmmm, cake.

For me it’s all about getting out there and riding. Fast and swoopy, singletrack, rocky downhill or just a pootle down the local towpath. I enjoy it all.

if i’m on a mountain bike then i want to be riding singletrack. don’t mind if it’s slow and techy or fast and swoopy. the scenery is just a bonus.

if i want something scenic or more of a workout then i’d rather do that on a road bike.

philconsequence, mrs and southernyeti, awesome to see you guys today 🙂

+1 the skills are transferable – just compare Cadel Evans to the Schlecks on any descent :-]

Any bike time is good bike time – I just ain’t getting enough right now 🙁