I was crazy about it for circa 20 years, went out every weekend come rain or shine, thought about it, wrote about it, built the website, created content, bought the bikes, had the holidays, spent all my money.

Then I just got bored, I dunno, same old same old routes in the Surrey Hills, same old routine etc. Stopped about two years ago.

So I started road riding and have just as big a buzz about it and now do all the things I listed up there but related to road riding instead.

I still have my DH week in Morzine at the start of July but I only rode my MTB three times this year by way of practicing for the trip.

I also now have a road trip to follow Le Tour so winner winner chicken dinner for me (two alpine holidays every year with different disciplines).

I went from a part-time, low stress job to a full-time, high stress one.
I think I would get lost now on the loop I used to two or three times a week, it’s been that long since I’ve saddled up the mtb.
I’d never go to the dark side for as long as I live in the South East, the road are far too dangerous.

Pretty much. Been out 5x this year if that. Location not the issue. Head and heart is. Lost interest 18-24months ago as was majorly in the dumps and riding wasn’t helping as I was just mulling over things even more. Pretty much coincided with me hardly ever commuting too but that was laziness mainly.

Started doing more running/walking/strength, so wasn’t inactive and just figured it’d come back in time. Regressed earlier in year and convinced myself I wanted a bike again as I really needed to get back out. Reality is I’ve probably wasted a load of money (again!) as beyond those few rides I just really can’t be bothered. It’s just not there.

Still running and training though, but think in reality I need to admit for me, at this point it’s over.

So it seems most people on this forum have given up mountain biking and turned to the roads!

So it seems most people on this forum have given up mountain biking and turned to the roads!

….which is quite ironic considering this is ‘singletrack’ forum. Lol

I’m an mtber, not a cyclist. If I can’t ride, I don’t really do anything. With family and work and a house, there’s always something waiting to be done instead. Up to about 4 years ago it was rain or shine riding 2 or three times a week, but slowly I’ve become more selective about the weather. I always have a month long morale crisis when the weather changes in Autumn.

At 43, I find I pick and choose my trails way more carefully than I used to, and this benefits not only my ride quality, but my gear and maintenance regime too. I used to just gear up and smash through the mud too prove a point I guess. These days I’m more inclined to wonder what the point of smashing through mud is.

This coincides with my riding skills increasing I think.

We’re a small cadre of riders of similar skills and old skool trail riding tastes, and we’ve all noticed that although we have the nice bikes, we’re actually chasing quality ride experiences.

Lost my wife 2 years ago, when she was alive riding was a great release from the illness in our lives.
Went to Spain last year for a weeks mtb, didn’t enjoy it, ridden one of my mountain bikes probably 10 times since then, use my road bike now and then, life is good now, don’t have anything to ride away from anymore, considering selling all my mountain bikes.

Got some nice stuff if anyone interested?

My earliest memory is riding down Christopher Harrisons back garden steps on a tricycle c.1970

I’ve been cycling in one form or another ever since, hand me down shoppers, garage forecourt bmx, 10speed racers, whatever.

I got my first mountain bike in the eighties and whilst there may have been times without any kind of bike when moving around as a young fella. As soon as I got settled anywhere a bike would be arrive sooner or later.

Now I have a great bunch of friends drawn together with s common love of cycling. I mtb everyweek and still love to go full gas on and off road. Riding for three seasons every week and zwift on the winter bad days. Travel to cycling destinations is now pretty regular and of course use a bike most days to go to the shops etc.

So stopping mtb yes occasionally more of a pause now and then. Cycling is cycling to me I dont really see this I do this type but not that, they all have there merits and ultimately all about freedom. I intend to carry on until I cant carry on even if means finishing where I started on a tricycle.

Variety for me is the key to riding off road all year round, located in West Yorkshire, good xc/ woods/ bridleway virtually on my door stop, £5.80 return to Calderdale on the train, and a bike at my mums within 45 mins of cutgate and quality riding around holmfirth/marsden

Mix it up with big full sus, xc full sus, 29er hardtail, 26 ht and a drophandle off-roader.
They’ll always be an idea in my head thinking I need to ride track a,b,c,d,e on bike a,b,c,d,e

Get bored of your regular route do it in reverse, amazing how satisfying going the wrong way around can be

Just to add to my earlier post: I’ve learnt to grab every MTB opportunity.

Today, I’m driving 350 miles for work.

So, to make it less painful, I’m taking my MTB with me and will pop into Cannock on the way home. It’s not far from the M6!

Like Scienceofficer said ^^^^, the older you get (and he’s not even old) the more you feel that you have to get something worthwhile out of a ride, not just riding for riding’s sake (like some I know).
So, for me, that can be getting to a location that I know and love (even if it’s just to watch blue hares and ravens), discovering a new, preferably rocky and steep, descent and cleaning it or, as I said before, the satisfaction of getting to somewhere with a bike where no bike has gone before (this mainly in Greece).

I try to take something good away from every ride, something that I did right, something that made me happy – something to store away and remember when the shit days roll around, as they most certainly will.
So I have a little library of stuff from trials and enduros, from sled dog racing, from bike racing and now just riding – I don’t thing a day of endless slogging through peat bogs would do it though….
Although maybe it would and the company might have been exceptional.

More crap from an old man then.

December 2010 put the full susser away and its been there ever since. Did get a fully rigid SSer which kept me going over that winter but it now appears about twice a year. The odd camping overnighter now and that’s it. Why? Got bored riding locally, hate driving to ride ( something fundamentally wrong with that) and mostly because by 2010 the FoD had become screwed with the FC development, a huge influcx of visitors, the trend for everything to become trendy and the complete lack of club spirit, history and community amongst fellow riders. It became instant gratification not something you earnt. Just put me off. Had been a road rider since 1978 so carrying on with that just seemed more fun.

The times I’ve been to FOD I’ve noticed a real buzz about riding, great trails, met riders doing organised trail building and maintenance and seen more women and kids riding than anywhere else I’ve been.

Nope. Not even a little bit. Expected to give up at 40 then 45 and definitely by 50. Which I’ll be in three weeks. Riding more than ever, on stuff that I wouldn’t have ridden a few years back and still slogging through the winters- even tho every year I pretend I’m not going too.

In the time I’ve had a road bike, it’s covered less than a 800km and all of that was for the purpose it was bought; commuting. Ridden 30,000km on MTBs in the same period.

Yeah there’s faff, and driving and cost and cold and dark and wet. But then there are amazing days with dust, sunshine, scary moment, mates and beer. And some amazing trips to fantastic places. I see MTBs as gateways to adventure. I never got that with road bikes.

Also the development of e-MTBs means I’m not giving up anytime soon! Going to keep riding normal bikes until that gets too hard, then get some help from electrickery.

lack of club spirit, history and community amongst fellow riders

You clearly want to belong to something.

Oddly, not belonging to something is what appeals to me about the social side of MTBing. It still feels like a ‘frontier’ sport with most people at the grass routes level doing their own thing and thats a big chaotic wonderful mess of variety.

There’s nothing more hateful for me than listening to some officious **** take names and make minutes of the meeting when I could be riding. Who wants to conga singletrack with 20 other riders or be bound by the lowest common denominator.

No ta. I’ll set my own limits.

Like Alex, MTBing is a gateway to adventure for me, be that a micro 3 hour jaunt on trails inappropriate to the conditions, a day ride somewhere new in testing conditions, or a week abroad somewhere.

I posted about my disenchantment with mountain biking earlier in this thread but reading all the replies above has got my memory stirred up. I remember falling in love with mountain biking in 1989 and going through about 15 years of absolutely fanatical dedication; I loved being out and self-sufficient in big country (never at trail centres, too posey and limiting) and I loved the way the bike rolled over the terrain. I did Polaris mountain marathons with my brother and we lived for mountain biking and talked about it so much we ended up annoying the rest of the family. But that love of rolling through the terrain began to wane and slowly the love of the speed of road riding took over; I remember my first long road ride and the realisation that flappy off-road clothing was an irritant at faster speeds. Nowadays I’m still in love with cycling but it’s the distances, the climbs, the much higher fitness, the clean purity and the group riding and the drafting and the craic that I love. I’m lucky in having a regular buddy of my own age who is an interesting and quite competitive character and in the last 4 years my teenage son has been riding with us too, which I happen to think is good for a growing young man as it exposes him to older role models. Since then our riding group has expanded by two more, both interesting and charismatic blokes. It also helps that for my 60th birthday I bought myself a rather naughty Italian race bike, which is an absolute blast to ride compared with my good but rather less exciting Roubaix, which I use in winter.

Somewhere, there’s a roadie forum, full of disenchanted roadies who only go mountainbiking these days .

I ride quite a lot and have been spending probably the last two years with a great group of friends just discovering amazing off-piste trails. Lots of winch and plummet’ type riding. Coming from a downhill bias, we now ride similar trails but ride back up rather than push.

I get too busy with my own work and now motorcycles to ride as much as I’d like and so suffer a bit fitness-wise when I rejoin the group but there is so much good riding out there that I cannot think why anyone would want to share the same space as cars on a regular basis and not be in beautiful woodlands and on top of incredible verdant hills with nobody around.

Lately I’ve taken to doing a few of the ‘classics’ from the likes of MBR etc as a way to discover new areas. Always tend to find some off-piste stuff too.
🙂

I’ve not quit but I’m certainly limited at the moment. Suffered a shed load of injuries this year that I can’t shake- probably due to being hit by a car just before new year.

My shoulder is a mess and my knee has a bakers cyst that won’t disappear. I’m so gutted and fed up that I’m only able to go for a bit of a pootle rather than race. And even then the knee flares up.

I’d just love to be able to get out and ride properly like the Old days!

Same as Alex. Still get a buzz, still riding all weathers and all locations, still watch videos and read mags, still get excited about new kit, think about mountain bikes nearly all the time, plan everything in my life around the next ride. Trail centres, long xc, stabby little winch and plummet week day blasts.

I’m pick scabs off myself all the time, riding washing or fixing my bike all the time.

Oh I also like track cycling.

If the velodrome was 20 mile closer and it wasn’t the scariest type of cycling ever invented I would be that too!

I quit due to the faff of fixing stuff, cleaning stuff and travelling to get to decent places

Then I took up mountain and trail running — it was fabulous, had everything I got from MTB and more without the faff, and much of the time (if the trails were tech enough) it wasn’t even much slower on average

Then I ended up in a cycle of injuries for 6 years…

So I took up road biking — figured I would have less maintenance and travelling to do than with MTB. That proved true

Road cycling has actually, at least at times, been much better than I expected. Being able to circle almost the entire Yorkshire Dales in a day from my doorstep in Leeds is quite wonderful. And if I go far enough I barely see anyone (less then when MTB often)

But I’ve slowly slipped back to MTB and now summer is here I’m remembering how good it is 🙂

Started running and road biking to get fit for mountain biking. But drifted in Marathon and long distance triathlon.

Despite living on the edge of the peak district I have no great desire to go out and ride local loops every week.

Like many I’ve also drifted into bike packing like many I think that’s because as you get older you seek adventure rather than adrenalin.

Going out tonight for a 50 mile road ride with about 6000ft of climb. At the moment gives me more of a buzz than a mountain bike ride.

Aside from a couple of financially enforced periods (6 months max, but even then, I was waiting for cash to buy another bike) I’ve been mountain biking (properly, rather than just ‘having a bike’) for 20 years, the only reason i will stop is if my bikes are buried, with me.

I’ve only stopped riding bikes twice and they were both times when things in other parts of my life were going down the pan.

I’ve ridden since I was 8 and off-road since I was 12, so from 1993. I even managed to continue riding through the Foot and Mouth crisis despite being surrounded by infected farms – having access to a private woods really helped. Ironically the first time I stopped was just after everything had opened up again! I’d had a really bad break-up with an ex (never mix work and pleasure people…) so went and hid doing other stuff. I didn’t touch a bike for over a year until the opening of Cwmcarn when I was reluctantly dragged along by a friend. By the end of the ride I was hooked again and cursing myself for ever stopping! Met a lovely young lady on the trails a few weeks later (didn’t last too long but the break-up was completely amicable!) and all was right with the world again.

The second was around ’07-’08 when I was really struggling with a job I hated. Depression took hold and I needed to do something to change things for the better. I handed in my notice without a job to go to and remembering the experience above I headed to Cwmcarn and smashed out a lap. I had a week off for holiday already booked so spent it just riding everywhere I could. Got back to work feeling much calmer but still quitting. Started talking to a customer about bikes and why I’d stopped riding for a while and they alerted me to a job going at their workplace, applied and got it! 6 months later I had passed my probation so treated myself to my first new bike in a decade.

I’ve never stopped riding since and never will. As long as I can turn the pedals, even if I’m destitute and can only get a beaten up BSO, I’ll be out there riding somewhere.

Sorry….must have got lost, thought this was a mountain biking forum.

It is, but not a mountain bike ONLY forum.

I’m 35, work ridiculously long hours and have two under 4 year olds at home. I go out more than I used to. I love it. Just got to make yourself.

Don’t understand the obsessive maintenance as an excuse to give up; quick rinse off, squirt on the forks and get them clean, and re-oil / lube drivetrain and pack it away. N+1 for the times when a major service is needed and your bike is out of action for a while.

At the end of the day you need to do what makes you happy, if you aren’t enjoying going out then do something else that puts a smile on your face (road/running/other)