By that I mean, is there a certain ‘level’ of rider you would like to be, or a certain skillset you would like to master…

…or are you just in it for the fun and care little about the technical side as long as you can get round the trails?

Everyday is a school day as far as I’m concerned.

Absolutely. I’m not content with the level I am at right now. The best way to improve – get outside your comfort zone. If you ride the trails you don’t normally do, or try to avoid, ride them.

Oh, and this means falling off. A lot 😀 Well for me anyway

In my experience better technical skills = more fun to be had when I’m riding. Win/Win.

Would like to improve, be comfortable in the air, corner faster etc, but I have a lot of inherent jey-ness, fear of pain and don’t want to be turning up at work in a cast, so I’ll probably stay jey-ish.

I’d like to solo SS a 24 hour race.

Not a certain ‘level’ so much as I would like to be able to ride a couple of the famous cols in TdF and to get there I need to lose another few kilos’ and increase my ‘training’. Winters’ here though and I feel like hibernating.

I’d like to stop being so jey and do some bigger drops/gaps.

It’s a fine line to tread between being in it for the fun and being in it to get as good as you can. I want both, the hard part is making sure that the drive to become the best you can doesn’t then kill the fun.

Naturally that means that there is an element of competitiveness in riding, even if you’re not actually competing directly. I think deep down inside, the majority of us want to know how good or capable we are relative to someone else (there’s not really any other way of judging this), so any ride with others will have an element of checking in it, if not competing openly.

For me, it stops being fun when the competitive element carries on after your wheels stop turning. That’s when it gets too serious IMO.

I’d really like to get around to doing some competitions, either a pure downhill event or an enduro race like the Mega or Kona Mash-Up. I know I’m a deeply competitive person, so much so that I’ve always shied away from it as I don’t want the green eyed monster to take over and kill the fun element of it!

I’m as jumpy and droppy as I need to be. I’d like to do the climb to Leith Hill tower from the bottom of Summer Lightning without getting out of puff.

The goal is pretty simple. Being able to stay on the bike, feet up, no matter what. Up, down, across, off, over, round, through – just want to be able to ride it without pause.

Less concerned about ultimate speed or style than cleaning the hard stuff. (and being me, I’m always looking for harder stuff!)

Nah, not any more. I’ve done the road/mountain/cross racer thing for enough years. It’s great to be that fit, it’s good to be fast, but the price in terms of the rest of my off-bike life was tricky to maintain.

Would love to be faster on the bike. Having the fitness to really leather it for a couple of hours would be great. Just doing a race and finishing mid-pack in the sport category would be pretty cool (and pretty far-fetched from where I am now).

Not that arsed about serious technical ability – it would be nice to have but it’s not worth the price you pay in injuries for me. OK when you’re younger, but I’ve missed the boat with that one.

Riding off road to enjoy and not do super tech stuff, happy to get around redtype routes intact , maybe small challenges at a black level. Trying to increase my skills level though! Happy that I can do a 6 day Pyrenees road trip across lots of the big cols, and maybe occasionally get a silver sportive std. Recognising that at super vet age I`m not going to get any faster at anything but wish to be able to maintain cycling at level as present for next ??? how many years 🙂

It is good to learn new stuff, we have a newbie in our group who has had quite a few accidents since starting with us in the summer. He’s 47 but fit with it.
We got him down a steep chute in Leith last week and the look on his face was a picture, overjoyed that he’d got over his fears and obviously buzzing with a bit of a rush, I’d say that’s the best reason for getting technically better.

we have a newbie in our group how has had quite a few accidents since starting with us in the summer.

Some friends of mine have a similar situation. He ended up taking a massive spill on the ‘double headed dog’ section near the Windmill behind Pitch Hill. Apparenty he broke his collar bone, 9 ribs, 2 vertebra and damaged his spleen so badly he almost needed it removed.

He’d been going really well but had yet to learn to consequences of ‘hubris’.

[hello! 8)]

i’ll always be a roadie at heart, but that hasn’t stopped me getting obsessive about cleaning the technical sections, up and down, knocking seconds off the local loop, i suppose getting better at that kind of stuff is a goal. but nothing in respect of racing.

at the end of the day, MTB just keeps the ramber in me happy – when i ride off road the HRM stays at home, i pore over maps and GPS tracks posted online, take great pride in knowing the local hills better than the natives do, but still delight in spending hours completely lost in a forest where the trail just petered out… goals would kinda spoil that.

I seem to be as fit as plenty of biking buddies weighing 2 stone less than me, so would be nice to see how fit i was if i was closer to my old fighting weight.

I enjoy relatively slow but rocky stuff and seem to be pretty good on techy climbing, but need to get myself on a course to master bunny hops, small jumps, drop offs properly etc. I’d be happy to be at a level to manage cannock black sections as a simple goal but then when i do them i’ll probebly want to push myself on more difficult natural stuff. After spending time in the Alps and finding welsh centres a bit dissapppointing from a MTFU point of view I think i’m just about there from a technical/confidence point of view.

i’d love to be able to jsut keep riding and not panic myself about whats in front of me…. i’ve found if i approach things slowly it gives my brain time to think:

ohhh that looks daunting
but what if i hurt myself
i dont get sick pay
i cant afford to be off sick
i better walk this drop

so by increasing my fitness and ability to take the singletrack at a better speed i’d probably roll over a lot of drops that i’m currently stopping myself from doing.

dont want to ever enter a race or anything, riding isnt about that for me and my riding buddies, its more about getting out in the woods to play and if we get fitter at the same time… awesome 🙂

no big air, no tricks, just the ability to hit stuff with more speed and flow knowing i’m not going to end up homeless as a result of my hobby haha

I just want to get to the point where I can just get out and ride and ride and ride, I’m unfit at the minute, but things are improving. I know my goals and I will achive them.

Next seasons DH racing to include a podium at a regional level race (got a 4th & load of 5th’s this year) & finish the overall rankings top 10 in my catagory.

Whether or not it’s doable, I don’t know, but i’ll give it a go. I have a proper normal bike to get out over the winter and get some decent training in.

need to learn to do big jumps/drops again, been off them for a few years after selling my dh bike and mainly riding peaks/lakes/local and sanitised trail centres 🙁 was at innerleithen on the dh runs a few weeks ago and felt the fear for the first time in years on the bigger doubles/drops 😯 otherwise goals are mainly staying reasonably fit and doing some bigger trips ie: riding to/round/along morocco/iceland/europe/americas etc oh and not letting work getting too much in the way 😉

or are you just in it for the fun and care little about the technical side as long as you can get round the trails?

Yep !, 🙂 that just about sums it up for me.

Obviously I’m handy enough for what I like to ride, but quite frankly I’m happy just for being on the bike.

good work on the results Hob Nob if you’re doing that well you’re bound to a get a podium soon 🙂 i’m resigned to the mid table and happy there! 🙂

Geetee that’s terrible, isn’t the double headed dog that steep gully bit that has a chicken run to the right? I could see that hurting if it went wrong hope your mate recovers.
We are careful with our newbie! Luckily hubris doesn’t come into it. We had to goad him down the little chute to the left of the tower on Leith. The first spill he had was on a little stream bridge on the Wall at Afan, stopped on it, couldn’t unclip quickly enough and fell about 8 feet into the stream below. He missed all the rock and logs to land in the only patch of mud there was, it was one of those horrible “this is going to hurt” moments but luckily just bruises.

I suppose that some injury is inevitable when you ride off road at speed.

ohhh that looks daunting
but what if i hurt myself
i dont get sick pay
i cant afford to be off sick
i better walk this drop

yes that is also what goes through my mind too on rockier tech bits, it`s a good way of taking care and preserving oneself

I don’t appear to be getting any better now, all progress has ceased.

Still like riding though.

or are you just in it for the fun and care little about the technical side as long as you can get round the trails?

Yup. I’m just out to see the countryside really, so it’s mostly rambling with a bike for me.

I took up mountainbiking at the age of 35 and have no skillz at all. I am just happy to get round routes in one piece and given that I have a few back and knee problems am just happy pootling around as my fitness increases anyway just having fun.

If I had the budget I would though love to do something like a Jedi skills course as you get the feeling he would never take the pee – I have been known to ride Mabie’s bike park when empty, but if there is just one other person there I wouldn’t ride it as I am now 40 and would feel a right tw@ trying to improve skillz that even 12 years olds have mastered.

Fitness is a relatively easy goal, its just time on the bike. I’m already much fitter than I was a year ago, helped by shedding a few pounds as well.

Technical hurdles seem harder to overcome, i’m progressing quite slowly.

Two years ago I could ride a red route no sweat and minced or walked black sections, Now I can ride a red route no sweat and still mince but don’t walk the black sections!. I’m still pretty poor at technical climbing as well.

Skills course perhaps?

i always try to get better technically on my bike.

mmmm a jedi skills course is on the cards for when the weather cheers up next year… fingers crossed that’ll give me time to improve my fitness and loose a little bit more weight, and hopefully more time on a bike before then will put the OH in a better mental state to do the skills course too 🙂

I’d quiet like to take off my stabilisers…

My progression has been slow, but satisfying over the years. I find if you ride hard, on a regular basis and push yourself little by little, your skill level seems to grow exponentially. I’ve found that year after year I cna rider harder technical sections faster and faster and hit larger jumps and drops, without really having to stretch myself to the point where I am really ” looking at something” trying to talk myself into it. I do find jumps and drops I cant do yet, but I’m sure I will get round to most of them. Massive silly stunts excluded.

All the time, especially in france for example, I see people eyeing up or tackling drops/jumps you just know they really have no business looking at – invariably when they try them, they either bin themselves and earn a wee trip to hospital or just about land it with zero style, the only thing saving their ass being a DH bike. And of course it’s high fives all round. And of course it’s usually those guys who are holding me up on the first minor steep corner. For me, that’s not progression, that’s just willy waving, story hunting for the bar later on..”I hit a 6 foot drop on my Turner DHR” yeah well you barely landed it and you made it look horrible. Thanks for that.

I’d take more satisfaction in being able to clean a really technical steep section fast, than make a stab at a jump where i was out of my depth. Surely this is when the most “I’ve got bills to pay” self talks must happen?

Some will surely disagree and maybe belong to the “brakes off, just hit it” school of thought, but for me I’d rather know that I have a good chance of not only landing something, or clearing a section, but doing it with a bit of speed and style and being able to do it repeatedly, mid trail, when I’m not even expecting it. And that only comes as your skill set develops as a whole.

I’m looking to get better at jumping, railing corners, and steep technical stuff. I’ve just got back into it and thankfully the stuff I learned as a yoof is still there, so I don’t think it will be too long before I am clearing small table tops 😀

To keep pushing myself technically for the fun factor.

TransWales 2011 for fitness factor.

A top ten overall at the North West Cyclocross league would be nice…just gotta get more aggro off the start line and push through the middle laps a bit more.It’ll happen.
A top 100 at the 3 peaks aswell…but its unlikely as I’m NEVER doing it again!

Transwales / black mountain 3 day fittness wise. other than that I’d like to be smooth and faster on the trails

I’ve been working on Manuals trying to actually get the bike up and balanced type manuals. I’m told by mates that on the trail I actually loft the front wheel all the time for drops and jumps and what not but whenever I think about it I can’t do it. I think aiming for conscious competence is worthwhile.

When I started out I was firmly in the ‘if you don’t fall off you’re not trying hard enough’ camp. I was always getting injured and crashing on most rides. Until I had a nasty off which put me off the bike and from which I will never regain full use of my thumb (hence cannot change gear with it). Then I spent a very long time in a mental wilderness of not being able to ride at the level I wanted because, quite frankly, I had neither the ability or the balls to do so anymore.

But now I tend to ride well within my comfort zone and find my progression is mostly steady and overall I’m probably progression quicker than when I was really trying to push myself (that’s all thanks to some mental coaching from Jedi).

However, I have a VERY specific set of goals which I feel I have to reach if I’m ever to become the rider I want to be. I need to be able to coaster manual, nose pick, hop in one place, not be daunted by blind-drops-to-steep-landings and bunnyhop to height. Until I can do these things I think I’ll always feel like I have a glass ceiling to the trails I can ride.

Also, I really want to be able to whip the bike and hip/transition. A few months ago I thought this would only ever be a dream, but have noticed I’ve been able to tweak the bike in the air over the last few weeks (goodness knows how) so maybe, one day, in several years time, I’ll pull it off!