Here's an illustration – how many folk on here ride Specialized MTBs? And yet how many do you see out on the trails?

i'm obviously being stupid here, but i have no idea how many folk on here ride specialized, what do you mean?

"Serious about riding" and expensive bikes do not have to go hand in hand you know

Jeez, get over it ffs! How many times does the guy have to explain himself??

Here's an illustration – how many folk on here ride Specialized MTBs? And yet how many do you see out on the trails?

Hah! Just last week I commented on how every time I saw someone on a Spesh they seemed to be taking riding very seriously 😆

Is there a distinction between 'serious about bikes' and 'serious about riding'.

None of the people I ride with are regular posters on here but I think the above distinction is important.

I know guys who say they are serious about riding, they can talk endlessly about suspension set ups, tyre choice, the merits of stem length and seat angles, and they perpetually fettle with their expensive toys. To all intents and purposes they're very serious…. but do they ever really ride their bikes?

At the other end of the spectrum I know guys whose bikes have to got the the shop if their gears don't work. Who ride their bikes until they break and then replace with new. Their bikes are also typically expensive, but do they know the correct rebound and compression settings, no. They're much less serious about the sport, but are out riding far more and with much bigger grins on their faces.

That wasn't really the question though, was it?
I understood the question, but don't know the answer, so didn't bother blabbing on about serious/expensive/quality blah blah, as it wasn't what the OP was talking about. 😕

Yeah sorry DezB, I just wanted to have a mini rant on the subject.

Fed up of the 'serious riders' berating tyre selection, suspension set up etc etc… I'll see you on the hill… no I won't you'll be at home fretting over how many pins to run on your flats this week.

Ahhhhhh, and breathe.

I'm on here and I am truly serious. If you met me I would amaze you with my seriousness. If there was a chart for seriousness I would have been No1 for longer than that Robin Hood caterwauling song off of the 90s. I'm actually thinking of jacking in my job and becoming a seriousness consultant. Just a minor point but people who ride spesh are evidently not serious, otherwise they would have got decent bikes. TTFN, HTH, HAND.

i just looked up what serious means, and it can mean bad, i've not been on here long so i don't think i'm stw'er but i'm definately bad. and not in a bad meaning good way.

Judging by the pictures in the latest 'show us your ride' gallery, most people are buying cheap but well designed frames and highly customising them with niche parts. It's hard to get more 'hard core' than that. But then there's the spirit that emphasises riding over technology too. That's very STW.

To me, the real pleasure of MTB riding is highly solitary. It's fun to ride with a group, but setting yourself alone in a huge landscape, with just you and the next hill to climb, the next river to ford or kilometres of empty forest to overcome…that's what I find between the covers of STW.

Without getting in to discussion about the exact interpretation of a word, I'd say you have to be fairly serious about mountain biking to take part in a 24 hour race.
2500 or so riders at Mountain Mayhem.
How many STWers there ? 50 ? 100 ?
That makes 1:50 to 1:25 as a very rough guess.

How many STWers there ? 50 ? 100 ?

Seriously?! There must be more than that..

I don't know.
I was just trying to remember how many posted on the "Who's going to MM thread" without bothering to search for it. 😕

Ah, you meant at Mayhem, not in total.

Riding round a muddy Staffordshire field is not serious at all. Serious people would rather staple their gonads to an electric fence than do that. That's a pretend event for people who only like to pretend to be serious when it doesn't encroach on their nice cosy being serious at work lives. True seriousness requires far more commitment. And Stella, although Guinness or Strongbow are acceptable alternatives.

Surely it's

"how many serious UK MTB'ers have jobs where they sit in front of computers all day ?"

HTH