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It's been a real honour to get nominations for the Singletrack Reader Awards in the past. To have my peers vote for Keeper of the Peak just makes it a bit special, y'know? Well they've come around again! If you think KoftheP is worth a nod – thank you SO MUCH first of all – but please let Singletrackworld know why using #STRAW19 . Maybe I can make it third time lucky!!

A post shared by kofthep (@kofthep_insta) on Jul 26, 2019 at 3:47am PDT

Naw

Aye

my fragile ego can’t take this rollercoaster ride

Ok, I’ll change mine from naw to mibbes aye, mibbes naw.

HTH.

Shameless!

I know, but I dunno how else you’re supposed to promote it without….promoting it… to be honest, it’s why I’d had it anonymous for so long.

In truth (and boringly seriously), nominations and awards DO play a role beyond just the ego massage – they provide legitimacy to what you’re doing and help open doors to discussions with people like landowners. Well, they have in my experience anyway.
And anything that can help the old advocacy thing is worth doing I reckon.

Did you ever do the ‘Balloon Debate’ thingy at school?

Where a number of ‘speakers’ attempt to win the approval of an audience?

How about KoftheP provides a brief synopsis on why this ‘service’ he provides should be nominated for an #STRAW19 for ‘Best Online Service’?

I follow on Twitter and see that KoftheP has also been nominated for BikeBiz awards – I’m not knocking the nominations or the Twitter Feed itself, but I’m just curious as to whether this #STRAW19 is for ‘Advocacy/PDMTB’ or for the Twitter feed on trail conditions … neither of which really strike me as ‘Online Services’ but I’m happy to be convinced otherwise with cunning wit and charming rehetoric seeing as he is so keen for our nominations and votes!

Fair enough I guess. I have kind of left myself open for the challenge.

Well I’ve been running KoftheP single-handedly for 7 years now, day in day out bringing path conditions to everyone round the clock, throughout the year. I’ve done it through marriage, kids, loss of job, house move – you name it. All because I want you guys to have good rides with no hassle either on the trails or from the people.
And that’s where it’s stepped up to advocacy. I’ve done every thing i can to minimise trail conflict – from working late into the night to show how we’re ok (advocacy files), various other campaigns, campaigning for good work from councils (rushup), to working with other advocacy groups on the biggest cross group trail funding every in the Cut Gate campaign last year where we all raised £74k. I’ve also got a pretty busy blog at http://www.kofthep.com which is putting some ideas out there that can maybe change things for the better.
It’s an online service – but free, earns me nothing, costs me a bit (defo timewise) and benefits everyone. I think. And it’s all about making things better for mountain bikers.

Certainly gets my vote. Kofthep has been at the forefront of mountain bike advocacy for a number of years. Him and Si were the two main drivers behind the successful Mend Our Mountains campaign to raise £74,000 to repair Cut Gate. That alone would win it for me however he’s been a spokesman in the national media on a number of mtb issues – advocacy, fighting inappropriate trail maintenance, responsible riding and most recently trail sabotage. Those are all documented on the KoftheP blog which runs in parallel with the kofthep twitter feed, which is a valuable source of information on trail conditions. If that’s not an appropriate winner of an mtb advocacy award then I’m stumped.