@Northwind, i think the main thing that puts me off the Perth and Falkirk muckmedden events is they are so short. ~90 mins riding even on a trail bike rather than a fast bike, and i’ve got to be honest and say being a moderately anti-social git i’m all about the riding and not so much the atmosphere etc afterwards.

Events like that in general are a good thing though and should be encouraged.

For me i’d be more interested in a couple of fairly decent big riding days EWS style, just with more mellow timed sections.
For example opening all the gates and running a stage down gypsy glen would be my cup of tea.

Guess that shows my heart is still more in an XC style event and why i find it dissapointing there aren’t more opportunities for it.

Think Scott are the title sponsor now.
Did them in 2011 as they were a great weekend of riding with a road sportive Saturday and MTB marathon Sunday.
They did away with the road events though, and its a bit far to travel to wales for 1 bike ride.
Definitely more of a social atmosphere to MTB marathons than the wannabe racer syndrome all to obvious in many road events.

As you correctly pointed out the mindset my travel with you.

Thats one thing i chose to pick apart and analyse a bit.
Took a while, but finally came to the conclusion that what i really wanted wasnt a change of job, it was to retire.

Having arrived at that conclusion the logical choice is to suck it up and keep getting paid a reasonable wage. The only way i can see me changing is if i can earn the same amount for less effort.

Hopefully not the same for you, but worth really trying to dig into the core of the problem before making any big decisions.

I don’t actually have a choice of races, its SXC or nothing, there are no ‘local’ level races, or if there are they are so badly publicised that even someone actively looking for them cant find them.

I’m under no illusion that the situation is better in some areas of the country, but we’ve had enough people say a similar thing to know its fairly widespread outside the southeast.

@Northwind, what are these noob friendly enduro’s you mentioned? Only one i know of is Comrie croft, and even that has 1 stage thats hardly entry level.

Edit: Just remembered the two muckmedden events

lol, get a grip.
The way enduro is headed a beginner would probably have a horrific smash and end in hospital before the end of stage 1.

Certanly meets the requirement as a racing format for fat lazy folks though *raises flame shield*

Granted, its always going to be hard work taking part in a cycle race, but clearly from my posts in this thread i think there should be racing available at roughly your level whether you can average 10mph or 30mph.
Literally any other sport you can show up, practice for 2-3 months to get the basics, and then get stuck in with others of your own ability level – why should cycling be any different?

WTF @ the size of that gap 😯

Even if i had the skills (1ft gap is plenty for me!), you’d have to be paying me a whole lot of money to get me to take a risk like that.

Yes, i agree. Can’t speak for cx, but certainly road is in the same boat.
I think thats why sportives are so popular, it allows the masses of fit (but not uber fit) folk out there to go ‘race’ even though its not a race.
And you can hardly blame them for it either, for an average rider, looking at the speeds seen in some 3/4 races must seem so far out of reach as to be not even worth trying.
You summed it up really well with the term ‘Sunday League’

I can’t help thinking there’s a missing piece of the puzzle here.

As others have said, Uni’s generally want students to pass as it helps make them look good. Also, regarding lack of supervision for dissertation i agree with @oafishb, i feel thats quite a normal situation to be in. Certainly was for me doing both BSc and MSc at different institutions.

Frankly i wrote two fairly miserable dissertations that wandered off on several tangents to cover for the fact my underlying practical work was an unmitigated disaster on both occasions. They still both passed with solid if unspectacular marks.

So overall finding it hard to beleive a dissertation can fail twice, and equally hard to beleive the Uni don’t want to help. Assuming of course there isn’t some crucial bit of information we are missing here.

Again, really hope it all works out, as to pass all the coursework and then lose it all based on a stupid essay would be heartbreaking for anyone.

Try something totally new, go full time, cut my current full time wage in half working mon-fri 9-5. More normal time at home.

Do you know what something totally new is already? And are you 100% sure its going to be for you in the mid-long term?
Been through a similar situation myself and came up with about 5 somethings totally new and also realised they’d probably only keep me happy for 2 years or so before I got bored so decided to stay put.

In that case, how about the conti cross ride? 700x42c, based on an X-King

http://nextdaytyres.co.uk/details.aspx/continental-cross-ride-29/768/2044?gclid=cieovpxk888cfch3cgodxako8q

Might be wrong, but i thought there was a 35c limit for racing.

What that doesn’t give you though is the ability to reward mid-pack plodders, but neither it should! This idea that you are entitled to come away from a race feeling rewarded even though you’re mediocre (despite what Strava or your mates might say) is surely against the very essence of bike racing – it’s a hard sport where you have to be honest with yourself, and if you want to be rewarded you have to actually do well. Going out and bursting yourself for zero reward beyond your own endorphin levels is what it’s all about, or am I missing the point of bike racing altogether?

The entire problem is there are no mid pack plodders.
Think of it like this:
Take everyone in the UK that rides bikes and randomly put them into groups of 10 people.
Then take the fittest person from each group (10%).
So we now have a pretty big group of really quite fit cyclists.
From that group, drop the bottom half of it into a Sport Category (supposed to be entry level) XC race in the UK, and they’d be fighting it out for last place.
When you find yourself in the situation that entry level is out of reach for 90% of the bike riding population, its pretty clear its a problem with the system and not the people.

Problem here seems to be that the kicking is too much. Getting shelled out after half distance is one thing. What you see in many MTB XCO events is something else altogether.

Exactly that, it would take an amazing strength of character for a beginner to enter, come last by 20 mins and stick with it through several years with the only motivation being he’s coming last by less than he used to.
Sure there’s folks out there that can take that, however the vast majority would probably get dispirited and give up after 2-4 outings.

…. it takes half the usual time to drive to work.

My thoughts exactly

It just sounds a bit like complaining that you’re bgin denied a place by someone faster,

In some cases it will be that, but i still feel its more of a case of a lacking system.

I’ll use myself as an example, back in my late teens I took up Table Tennis, I joined a team and started off in Division 4. That first year I won half my games which means the competition was fun lots of players at a similar level.
The following season due to a bit of a league restructure and the fact I was improving fast saw the league double promote us into division 2. I worked hard and again had a fun season again winning half my games.
Season 3, still in division 2, i’d improved a bit more and won near 80% of my games, we won the league, got promoted, happy days.
Seasons 4-9 saw a gradual grind up the first division, starting out with a 20% win rate and ending up with a 70% win rate and playing some national league games.
The point of all that being, I started as a total beginner, and over 9 seasons of progression, there was always a place where I was competing at the correct level.

Now around 5 years ago I gave up TT and took up cycling. In my mind, i’ve followed a pretty similar progression curve. I don’t have power, but from various sources estimate my FTP @ ~3.8W/Kg, maybe a touch higher. I can finish top third of GT7/10UTB, I have a few uphill Strava KOM’s, so consider myself quite far from unfit (although clearly far from great too). And yet if I want to race XC Sport cat, 5 years solid training and improvement under my belt has got me to a place where I can maybe finish 2nd last.
Which is fine, but where is the appropriate level of racing for the first 5 years of improvement, or for the guys that are simply not as dedicated or as fit. Where are the equivalent of division 3/4 as it were? It doesn’t exist, and without that level for people to progress through and still feel like they are competing with others on a similar level then the sport is going to stagnate and decline.

SXC AGM is coming up soon, might be an opportunity for a few on here to put their ideas into action, rather than pointlessly posting them on the internet. Other series are available.

They asked for feedback after last season via a rider representative and were given the exact same feedback along with a fair range of suggestions via the Trail Scotland forum. They then chose to ignore all feedback and carry on exactly as before.
Unsurprisingly, participation levels have not increased.

Which is, in part, a function of population density. There just aren’t many people up there. Whenever the national series has gone to Scotland the numbers are down. When it doesn’t, the Scots moan that it doesn’t go to Scotland. There’s a point where geography is just to blame in part.

For sure – its a long way to travel which doesn’t help at all. All the more reason why it better be a damn good experience when you get there.
But there should in theory be ample population to support it – ‘local’ cricket league as 7 divisions I think, and a hell of a lot more people own MTB’s than cricket bats.

Take a look at this for a bit of an example what I mean:
http://www.sxc.org.uk/forfar-2016

Turnout is so low that field will immediately be spread and the feel of ‘racing’ is gone.
And the top 3 guys in sport are only lapping 90s off Rob Friel, and would have been battling for 5th in elite/expert.

But that excludes riders from a series position in a year they move up. Or do they carry their points into the new category?

TBH, series rankings are the least of our worries atm. If you have a 5 category system and don’t move people up immediately, you have fast folk ruining the experience in lower categories for 3 years while they move up

If you promote anyone who gets on the sport podium don’t you just fill expert with chaff then? Where do you say “ok, that’s enough, you’re ok in Sport”. When you’ve got 200 riders in expert and 3 in sport?

Valid point, and it does need a critical mass of riders where the 10% getting relegated each year evens out the new promotions. Bear in mind that in a 5 category system, sport itself would not be filled with ‘chaff’, more like fit folks with ~3.5-4W/kg ftp’s and comparable bike handling skills.

Bottom line, nearly everyone in the thread has said the current entry level is so far from entry level that its un-fun and borderline intimidating, and if to correct that we need to overfill the expert class for a few years then so be it.

I’m not really sure how you fix it though, what’s the better way to do it? If people do the odd race here and there they’ll never achieve the points to move up, so how do you ensure that people are in the ‘right’ category?

More official BC points scoring categories, and less points to move up. 1 win or 2 podiums are enough to move you up a category immediately, other riders promoted as they accumulate enough to cross threshold. Points scored in lower classes stay on license for 18 months before expiring.
Bottom 10% of riders in each category whose points in lower categories have expired get their licenses relegated.

Ensures that low categories get depopulated of fast riders quickly – gives newly promoted riders a safety net period to prevent category yoyoing – lowers riders that can’t cope back to a more suitable level within a reasonable time frame.

Beginner/Fun/Open/Sport/Expert/Elite

That would be perfect.

We have Novice/Sport/Expert/Elite, however the Novice race is only 2 laps, so ~40mins tops for anyone even moderately fit, and the ‘Sport’ race is a second Expert race but 1 lap less.

So yeah, given the 3 options of:
drive 3hrs for a 40min event in a field of 3 riders.
drive 3hrs to get dropped in the first 3 mins of a 90 min event
stay home and do something fun

guess which most folk choose?!

I think the size of the field at selkirk marathon, GT7 and 10UTB says there is plenty of appetite for XC type riding, but a key part of any sport is to feel like you are competing against someone at a similar level.

Will probably pick up a copy towards the end of the week. Season ends at Relentless this weekend, so then its 2-4 weeks of chilling and only riding bike if I really want to = plenty time to pwn n00bs 🙂

So yeah, coming back to the thread an hour later and most people’s experiences seem to be saying the same thing.

A) Need to be getting the properly fast guys (the ones who are basically doing elite lap times) out of sport cat as a priority. This then free’s up sport cat for ‘normal’ fit riders.

B) Need probably two lower categories to be populated by weekend warrior types and beginners.

C) Need some sort of advertising campaign in combination with the above to draw people to come and give it a try.

Edit To be fair to the ‘sandbaggers’, in some areas of the country, its sufficiently hard to get to races and they are so few and far between that no matter how fit you are scoring enough points to be promoted may not be guaranteed. System is flawed as much as riders taking advantage of it

I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a possibility to redo the full final year and submit new dissertation on a different topic.

Not nursing, but i’ve had several friends that have had to redo a year for one reason or another.

Fingers crossed it works out.

@cynic-al

Not a warm-up for 10UTB i think. Pretty sure i read 10UTB is being moved to an April time slot.

Still a bit undecided on GT7 for next year – very much enjoyed it this year, but always have the nagging feeling it’ll be absolute carnage if its wet.

@mike

The barrier to entry is that sport cat is broken to the point of being intimidating. Round here, guys winning sport cat are nearing 5W/kg ftp and need near 4W/kg not to come last.

Given that most fit recreational ridersvare more likely to be in the 3-3.6W/kg range and not so fit/beginners at 2.5-3W/kg, there is literally nothing for them.

Add to that our national Scottish series only has 6 races, and pretty much nothing in terms of regional races.

Whilst in theory yes you are right, you can just turn up and race, in reality its a difficult and demoralising exercise to do so.

I know its been said already, but £70! 😯

Well, you say its irrelevant and out of date, but RBTV still devote more airtime to it than DH, and don’t do any TV coverage of Enduro at all (for obvious reasons).

Massive barrier to entry, poor availability of races and no magazine coverage = incredibly hard to attract and retain new blood.

Elite custom race, got them on a few bikes now – no bounce outs to date.

At a guess anywhere else that doesn’t require you to be super fit to not be dropped in the first minute in the ‘entry level’ sport class.

Oh, and did i forget to mention driving 2-4hrs to get to said event to get dropped and ride 90mins solo?

Present!
Skinny bloke on white BMC Teamelite
Racing pairs this year so hopefully wrists last the distance this time around.

More than enough, but less than half the fun!

Yeah, another vote for beating to death with a hammer.

Yeah, likewise find the camera a lifesaver in Hyundai i40 tourer. Damn thing is so big you have to get within an inch or two of the back of most parking spaces and the front still hangs out of the space :/

Really good, especially with the predicted path overlay.

Sensors on the other hand are nice, but prone to failure and given the choice i’d take the camera every time.

The GCN 40 min and 60 min workouts are good, but don’t quite give the same feel as sufferfest.
Got to say i’m not a fan of the way sufferfest offer their content, might sound a bit old fashioned, but i’d actually like to be able to get 2-3 of them on dvd

4:30 quite possibly, think 4:00 would be too far for most though.

Might be worth doing a bit of core strength work. A weak lower back causes slumping and causes extra weight to go through the hands.

Yes, not sure they do themselves any favours with how they market the compounds. Would also like to see the softer BC compounds as an option for front tyre for XC. Already a huge x-king fan, but would love a slightly softer, grippier one on the front.