May, 2013 | Roger Swannell

Horse Boarding

Roger on 27/05/2013

Horseboarding rouses some mixed opinions. EvilAdmin doesn’t like it, Matt and Amon do.

I can see why people have such vastly different opinions. Anything that draws two very different things together always risks alienating and annoying people from both groups. The horse riders probably wonder why on earth anyone would want to drag a mountainboarder behind them, and mountainboarders probably wonder why they would want to be dragged along by something out of their control.

For me, from a vaguely marketing perspective, I ask, ‘What makes it unique?’ If the horse just provides propulsion for mountainboarders to go over wooden kickers, then it’s a poor substitute for gravity, and the horse rider is going to get bored pretty quick. For horseboarding to develop it needs to offer a sporting activity that is a challenge for both of the humans involved. It has potential, it just needs to do something different.

Horseboarding could offer endurance/cross-country mountainboarding that isn’t possible using gravity or wind power. Mountain biking has it, why can’t mountainboarding. Imagine 3 mile timed races along the South Downs, or super-enduro courses that are 7 miles long winding up and down bridleways in the Chilterns. The courses could have up hill sections, flats, and of course down hill sections that test the riding and horse control skills of the horse rider and the leg strength and board control skills of the board rider.

So, with a bit of thinking outside the box and offering something unique, and something that both participants can enjoy, maybe horseboarding does have something to offer. Let’s keep an open mind.

Why are competitive riders grouped the way there are?

Roger on 26/05/2013

Competitors in mountainboard comps are almost always grouped by age, and some times by gender. But why? Just because you’re the same gender and a similar age as another ride, why should you be competing against them? Neither age nor gender have any causal relationship with mountainboarding ability. So why are all the women put in one group and all the men over thirty in another group?

If we think back to the beginning of mountainboard competitions, when there weren’t very many riders, and the range of ability was much closer (I assume), it might have made sense to split the women from the men, and the younger riders from the older riders. And although the splits between the groups have moved over time, the historic idea of how riders should be divided has persisted.

At Round 2 of the UK Series 13 we rolled out a new boarderx qualification system that took a step away from the old way of classifying riders and grouped them by ability. We started with a list of riders, used their previous results to sort the list best to worse, and then split the list into groups of twelve. Each group then had three races so riders could earn points before being sorted back into their categories. The riders seemed to like it.

It’s always nice when the riders like the changes we make, but that isn’t why we did it. We came up with this system to make the qualifying races more interesting for those riders that otherwise would have had three pretty much identical qualifying races. We wanted the system to be safe first and foremost, which is why we don’t include the Groms (under 12’s), and we wanted it to help riders improve their racing ability, which makes them safer and reduces injuries.

It’s a step towards moving away from the arbitrary classification of riders. I wonder where we’ll go next.

A way of laying out a berm

Roger on 25/05/2013

I’ve been struggling to figure out how you work out the right radius for a berm for ages now. But today, I think I’ve figured out the basics of laying out a berm using the measurement of the corner across the apex.

Layout the tracks, coming into and out of where you want the corner. Make sure that your guide lines cross so you know the area you’ll be working in.
Measure a straight line across the inner apex of the corner and all the way out to the start of the corner and the finish of the corner. We’ll call this ‘a’.
Join up the two points where the incoming and outgoing track cross to give us a guide line that intersects the inner and outer apex’s. Then divide ‘a’ by two. We’ll call this ‘b’. Take the length of ‘b’ from the start of the corner to where is meets the apex line.
Where ‘b’ meets the apex guideline is the centre point around which we’ll layout the berm and ‘b’ is the radius for it.

It needs some real world testing but the immediate advantages of laying out a berm using this method are that the curve of the berm is constant rather than changing through the corner and forcing the rider to adjust their course, and that it is fairly simple to do with just a length of rope and a stake.

Building The Perfect Track

Roger on 02/05/2013

I want to build a mathematically perfect mountainboard track. It would include all the knowledge we’ve gained from thinking about how tracks should be built.

It would use a clinometer to ensure the track always runs at a constant angle, the rollers would be built using a sine wave with a 7:1 ratio, and the berms would be laid out using constant curves and radii.

All I need is a hill and the time.

Stars and pyramids

Roger on 01/05/2013

A few things happened today which made me think more about the strategic level models that guide how the ATBA-UK works on its mission of supporting the growth of mountain boarding in the UK.

I currently have two models at different stages of completion and understanding.

The Riders Model

Mountainboarding rider's progession model

This pyramid shows the pathways approach we use to understand what types of mountainboarders there are, how people get into mountain boarding, what barriers get in the way, and what we do to help people overcome the barriers.

First timers are mostly those people who go to a centre and have a lesson. For most of them, that’s all the mountain boarding they will ever do and we recognise that one of the barriers that exists for this segment is the perception that mountainboarding is a one off activity like paintballing or zorbing but isn’t the kind of thing you do as a hobby.

Those that do take up mountainboarding as a hobby we call Hobbyists. These riders usually have a cheap board, will ride occasionally during the summer, and aren’t part of the community. A lot of these people are perfectly happy riding occasionally, but the barriers that prevent this group from moving up the model include the price of boards, not having others to ride with, and perhaps having lots of other things going on in their lives.

Those riders that are part of the community and ride regularly we call Recreational Riders. Moving a percentage of these riders up to the next level is a priority to counter the attrition rate of Competitive riders, who are those that participate in competitions. Arranging different types of competitions and choosing different locations for the competitions is one of the pathways we use to take Recreational Riders into the Competitive level, whilst also hopefully providing some variety for the Competitive Riders to keep them interested.

The Industry Model

Mountainboarding industry constellation model

This Constellation Model is actually a model used by social enterprises to enable partner organisations to work together to achieve the same goal without having to be formally organised as a single entity. It means that any organisation within the constellation can get on with doing their thing regardless of the other organisations, but they are all working together in a loose way as they all have the same goal.

As I adapt this to fit the world of mountainboarding, I can see constellations developing for ‘Mountainboard Centres’, ‘Activity Centres’, and ‘Retailers’, with the ATBA-UK taking on the role of stewardship and the shared vision being one of growing mountainboarding in the UK. What is particularly interesting on this model, and why I think it fits mountainboarding so well, is the chaos/order line. This shows that all the elements of the various constellations can and do operate in a disorganised way, but that the shared goal and stewardship can bring order to the whole system and achieve more than the sum of it’s parts.

The final stage of this model development will be figuring out how the two models fit together and mutually support each other, e.g. with the Centres constellations having a focus on First-timers and all levels of riders in the Pyramid having a connection with the Retailers constellation.

Entrepreneurial Schools

Roger on 01/05/2013

Heard a brief thing on the radio about encouraging students in schools to be more entrepreneurial by starting a business with £10. It started me thinking how they could do that.

If I were them I would leverage the community aspect of the school to provide stock to sell and as customers. I’d set up an Ebay shop that would be stocked with items donated by students, parents and teachers. However, to make better use of the school community and encourage people to keep providing stock (there needs to be a part of the strategy that considers sustainability), I’d award points to each of the donors based on how much the items they donated sell for, e.g. 1 point for 1 pound. These points can then be redeemed at the school for things like free tickets to school plays.

Of course, it would be promoted via the usual social media channels that kids love, ifttt’d from ebay to FB, TW, IG, etc. The points system could be run on Mailchimp so that everyone involved gets regular emails telling them how many points they have earned and what products are for sale this week.

So, what would the £10 be spent on? The postage of for the first round of items sold until you’ve got some profit to pay the delivery on more items.