UK Mountainboard Championships 2018
BoarderX


Downhill


Freestyle



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.
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.
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.
Spent all day building the spreadsheet to run the BoarderX racing.
We start with a list of riders who have entered the comp, order them based on their results from last year, split them in groups of sixteen so riders of the same ability are competing against each other, give them three races each to earn points, add those points up to get their qualified position, sort the riders into their categories maintaining the order they qualified in, fold them into their first knockout race, remove the two who finish 3rd and 4th, repeat unto the final, and then add up all the finishing places to get a list that looks very much like the one we started with.
I’ve seen quite a few mountainboard competitions over the years, seen things riders do that gives them a competitive edge and seen the mistakes they’ve made. Maybe a bit of thinking about how to approach riding in a comp, and what to focus on to improve your riding might help.
Competition riding is all about smoothness, which comes from time spent on a board. Practice makes perfect. Unless you practice the wrong thing, in which case you become perfectly wrong. Practice the right thing.
How many ways are there to go round a corner on a mountainboard? The answer is lots
But to start with let’s think of a corner as having nine points on it. Three of them are on the outside edge, one at start of the corner, one at the apex, and one at the end. Let’s call them A, B and C. And then we have the same along the inside edge of the corner. Let’s call them D, E, and F. Now, let’s add another three points that follow the middle of the corner and call them G, H and I, and draw all the connecting lines.
Those nine points can be joined up like this:
Which gives us:
Those nine points give us 27 different ways to go round a corner.
So, what the point of all this? Surely we just ride into a corner, go round it, come out of it and carrying on riding, right? Is it really worth thinking about your line? What are the benefits?
There are two benefits to choosing your line round a corner; speed and control.
Taking a corner at the maximum speed is all about getting it as smooth as possible. In motor sports, the ‘racing line’ would be A, E, C as it’s the shortest line though the corner (rather than going round it), and on some corners that would work just fine. But on a boarderX track this might not be the case. As berms are built to hold the rider on the track following the central line of G, H, I might be the faster line. But, out freeriding on a loose surface might mean that taking the widest line of A, B, C might be fastest as we don’t slide.
Control is all about being able to put your board exactly where you want it, to be able to come out of a corner on the best line for the next feature or obstacle. Remember, line out is more important than line in, so if we want to exit the corner at point I we have nine lines to follow. If we knew we were going too fast to get round the corner we might go D, B, I and lose some speed by going out wide. Or maybe we came into the corner on the G, H, I line but a rider had fallen in front of us so we had to go G, B, I. And, of course, this is all based on the perfect corner, but in the real world the track might narrow at the exit of the corner so that F, I, and C are all in the same place. Then we really need to consider our line in to make the exit clean.
So, regardless of whether we have a berm to help us get round the corner or not, choosing the right line can be really useful for maintaining speed, loosing speed, avoiding obstacles (and other riders), or even just making it round the corner. As every corner is different, it’s up to you to decide what you think is the best line to take (and if you’re a boarderX racer, practice every line).
It’s lucky there are so many corners in the world.
I’ve been experimenting with modelling boarderX track features in play-doh to help me understand how they should be built correctly, and seeing how we can put a bit of science into feature design rather than track-builders always having to make it up as they go along.
After an awesome weekend of some of Scotland’s best mountainboarding we finished off with a chilled session at Perth’s BX track.
Rode Ironsides Court Farm BoarderX Track today with Raph, Simon, Duncan and Morris. The ‘Orange Run’, as it’s known, is a comfortable bx track with the usual rollers and berms. I’m not really into riding boarderx but it was a nice ride, and a great place to be on such a nice day.