This is my spade. There are many like it but this one is mine.
It has dug dirt in the majority of UK mountainboard centres and a few other tracks too:
It’s a piece of Mountainboarding history.
The first few months of the year passed uneventfully. I went to a couple of small freeride meets but didn’t ride very much. In fact, in 2015 I went mountainboarding fewer times than in any of the ten years I’ve been mountainboarding. I wanted to ride. I still loved the feeling of riding a board through leafy woodland, but more and more life just got in the way.
Summer is competition season. This year’s comps followed the same format as the past few years; four boarderx, four freestyle and four downhill, so that’s twelve comps over six weekends, four of them at centres and two at other locations.
We did one of the downhill comps at the Fruit Farm in Gloucestershire. We chose it because it was a good track, it had camping, uplift track, etc., but also because it was near to where lots of mountainboarders live. We thought that would encourage more riders to attend. Turns out we were wrong. The comp had low attendance, and even though most of the riders who did go enjoyed it, it showed us yet again what we’ve known for a while, that there isn’t very much the ATBA-UK can do about people having other things got on in their lives.
The continual decline in the number of riders competing (because existing competitors drop out and because we don’t get very many new riders) meant we had some difficult decisions to make about the future of the competitions and the ATBA-UK. We had three options; carry on regardless and run twelve comps in 2016 knowing the entry figures would be low, pull the plug and accept that not enough people want mountainboard competitions to do any for 2016, or find some middle way and downsize the ATBA-UK and the competitions so that we can still continue in some limited capacity.
We went with option three: the UK Mountainboard Championship 2016, a single event featuring all three disciplines over a long weekend in August. It may look like an easy and obvious choice but it was actually a very difficult decision to make because it has such a huge impact on everything else the ATBA-UK does. With so few riders there was no way we could pursue our plans for recognition of mountainboarding as a sport (which has a real impact on the future of mountainboarding), there was no longer any reason to continue to offer paid membership as the only reason most people bought it was for discounted comp entry fees. No membership fees, along with drastically reduced income from only one event, means we’re at risk of not making enough money in 2016 to buy insurance in 2017, which means the ATBA-UK would have to close. I don’t want it to happen but I think it’s the most likely outcome.
With the competitive season out the way, and decisions about what next year’s season made, I had some time to better analyse the problem of not enough mountainboarders and come up with a solution.
It became clear that the reason there aren’t enough mountainboarders to maintain a community, warrant a governing body, justify competitions or make mountainboarding a sport is that there there isn’t sufficient infrastructure. Mountainboard Clubs, of which there were eight or so when I started, are almost non-existent now, and the number of Mountainboard Centres across the UK has halved in the last five or so years. With no one to ride with and no where to learn, no one gets into mountainboarding and so we see the decline of the past few year’s and get to where we are today.
Knowing the problem is half of the solution. The solution was to build new infrastructure. The solution was grass roots clubs that had a focus on providing instruction and accelerating the learning of new riders. These new kinds of clubs wouldn’t need to be big, they would only need three or four experienced riders and maybe three or four new riders. The new riders would be carefully selected to give the club the best chance of success. They would be in their twenties, have a job and a car, and would probably already be into snowboarding. These new ‘Top Gun’ clubs would offer free lessons and kit to be borrowed, and would be all about getting the new riders to sufficient standard for them to enter next year’s competitions. A few small clubs in as few different areas could surely produce five new competitors, and that is all we need, just five or so new riders each year. They would represent a ten percent increase in competitors and be enough to keep the entry figures steady.
So I created Thames Valley Mountainboard Club, built a website, and started to advertise. I bought boards, helmets and pads. I identified three likely new mountainboarders. And I organised fortnightly freeride meets across the Thames Valley. We had three meets and things were going well when the other pressure’s on my time became too much and I couldn’t go any further with TVMC. I’m still confident that it’s the right approach to getting more people into mountainboarding and onto competitions, and I wish I could have proved the theory and then roll out the model to create other clubs in other areas, but things don’t always work out the way you want them to.
As winter came around the amount of time I spent mountainboarding decreased even more. So when Mark from Team Dad needed a Secret Birthday Ride somewhere he’d never ridden I suggested Wendover Woods. This “secret” (actually it was only secret from Mark, more of a surprise) ride turned into the most well attended freeride meet of the past few years. Fourteen riders rode Truffler, Ripper’s Gash, Backbone, Painkiller and Tarantula (mountainboarders come up with some interesting names for tracks).
Tarantula is one of my favourite tracks. It starts with a drop, goes onto tarmac, through a narrow gap, along a leafy track, down some steps, and then into a steep narrow footpath, so has a lot variety. And on this day I rode it best I ever have.
A couple of weeks later and another Team Dad secret birthday ride, this time for Clayton. After lots of texting post codes, messaging directions, and picking up people from the train station, we all met at a new spot I had recce’d the week before. It had plenty of long fast tracks that could keep brake and non-brake riders entertained all day. We rode each of the tracks in turn, and went back to ‘Toy Box’, a steep leafy hillside for a second go. It’s a fun area to play in and we spent about half an hour finding new lines. Having talked about which tracks to ride next we all headed for the bottom. Mark, Clayton, Matt and me, and then Smilie. He came flying off the first drop, didn’t line up for the second drop and hit a tree. With that much speed, and with his feet in snowboard boots and firmly strapped into his board the force of the impact went through the next weakest part, his leg just above the boot. I ran over to Smilie, carefully got his feet out of his board, and stabilised his broken leg while I called an ambulance. A hour or so later, and with plenty of morphine, Smilie was in the back of a 4×4 ambulance on his way to A & E.
Smilie’s injury bothered me. It bothered me for two reasons. One, I very nearly hit that same tree minutes before Smilie did, and two, it made me realise how much responsibility I take on with organising freeride meets, being a first aider, working with the ATBA-UK, and not having the time to give to growing mountainboard clubs when I know that’s the solution to the situation mountainboarding is in at the moment.
Responsibility kills freedom…
I need to focus what little time I have on the project that is going to have the biggest impact on achieving the objective of getting more people into mountainboarding. I’m very clear that the problem is caused by not enough infrastructure in the mountainboarding industry/community, so the question then becomes what should I do to contribute to building sustainable and effective infrastructure. My options range from top-level projects that to get more people to the existing Mountainboard Centres to bottom-level projects that create local infrastructure.
The options are:
I have offered to help mountainboard centres with marketing before but they don’t seem to want the help. I could try this again. Or I could focus on marketing the UK Championship. I’ve tried that before too. It’s lots of work for very little return. This is more of a top-level project and I don’t think it can achieve the objective.
I could focus on improving and growing Membership as a way to get more people into mountainboarding. This would include getting more people to sign up, delivering value through emails. It could involve special deals from mountainboard centres and shops. It would mean changing what the ATBA-UK email newsletter is about but it isn’t really working as it is anyway.
I’m part way through rewriting the Instructor Manual and building the Instructor Training programme. The issue is that as there aren’t many mountainboard centres, there isn’t much need for instructors or training. But of course without a robust instructor training programme we’ll never get the instructors that we do have teaching well enough to give those that do go to centres a lessons a good experience.
The beginners guide to mountainboarding website is a resource for people looking for information about how to get into mountainboarding. It’s a little out of date, needs a new look and some more articles, but improving it could be done at a slow pace whenever I have the time as it doesn’t have any dependencies. The question is, if no one is looking for information on how to get into mountainboarding then working on the website in isolation could be a waste of time. I can look at Google Analytics to get some idea of traffic and search intentions, and I could do some SEO/marketing work so that the site is easier to find for people that are looking for info.
TVMC has the best prospects for getting people into mountainboarding by providing equipment to borrow, free lessons and regular meets. The issue I have is whether I have enough time to make it a success. This project fits my assertion that the problem of not enough mountainboarders requires a bottom-level/on-the-ground/grass-roots solution, not a top level national promotion campaign as getting more people to want to have a go at mountainboarding is pointless if there is no where for them to do it.
I wish I had time to do all of these as they would all compliment each other and help all of the projects to be successful. Unfortunately I don’t have time so I need to decide which I think will have the greatest impact and fit with the time I have available.
nom.pa domain name is only $105 for two years…
What a great start to the 2015 UK Series! We saw the regular faces, some new faces and even some of the old faces. There was lots of close races, skilled downhill runs and spectacular stunts in the freestyle.Check out the results from Round 1 of the UK Series ’15 on the ATBA-UK website.
Round 1 Results
For Round 2 we return to Perth in Scotland but this time you not only get to ride the fun Downhill course but also the countries only public BoarderX track. Two disciplines, twice the fun!
Dates: 13th & 14th June
Disciplines: BoarderX and Downhill
Location: Perth, Perth & Kinross, Scotland. Nearest Post Code: PH2 0NE.
The BoarderX Track will be open for practice on Friday. The Downhill Track will be available with care as other people may be using it.
Registration is open from 9 to 10 am. Entry Fees are £10 for members and £20 for non members per competition, so if you’re a member entering BoarderX and Downhill will cost you £20.
BoarderX racing will start at 11 am on Saturday. Qualification will be run using ability-level groups with a maximum of three riders in each race.
Downhill will start at 2:30 pm on Saturday.
Prize-giving will be at 6 pm
Camping is available on the grass near the track. Vans are welcome in the car park near the track. Camping is £5 per person per night.
Entertainment will be provided by whoever can sing the loudest.
Bring your own food and drink. And if you’re going to bring sweets, bring enough to share
Bring your board, and helmet and pads (you won’t be able to compete unless you have a helmet, elbow and knee pads and wrist guards).
Bring a tent, sleeping bag, etc. and clothes to keep yourself warm and dry whatever the weather.
Bring plenty of food and drink, especially water if the weather is hot. And bring sun cream and insect repellent.
Bring money, so you can pay for your entry fees (£10 per comp, £20 if you do both disciplines), and camping (£5 per person per night).
The season is in full swing and it’s the perfect time to be out filming for your entry for the 2015 International Mountainboard Film Festival.
Get planning, get filming, get over to Facebook to find out more.
R1 – 16th & 17th May – BX, DH, FS at Hereford Board and Bike Park – DONE
R2 – 13th & 14th Jun – DH, BX at Perth – NEXT
R3 – 4th Jul – DH at Fruit Farm
R4 – 18th Jul – FS at Knockhill
R5 – 1st & 2nd Aug- BX, FS at Another World
R6 – 15th & 16th Aug – BX, DH, FS at Hales Board & Bike Park
Connor is a good mountainboarder, no doubt about it. But is he good enough to win the Pro category Downhill competition after only competing for a couple of seasons and not practicing much? Well, today the answer is yes, and that leads me to ponder this anomaly for reasons why.
Connor is definitely a good rider. He rode well in last year’s World BoarderX Championship and he definitely stepped up by joining the Pro’s. A good level of riding is a prerequisite for winning. Without the skills he wouldn’t have stood a chance.
His way of riding fitted the track. It’s a pretty steep track, a bit slidy and with a few tricky corners. Most of the other riders were going into the corners as fast as they could and then scrubbing and sliding their way round. Connor never slid, he never scrubbed, he never took his wheels off the ground. He rode smooth winding lines that meant he went into the corners with the right speed and came out in control and lined up for the next. This approach would have given him a lower top speed but a higher average speed.
He had lots of runs. Nine in fact, compared to most riders having four to six. These extra runs gave him more opportunity to learn the track and he made use of those opportunities to figure out his lines and improve his time.
There weren’t many other Pro’s. There were only two or three other riders of a similar ability. Having less competition in itself doesn’t help a rider win as it doesn’t matter if you are beaten by one rider or ten, you are still beaten, but in Connor’s case the lack of competition was so low that psychologically he knew he only had two other riders to beat. One of those only had two runs so didn’t get the same opportunity to learn the track.
So, the four elements of Connor’s success are skill, adaption (fitting riding style to the track) , quantity (more runs gives more opportunity to learn the track), and lack of competition (not many other riders).
