BT May Mountain Bike (BTMMTB) Challenge

It’s time for a challenge for those that like to get dirty! This is a mountain bike challenge for the month of May, from May 1st to 31st, 2009. This has to be done a little different than the road cycling challenges, because counting straight miles doesn’t give credit for really gnarly rides. So I have come up with a point system for each ride.

How it works:
There are 3 rating categories: hills, technical, and time. After each ride, you’ll rate your ride based on the descriptions for each. This is on the honor system, so try to be realistic for your local area trails.

HILLS
D: Flat to slight rolling terrain
C: Rolling hills, no long climbs
B: Lots of short, steep hills, or longer climbs
A: Sustained steep climbs

TECHNICAL
D: Smooth trail or Jeep road
C: Some technical challenges (few rocks, roots, etc) but mostly non-technical
B: Lots of technical challenges (big/loose rocks, ruts, sandy wash crossings, etc). May have short hike-a-bikes (few steps long).
A: Highly technical (steep rocky sections, large drops, steep scree slopes), and may have long/several hike-a-bikes (measured in fractions of a mile or miles long).

Night rides: For night riding, bump up a tech level. So a trail normally a C would be a B at night.

TIME (actual rolling time)
D: 30 min – 1 hr
C: 1 hr – 2 hrs
B: 2 – 3 hrs
A: 3+ epic, or intense mountain bike race

POINTS:

The order from D to A is backwards because that aligns more with the current lingo in the mountain bike community. Crazy hard rides are known as A rides, while easier rides are known as C and D rides.

Example:
I did a 1.5 hr ride on a trail that looks mostly like this:

I’d give the trail a Hill rating of C, Tech rating of C, and Time rating of C since I rode 1.5 hrs. In the points table, C’s are 2 points, so that’s a total of 6 points for that ride. I’d log my cycling like normal in my BT blog but put in the description that it was a mountain bike ride worth 6 points.

At the end of each week we post how many points we got. More points is better!

Hills – pretty self explanatory.

Technical – This is a little more subjective, so I’ve tried to provide examples.

Time – This is actual rolling time on the bike, not counting resting, chatting, posey sniffing. Minimum ride time is 30 minutes to count.

Races – Note that a mountain bike race gets an A rating for 4 maximum time points (hills and tech ratings depend on the race course and are up to your discretion). This must be an official mountain bike race to count, and you do not have to have raced for 3+ hours. If you race for 45 minutes, you still get 4 points. I wanted to give extra credit to those that go out and challenge themselves in races. If you DNF the race, give yourself the normal time points (gotta give props to those that finish!). The mountain bike portion of XTERRAs (off-road triathlons), off-road duathlons, and adventure races count.

GUIDELINES
Bike:
This is a mountain bike challenge, so rides must be done on a bike with knobby tires to count. Cyclocross bikes are acceptable as long as you are running knobby tires. Trials bikes (observed trials) are allowed, and skill sessions count. Sessions must be at least 30 min long though.

Trails:
The focus of this challenge is on dirt trails and mountain biking. The ride may include road, but the majority of the ride must be dirt, and the express purpose of the ride must be dirt riding. For example, if you are riding a dirt road that turns to pavement for a bit and then back to dirt to get to a trailhead, you can count all of that time because you are going to ride the trail.

Commuting:
I went back and forth on this and determined commuting is not in the spirit of this particular challenge. So commuting on a mountain bike does not count, even if it’s on dirt. However, it does count for the commuting challenge, so please join Bill’s BT Commuting challenge.

Blogging:
Each person needs to keep track of their rides and points in their BT blog and report it on Monday of each week. We need each person to be active and help with this. This isn’t one of those passive challenges where you just sign up and someone else checks on your blogged miles. Besides, more posting means more time for smack talk!

Teams:
For now, please post if you are interested in participating. Depending on how many we have interested, we may do teams, and if those get big enough, have team captains to help with reporting points. I don’t think there has been a BT mountain bike challenge, so I have no idea how many folks will be interested.

In the words of Mike Rowe: “Now get ready…to get dirty!”