Our eighteenth monthly Zoom video meeting, on Monday 12th May 2025.
The University of Bristol’s (and Ride Bristol’s) Dr Fiona Spotswood talked us through her research into gender inequality in mountain biking, and how it’s led to the development of the FIAS (Fostering Inclusive Action Sport) framework, a tool which any group in mountain biking, including trail associations, can use to help become more relevant and welcoming to women. She then showed us how it’s being used by Forestry England and Beicio Cymru to develop their activities to support women and girls in mountain biking.
We then had a wide-ranging conversation covering media consumption habits, the role of brands, women influencers, making racing more inclusive, riding group culture, and how to run successful women’s only and inclusive mixed rides.
There were 10+ attendees, including Charlie Kingswood (Hafod Trails), Fizz Harris (Trek Bicycle), Hannah Dobson (Singletrack), Ian Warby (Firecrest MTB / UK MTB Trail Alliance), Jez Sainter (SingletrAction), Tim Foster (Revolution Bike Park / UK MTB Trail Alliance), Tony Skirrow (Ride Northampton), Zoe Woodman (girls ALIVE), Fiona Spotswood (University of Bristol / Ride Bristol) and was hosted by Robin Grant (UK MTB Trail Alliance).
Links to things talked about during the meeting:
Project FIAS https://fias.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/
FIAS Toolkit https://express-licences.bristol.ac.uk/product/fias-toolkit
Mountainbike Forum Deutschland Mountain Bike Monitor https://www.mountainbikeforum.de/en/knowledge/mountainbike-monitor-2022/
SheRACES https://www.sheraces.com/
Hello and welcome to the 18th demog market of the UK to the trail alliance. Um in a moment I will hand over to Bristol universities and ride Bristols and many other uh organizations. Uh Dr. Fiona Spotswood um and Fee will talk us through her research into gender inequality into mountain biking and how it’s led to the development of the the FIAS which stands for fostering inclusive action sport framework. a tool which any group in mountain biking including trail associations can use to help become more relevant and welcoming to women. She’ll then sh that’s been used by forestry England and biker come to develop their activities to support women and girls in mountain biking. Um so after a Q&A with Fiona uh we’ll we’ll then give everyone a chance to share anything they want help or advice on benefits from the group experience. Um, but as I’ve started to do on recent calls, rather than just sort of uh carry on uh until uh I get bored of asking questions, which is what normally happens, um we’re going to keep we’re going to bring this to a sort of a hard halt after 90 minutes. Um which will be uh about 25 to 10. Um so before we start, a bit of housekeeping. If you use the little hands up icon at the bottom of the screen, um if you’ve got a question so I know you want to speak, that would be great. I’ll call people in turn. Um really importantly, when asking your question, please say who you are and what group you’re from. Um and can I also ask that you please leave your video on during the call so everyone can see each other just it’s a bit more of a social experience. Um and please change your display name to include um your name, your full name, and also the organization you represent. So for example, you can see mine is Robin Grant UK to be trails. Um and having said that, I will hand over to Fee. Great. Thank you. Um and I just need to share. Okay. Can you see that? Yeah. Amazing. So, I’ve got the first slide wrong because it’s not just me doing uh Project Fierce, but this is me. And as Robin said, um I’m a prof um at uh the business school in Bristol. um which is a kind of strange place for someone to be who’s interested in mountain biking. But if I just sort of say that all my research has been about um the consumption of sport and physical activity and most of my career in fact has been um focused on understanding how um people don’t do any exercise and physical activity and it’s taken me a long time to get to the point where I’m actually doing research in my own sport. So I am a mountain biker as well. Um, and as Robin mentioned, I’m a trustee of Ride Bristol. I was on the Reframing team as well. So, I, um, co-organized Reframing this year. Um, and I lead a lot of rides in Bristol, including, um, Women Ride Bristol, which is a women only, uh, group that meets once a month. And also I co-lead the Thursday night rides, um, which are mixed gender. Um, and I also run a kids mountain bike club in Bristol as well in all my free time, as I like to say. So, I’m busy, but this is um this is just a kind of whistle stop tour of of FIAS um to give you kind of a bit of an insight um into what we do and also I have a favor to ask as well which I’ll get to later on. So, what we do in a nutshell is research as you’d expect because we’re at a university. So, we’re interested in both the consumption and production sides of mountain bike culture. So essentially how people do it, how people engage with mountain biking and and our collective culture. Um and also what makes that culture and particularly focusing on marketing and media. Um we develop we do lots and lots of different types of research and we use that research to develop we write loads of academic papers and stuff as well which um I’m sure you’ve all read. Um but when we’re not doing that, we also uh we work on producing kind of frameworks and toolkits for different audiences. Um there’s a whole bunch of those. Um they’re all free. Um and you can download them and use them. And we we run workshops that use them and and try and embed the different frameworks and toolkits into different organizations. So I’ll talk a little bit about that cuz that sounds a bit vague. Um I’ll explain what I mean by that. Um but essentially the point being we do research but we want it to make a difference and we want our insights to kind of change something rather than just um fuel the academic publication system. So one of the things we’ve done is produce a toolkit for um developing supporting thriving women onlyly communities in mountain biking. Um and we part of that is workshops for um we run workshops with women who are interested in setting up uh women onlyly communities. Um we’ve got one I think next week or in a couple of weeks time at Bike Park Wales which would be loads of fun where we help women who have perhaps um started a community or want to and we have a load of resources and ways of thinking about what they’re up to in order to make sure that those women only communities become um part part of a pathway for women to get stuck into mountain bike culture rather than just segregate women off and say you know you you do your own um but don’t don’t join in uh the mainstream of mountain bike culture. And we’ve also got a tool kit um on the way called gearing up um which is not for us mountain bikers. It’s specifically for the people working in brand marketing. So people who are kind of you know selling mountain bikes and kit and also for people working in the media. Um and you’ll see a stream a whole load of research um and ideas in in project fierce is around the kind of image of mountain biking. And of course we all know how important um mountain bike magazines are in their digital form as well as um you know unfortunately there’s not a huge amount of print magazines. I still get excited when my single track magazine uh comes through the letter box. There’s not so many of those anymore but they’re still really important for kind of setting that we call them cultural gatekeepers. they’re really important for mountain biking. So that tool kit’s targeting those guys. Um and we run a lot of um specific programs with partners as well which I’ll talk about later on. Um particularly MB Wales and uh Forester England which we’ll talk about. So we started out I won’t I won’t spend too long talking about the research findings so much. Um I always say that and then I get carried away. But essentially we set out right at the beginning of this project which was in like late 2000 uh 2022 I think it was. Um asking and I asked the question like how what’s it like being a woman in mountain biking? I used to mountain bike a long time ago. I used to race a bit um but I hadn’t really been involved for a couple of decades or maybe not quite a couple of decades but at least over a decade wasn’t really involved in the culture and I was thought how how think how have things progressed so how how do women navigate this culture of mountain biking which has always been male-dominated as are many many sports and particularly action sports um what’s it like being a woman in mountain biking essentially and as a marketing professor I was interested in the role of marketing and the media in creating or shaping or changing that culture. Um, and as somebody who’s interested in social change, I I ask always asked the third question. It’s like, what do we have to do to make things better for gender equality and mountain biking? So, um, I’m not expecting you to read this, but we’ve done a lot of research over the last three years, and it’s carrying on. Most of the research has been with women and girls um, in mountain biking. We’ve also done a lot of research with teenage girls who don’t mountain bike. That’s been absolutely fascinating. So teenage girls speci specifically who are sporty, do other action sports and live near trails but don’t mountain bike. And we’ve asked them all sorts of questions about what they what it looks like from the outside and what appeals or what could appeal or what doesn’t appeal. It’s been fascinating. Um we have also done focus groups with women who ride other forms of like leisure cycling um and done a lot of ethnography. So participant observation, I’ve been watching people for years with purpose um trying to figure out what it’s like um riding in single gender groups and also in mixed gender groups. And of course um lots of research with marketing and media professionals in there as well. And from that well there’s two kind of main bodies of research findings. The first one is about how women navigate this mountain bike culture that we all love. I love it. There’s lots of women in mountain biking now, many more than when I first started out in the early 2000s. Um, but it’s still a male-dominated and masculine sportscape. Um, and there are pockets of um, amazing progress, incredible progress. And I want to know what’s going on in those moments of those pockets of progress and bottle it and and share it. But also there’s still um patterns of experience that women have which are sadly shared so often by women who tried to um come into mountain biking. And pretty much every woman I interviewed gave me fantastic examples of really supportive men riding who they rode with. Pretty much every woman I interviewed had been introduced to mountain biking via a man. Um but um they all h they shared this experience of discomfort is probably the kindest way to put it. Not because they you know there were there were experiences of of misogyny and sexism of course um but not many um it was more a case of just a general sense that women are on their back foot slightly. They’re not quite they struggle to feel legitimate in in this in the culture of mountain biking. And that was a really interesting um finding. Uh it’s a bit more it’s a bit more complicated than that, but essentially that sums it up that women struggle to feel deeply connected with our sport and that we need to do proactive things to help women settle in and and forge that deep connection. When I talk to industry about this, I always say ultimately getting consumers to deeply connect with the thing that you’re selling is a great way to make money. So understanding women’s relationship with mountain biking is a brilliant um you know uh business a business decision. Um and so my research kind of has identified really where gender inequality is locked into mountain biking and where there are pockets of progress and how and how those pockets of progress work. Um, and so just to start off by saying that we still have around we think the data is not entirely clear, but we think around 20% of mountain bikers in in the UK are women. It’s pretty similar across Europe. There are different places with different um stats. Uh, but it’s anywhere between five and 25%. I always go for the upper end. I reckon it’s about 20. So, you know, if we’re thinking about um I won’t talk about this actually, uh but if we’re thinking about what the media and what marketing does to construct a culture of mountain biking, we have to look at what it says. So, one of the pieces of research we did was um a content analysis. So we took every publication, online publication from Bite Radar and Single Track across 12 months um and we analyzed how they present gender and we purposefully chose Bite Radar on Single Track because they’re really different. Obviously Bike Radar is predominantly a review site and Single Track is is much more varied and much more kind of lifesty lifestyle oriented and also has a woman um editor, managing editor. So we looked at how they present mountain bike identities and there is a kind of established um way of seeing mountain bike identities that I didn’t come up with it’s from a different academic and there are four there are the the recreationalist rider very chilled big smiles nice and relaxed not technical then you’ve got your competitor which speaks for itself then you’ve got your risk competitor which is a bit more kind of downhill and And then you’ve got your I can’t even say this word asthlete. Asthite. So kind of combination of uh it’s basically jumping. So athletic but also aesthetic um sort of slope style I guess you you’d describe it as. And so we we we counted, we analyzed and we came up with a bit of analysis, bit of a a sort of um you know a finger in the air to just to see what was going on. And you can see there is obviously a huge representation of women in there, but it’s uneven um across the board. Um there are more men than women and um the the women are predominantly um in the recreationalist category whereas men are across all of them. So you already see this kind of hierarchy of gender hierarchy being built into the way mountain biking is being represented in the media. Um, and actually this is arguably not a rep representative year that we did it because this was the year the world champs were in Fort William. And so there was a big commitment from all all the media in the UK to cover women’s and men’s um racing in very equal ways. So I suspect that if we did this in a different year, we’d come up with different findings. Anyway, so that’s interesting in its in its own right. What’s more interesting is how the women we interviewed um responded to the media. And I can go on about these findings for hours and hours and hours and I won’t. All I will say is that women have a really problematic relationship with uh mountain bike media which is a real shame and it’s one of the reasons that they feel uh they often struggle to feel deeply connected with our sport. We cannot underestimate the importance of the mountain bike magazine in all its forms. As I said, women feel like um women feel like in our mountain bike media, women are missing and they are represented in a very narrow way. Um as is the sport itself, they feel that mountain biking is actually represented in a really narrow way. So basically, you can’t be average. You can’t be you certainly can’t be an average woman. Um and we don’t show the full range of different types of mountain biking that you can engage with and all the different reasons that you might want to engage with. It’s like this the best kept secret that we that we have. We as mountain bikers know that actually we’re not all riding, you know, 80 foot gap jumps across a ravine when we go out in the woods, but we don’t tell people that. We show this one very, you know, top of the pyramid kind of image of the sport. And so, you know, women have, you know, told us all these different ways that they love mountain biking. They love the flow, the fear, the freedom, the achievement, the challenge, the progression. also use mountain biking as a form of um mental coping for mental health. So nothing a man wouldn’t say, right? This this is not gender. This is just all the lovely ways that we all love mountain biking absolutely came out of the data. But when you ask them about the media, they feel really disengaged from mountain bike culture. They talk about there’s no women in those magazines. Well, that’s not true, but that’s what they said. That’s what they feel. They talked about um you know the importance of role models as they were growing up. So I the d the data collection for this part of the research was me going for a ride with a with a woman who mountain bikes and then after the ride interviewing them about their relationship with mountain bike culture and how they engage with the media. So that’s important because when um so they are mountain bikers so you know women were telling me that they were growing up thinking well mountain biking was definitely off the table. It was a complete accident that I took it up. Um, I knew uh there were no other women there. There were no other women in mountain biking. I couldn’t see them. They weren’t anywhere. And they struggled to form this legitimate connection. Um, there was a lot, you know, pretty much every woman I interviewed said at some point, I feel like a bit of a wally. I’m I’m paraphrasing. I look ridiculous. Am I allowed to be scared? I just feel like I’m not riding properly. I’m not a proper mountain biker. And I did ask every woman I interviewed whether they were a proper mountain biker. It’s because I’d been for a ride with them and their bikes were propped up against a tree as I was interviewing them and so many of them kind of apologized for not being a proper mountain biker, not a rad one. So these images that we create in the media are really important. So they were really felt really disengaged. They felt really frustrated that the only way they could access mountain biking was through a male friend or a male partner and it shouldn’t have to be that way. There was a real sense of that. Um, and for some women that that sort of habituates is this kind of um disengagement. They never quite give themselves to mountain biking. I mean, I have I this is my true love. I’ve been mountain biking a long time. I will never stop. Um, you have to drag me off the trails. Um, I adore it. But I could see there was a for some of the women there was just a sense of it’s not it’s it’s really their husband’s thing. It’s not properly their thing. But others there was a real anger. There was a real sense of rejection. I don’t want this mountain bike scene. I know what it is. I can describe it to you. It’s big groups of lads and I’ve got no interest in joining it. And so there was a particularly with the younger women, there was a real anger and a real rejection of what they perceive as contemporary modern mountain bike culture. Now, a lot of this is quite interesting because they their critique of marketing and media. to the the representation of mountain biking is that when women are included, it lacks authenticity. It’s tokenistic. It’s really including women for a male audience. It sexualizes women and it trivializes them. Now, we didn’t actually find any images that sexualize women or even trivialize them. And it’s difficult to say whether it was these, you know, any articles we found that were kind of about women or included women were for a male audience. But we didn’t find the level of perceived um sort of gender injustice that that the women we interviewed perce you know felt really strongly. Um we had a lot of comments like this you know they haven’t determined that’s what women are interested in who asked them what they wanted. Um and I know a lot of people who work in the media and they really do they try incredibly hard they are trying to change the the representation of women but there is this cultural lag. A lot of the comments we received about the marketing and media referred to the Marzoki girls. And for anyone who’s been around a while, the Marzoki girls were used to advertise um Marzoki forks, but quite a long time ago, really in the ‘ 90s. They haven’t been around quite a long time, but this was the the cultural lag. And it’s like women have written off marketing and media as not part of their experience in mountain biking, which causes problems for how we bring them in and draw them in. Because of course it deep engagement with mountain biking as a kind of consumer means that women are spending money, they’re volunteering, they’re taking part in dig days, they’re getting stuck into all aspects of the sport, they’re training as ride leaders and they’re becoming, you know, um, coaches and mentors and working in the industry. And so there’s a lot of other things that spin off from this problem of lack of engagement with mountain bike culture. Now, final point is that it wasn’t all bad. So, women are avid consumers of mountain bike media. Definitely, they just don’t read what we would describe as the kind of mainstream mountain bike magazines, websites, uh, brands, and so on. They hunt out interesting stories. They shout about what’s going on. They share avidly. There was a lot of media consumption. it just wasn’t it was very different to um what men uh tend to read and follow. Um and it was really important to women that they found the interesting stories and interesting blogs and that and it has a particularly important um purpose as well. Um which is connecting women together and this is something that has um taken off enormously particularly during lockdown I think. Um there was this uh rise in gravel gangs as they were called. Um you know gravel off-road riding communities, women only communities that were really started as a way of combating social isolation. um mountain biking grabbed hold of these um these this idea um you know by the scruff of its neck and women are you know forming you know mushrooming everywhere um women only communities and they’re so important for mountain biking as I’ll talk about um you know and I’ve interviewed a lot of women who’ve started women women only communities and there’s a lot of things that those communities do it creates a safe space it obviously creates visibility as well um it creates a pathway way into the sport. It eradicates that feeling of discomfort that so many women have when they join however supportive a group of largely men male-dominated group you know sets out to be. It’s really intimidating for women to join that space. And so women onlyly spaces, events, rides, weekends, festivals have become such an important part of mountain bike culture. And I’d extend that as well to dig days um training anything. I think it’s an incredibly important when it’s incredibly important part of um a future more inclusive sport if it’s done right. I won’t I won’t talk about this slide too much, but essentially what we’ve done in project f is map what we call the practice ecosystem in mountain biking and identified where gender inequality is locked in and where gender progress is possible. So there’s like the b ones are practices that stifle gender equality and the ones at the top are moving towards they’re transformative. And we turned all of that insight into this framework. And this framework is what we use as the basis for workshops with um organizations ranging from British cycling. We’ve done this. We’ve run the fierce framework workshop with British cycling, baking and kimry um uh for England, you know, big organizations, national organizations, but also we’re developing a version of it for trail groups as well. And um it identifies you know through research it’s all underpinned by um by our by our research that there are essentially four parts to um fostering in you know an inclusive mountain biking and that groups should strategize and and use this to underpin their actions around these four areas and this will lead to progress in mountain biking. So at the heart unsurprisingly is building mountain bike community for women stable, visible, supported, growing communities of women, mountain bikers. I we use the word women plus to denote women and marginalized genders, but I just can’t say it every single time, but I should have been really clear that when I say women, I mean women plus and that means women and marginalized genders. Um at the top you’ve got integration of women into mountain biking and that is a very purposeful it’s at the top for a reason and it’s all about um act activities that are needed to integrate to support women to join stuff that’s already happening in mountain biking whether that’s trail associations whether that’s races whether that’s events but they might feel like they’re really inclusive and open and I have race organizers say to me all the time well women enter if they want without any understanding of women’s experiences in those spaces. So integration is proactive action to ensure women can join what are purportedly mixed gender um mountain bike experiences. Then you’ve got diversifying mountain bike leadership. We know I don’t need to tell you guys but you know diver diverse um diverse leadership leads to different decision-making. It’s good for everybody. And so, and that leadership can be, you know, around the boardroom table. It can be um or it can be, you know, ride leaders or trail group leaders, trail dig leaders. Any form of leadership, gender diversity will change the decisions that are made, the atmosphere, the culture, and encourage women to move from their women onlyly community into different parts of mountain biking. And then the final um bottom left is fairly obvious. transforming transforming the uh cultural representation of mountain biking and um we started big. So we started with major national um policy organizations. We also work with um the international mountain bike association as well. Um but this is the same everyone has a voice. So trail groups have a voice, races, events um your local you know you know community ride that you pop on Facebook has a voice and has an image. And so transforming the cultural representation of mountain bike, it can be done by everybody. Um it’s not just the role of single track and bike radar. So the framework is not just this. It’s got a whole load of activities and actions. Um and it’s freely downloadable from the Bristol University site. So I can share that. And there’s also a toolkit which I mentioned at the beginning which supports women only communities. And as I said, we run workshops that help uh communities who want to set up a group for women, whether that’s a trail group who wants to who has a mixed ride and wants to set up a women only ride. We um have a bunch of resources that can help do that. And then we run these strategy development workshops where we use the fierce framework to underpin and shape what groups do, what comm organizations do. We’ve, as I said, we’ve started big with these big organizations, but this is my favor is that we would like to work with smaller organizations as well. So, if you work for a, if you are part of a trail group and are keen to to to have a conversation about how you could shift and shape your activities and strategy, if you have one, um, uh, around, uh, gender inclusivity, then give me a shout because this is exactly something that we want to move into in the future. I’ll finish up now with just a few examples of um where we are embedding the fears framework in kind of larger projects in partnership with organizations. So that we’ve worked with um so some we get phone calls where people ring us up and say oh we we are the Luxembourg Ministry of the Economy please can you come out to Luxembourg and tell us how we can use marketing to create an inclusive culture of mountain biking in the country and it’s these are amazing experiences. So we use the fierce framework in a whole load of different ways. Um and and that was that was great. We’ve also worked with Baker Camry and I have um a kind of member of staff, a policy fellow called Maria um who’s working um with Baker Camry on the MB Wales project which some of you will be familiar with. Um we also um are working in Germany and in Europe um in France really with the European network of outdoor sports. Um but I’m going to talk about um the well Baker Kimry first of all and the Forestry England pilot as well. So you’ll see uh you may be familiar with MB Wales and the things we’re doing but some of those some of those activities from MB Wales are kind of energized by Fierce and the Fierce framework. Um and we’ve been really lucky to have an amazing group of um regional champions who are supporting our work, some of whom are on the call. Um but we have five events um set up for the community of practice in Wales and really what they’re all about is shaping action and activity and visibility of women as part of mountain bike culture in Wales and they are uh they’ve been organized around different parts of the fierce framework. So we’ve used the fierce framework to decide what to do. So, for example, demystifying wide leadership is encouraging women to get stuck into wide leadership. And we’re also offering free training as well as part of that. And then we’ve got our community building workshop. Um and then um a a really fun one I’m looking forward to this an inclusive events discussion where women are coming going to come together online to talk about what they want with in races and events and what would you know coming up with basically a manifesto for inclusive mountain bike events. Um and hopefully we’ll be in a position to share those ideas with race organizers and develop something kind of regionally um that events organizers can commit to. That’s the plan. And then you may be familiar with um the forestry England work particularly in the form of the women’s uh takeover day. This is just one part of the the uh the the kind of strategy that we’re developing with um the cycle center over in the forest of Dean. Um there’ll be lots of things. We’re also going to offer RI leaders Ry leadership training. Um there’s a hope women’s anduros coming to the forest of Dean. We’re organizing this big women’s takeover day. There’ll also be a social media marketing campaign to raise a profile of women mountain bikers in the forest and we’re going to develop um different partnerships um with with brands and so on um through our work there. And this again is being um driven by an amazing uh steering group of women who live and ride in the forest and are co-creating all the activities that we’re doing. That’s it. So next what we’re doing is as I mentioned we want to expand into working more closely with grassroots organizations. Probably should start with Ride Bristol given that I’m a trustee. Um I will do that. Um and also we are expanding the FIA work beyond mountain biking to other action sports. So one of our original steering group members um is actually a kite surfer and she’s used the fierce framework to develop a lot of her activities in her um kite surfing community that she runs. And so we are looking to see the relevance and the possibilities for ex extending some of our actions beyond mountain biking believe it or not. And as a and as I mentioned we are working with Germany and France and we’ve always already worked with Luxembourg so we’re expanding into Europe. So that’s I’ve gone over slightly but not too bad. So that’s the end from me and I’m very happy to answer any questions. Cool. Thank you FE. No problem. Um, so yeah, as as all as as normal, I’ll encourage everyone to think about their questions and I I will kick off. Um, I’ve got loads of notes. Where should I start? But so going back to the beginning, I mean, you you you sort of reckon that about 20% of mountain bikers in the UK, but you gave a range of five five to 20% um five to 25% across Europe. Yeah. like like have you got a feel for like which countries are are sort of doing really well and which which countries are doing really badly? I no um it’s not a simple answer. It’s the the there is no data. It’s amazing. So in Germany they got this amazing thing called the the German mountain bike monitor and they do a national survey and I would love to do this in the UK if we could ever find some funding. But every year they they do a really big survey of mountain bikers um and they ask all sorts of questions including like where they go on holiday, where they ride, what kind of riding, who they take with them, how much money they spend. It’s it’s absolutely brilliant and it’s used to develop strategy um and g and get money funding in Germany. um and it’s kind of managed by um the organization we work with there and um it’s brilliant. So we don’t have that in the UK. So there are the the data is actually pretty ropey. We’ve got um media engagement data, brand engagement data. We there was a there was a an academic survey done in 2018 and I think that’s the last one and that said 20%. Um there bike did a survey that said um 95% of mountain bikers are in men. The trouble is with surveys and you know my a lot of my data talks about women’s lack of engagement or less they’re less deeply engaged. So if you if you receive an email from an organization like Pink Bike saying fill out this survey if you’re a mountain biker women are just less likely to fill it out. So it’s really difficult to get good quality data. It doesn’t So I So I think I go with um 20% because I don’t believe only 5% of mountain bikers are women. I think it just doesn’t sound right. Um, and based on there’s a few other sources that we’ve that we found that say about 20 20%. And um, so I don’t think it’s na I don’t think it’s national. I think it’s regional. You know, you you when when there is proactive um effort to make women feel included and put on particular activities and think strategically about how to encourage women to feel like they’re part of mountain bike culture, they will ride. And so it’s it’s actually it’s not about national, it’s about regional local effort. Um which is one of the reasons we wanted to work with forestry England right from the beginning because they you know we we you can you can do things on a really local level and then see the effects of them. I’m interested. It was it dimin Yeah. Dim developing dim but something isn’t it the the German sort of mountain bike federation that runs that survey. It’s um it’s it’s kind of managed by um what are they called? I’ve got a real problem remembering the name. They’re called uh mountain bike tourism Deutsland something. Tismas forum. Tourism forum Deutsland. Yeah. Okay. And what and have interesting note, do you remember what proportion of those the German survey respondents women? It’s it’s about 11%. Right. Okay. which again it doesn’t rep doesn’t rep but it’s a survey this is why I do qualitative research it doesn’t represent you know that it’s probably more than that right so we have no qual we have no reliable quantitive data basically um which is okay well that leads me on to my next question you talked about this a bit but how do you think it compares to gravel for example so gravel’s fascinating um and I asked questions about gravel culture particularly when I interviewed the marketing and media professionals. Um, so gravel culture, you know, gravel biking has been around forever. Like, you know, you I I rode that is just mountain biking in the ‘ 90s, right? It’s just, you know, but gravel culture is market mediated as is mountain bike culture. So, so we we know what to do. Um, and we know what it feels like without theorizing it too much, but like we know kind of the the atmospheres and how it should feel and what we should look like because of marketing and media. They tell us essentially what the parameters of the sport are. So, gravel riding, just like mountain biking, was created in in the in the in adverts and in magazines and in branding and in um ambassadors, you know, that’s what created it. So it’s really new as a as a concept and it’s creat been created at a really different point in history. We’re much more you know mountain biking was developed as a you know market mediated enterprise um in the 80s which and it’s and you can tell you know you can tell that it was all big masculine macho characters loads of fun kind of top gearesque um you know caricaturures almost. and gravel riding is invented now um where we’re much more you know we’re much more um uh well you know pre-Trump of course but we’re much more aware of diversity and inclusion and so and it’s been carefully done gravel events and brands that support gravel or get behind gravel think really carefully about how to um create a culture of inclusion and I really like that it’s really really interesting case um so I don’t so Yeah, I’ll leave it there. I’m sure you’ve got more questions. Well, I don’t. Well, well, just I mean, so do you think do you have a feel do you have a guesstimate for what percentage of gravel riders in the UK are women? No, but I’m I don’t because there is to my knowledge no data. You’d have to you’d have to do the same sort of um crazy dance that we’ve done with mountain biking where you probably pick the leading brands and find out the engagement and bike sales and then events data and kind of figure it all out. Yeah. I wonder if we could speak to the bicycle association who are the trade body for yeah bike manufacturers in the UK um and see if because they’ve got they’ve got pretty you know they’ve got pretty impressive sales data whether they break that down by gender or not they don’t right okay no it’s really most brands I know this um very well because we is one of the set data sets we’ve been chasing for two years now um but they there there’s very very little gender retail data. I think um Canyon has um gender split data. Trek does, but only if um only in retail stores and only if the salesperson puts it into the till, which is really interesting actually. It’s a total anecdote, but women sales staff tend to put in the gender and men don’t. Isn’t that interesting? Says a lot because they because it’s so it’s so conscious they’re so conscious of it. Um but actually it’s really really challenging. to try to find we’ve got some proxy data. So, we’ve got some data about um from commute of how many men and women sign up to you know events and training and trips and stuff. Um but we it’s really difficult to find retail data and bike sales by gender. They just they just don’t keep it. Yeah. I mean anecdotally it does feel like you know gravel is a much more gender balanced part of cycling biking is doesn’t it? I mean, certainly in terms of looking at rides or events about gravel, there seem to be a lot more women in the room or on the ride than there are mountain biking. But that and I think it’s really important to recognize that that’s been done very proactively um it’s not an accident. It’s been done incredibly proactively um by people with real insight into not wanting to make the same mistakes that we’ve made in mountain biking and to a large extent in road cycling as well. Yeah. Um well yeah road cycling is not probably not well I don’t know do you have an insight into that is road biking better or worse than mountain biking I um so my collaborator Martin is a um is a roadie and his specialtity is um French road cycling history so he I wish he was here he knows everything about the tour to France and the and the birth of road cycling and how it came to Britain and everything um but it’s no it’s very similar it’s very similar it’s very male-dominated and kind of masculinist in some forms. Obviously, there are again pockets of real progress which are wonderful and you you need to understand those in order to take the bits that work and apply them elsewhere. I think what’s interesting about gravel is one of the interviews I did with um a um he was a globe he was a global um marketing director for a major bike brand and I interviewed him um and it was very interesting. So without giving too much way, uh he we were talking about what it’s like being somebody who’s interested in gender progress in an organi big organization, a marketing organization and whether that’s easy and whether you can recognize it and what you can do to ensure that when you spend your marketing pounds, you make sure that you’re representing mountain biking in a way that helps um uh gender equality rather than hinders it or at least stagnates it. And one of the things he said to me really struck me. He said their brand had been realigned. So you know they do these these very expensive brand repositioning activities. Um and he before he had started actually he said we did this really really good re uh repositioning activity and it was all about gravel culture. So we were we were learning about gravel culture in order to apply those those insights to our mountain bike uh marketing strategy. And and because we did that, it’s therefore really inclusive. And now he never has to fight when he says, “Hey, you know, maybe we should put should put a woman in this advert or maybe we should get a woman to review this new bike we’ve just launched.” There’s never a push back because the whole brand is aligned around kind of these inclusive values that they took from Gravel Culture. So, I thought that was it says it all really, doesn’t it? I thought that was really interesting. Um, yeah. Um, everyone else, don’t forget you’re meant to be asking questions if you have if you have any, but I will in the meantime carry on. Um, so I mean, you talked about women being avid consumers of media, but not traditional mountain bike media. Um, so there’s a challenge to that. I mean, isn’t that just representative of, you know, how times have changed for for everybody, not just women? Yeah. And obviously my data is qualitative, so it’s not representative. doesn’t doesn’t pretend to be um but you know I have talked to a lot of people um and what I tend to see is that um is that you know men who mountain bike and and for whom mountain biking is a big part of their life like let’s call it used to be called a lifestyle sport we don’t use that phrase now but I don’t know why it’s great it is a lifestyle you know people um fall in love with mountain biking and find it very difficult to fall out of love with it and when and the men that I talk to tend to you know read the headlines pretty much every day there’ll be single track pig bike, you know, bike radar. There’ll be a kind of, you know, flick through, there’ll be the feed and they’ll just read it and that’s just part of how they keep up with the technology and what’s being released and, you know, whatever else techno fetishist stuff get interested in. Um, and women just don’t feel connected to that at all. But, and so it’s very tempting to kind of give up. Um, but I but I found it fascinating that when you dig a little deeper, uh, once they finished telling me that no women read those magazines, they did actually tell me that normally it was, “Oh, but I do like Single Track. Single Track’s different. They’re beautiful.” Oh, I can see Hannah’s there. I’m not I’m not sucking up Hannah. I promise. Um, you know, they you know, I love the photography. The stories are amazing. I really like the writing. So, there was a there was I don’t buy it, but my husband buys it and I’ll read it. I do like it. And then there was also and I follow this blog and I really like these people on Facebook and I do follow these these people on on Instagram. So there was there was a real media landscape that was curated. It was just um not the same. It was just not the same and it wasn’t it wasn’t really engaging with um the what we would call the mainstream. And that’s important I think. Yeah. And again and that does yeah that rings true with my personal and you know my experience with other male friends in mountain biking. I suppose though you know what where I was leaving to with that is if there is this sort of change in media consumption patterns towards sort of social media and towards you you know I mean if you look at it in just culture in general and politics you you know women and men consuming very different types of media. Um yeah, how do we deal with the problem in that scenario? You know, in fact, it it’s it’s really problematic and um we go into this in in the academic paper we wrote um because obviously then it’s algorithm bias and you know I I interviewed some women at different points um who not for this part of the project but um who said I don’t I I think there’s loads of women in mountain biking. I don’t really get what the problem is. But of course, if you are a woman who mountain bikes, your feed is then full of women who mountain bike and you don’t and it’s and then you’re a man who mountain bikes and your feed is full of men who mountain bike, but never the twain shall meet. So there’s very little integration. And so the the role of the kind of the broader media to to to pull those links and actually be progressive is really really vital. So I always think about social media as being um a reflection of existing kind of societal inequalities, imbalances, whatever. And the media has this, you know, the other media has this um opportunity to be progressive which it can either take or it can’t. So you’ve got a kind of continuum between media reflecting and media is molding. Um, and one of the things that we said in our paper was, you know, there’s definitely been progress, but there are also a lot of missed opportunities. And I suppose, you know, regardless of where their content appears, brands are a constant factor in in funding the production of that media. Almost all of it. Yeah. Um, yeah. But I suppose again, and again, I don’t have the answer to this question, like, but you know, shred it to sell, right? Which is what which is why they produce them. Yeah. How do we get how do we get around that? Like like you know and don’t get me wrong like like you know shreddits are problematic in lots of different ways. They’re problematic in a in presenting you know this male-dominated action sport you know adrenaline fueled vision of mountain biking but they’re also problematic in terms of you know irresponsible trail riding and you know and lots of other lots of other ways. Um yes yeah you know and I don’t I don’t have the answer to the question but and it you know perhaps that’s a wider discussion for everyone in this call but yeah I don’t know you know like if it’s there’s that basic link between you know if we produce this this video which is actually let’s face it quite cheap to produce it will help us sell bikes. Yeah absolutely. Um and you know there are some really quite challenging stark financial realities that the bike industry has faced or is continuing to face um which you have to set against this. Um I for me you know I I think there’s a I think it’s about variety and diversity rather than banning the shreddit. You know, I think I think everyone loves to see someone amazing riding a bike in an amazing way that you could never possibly do and and making it do things you didn’t know were possible. You know, of course we do. Um, but it’s also about recognizing that at the moment there is a missed opportunity in engaging with different groups of actual or potential to use a horrible marketing phrase, but actual or potential customers who are not engaging with the media content that we’re putting out there about our sport. And if we want to create an environment where, you know, our children grow up and think, “Oh, that looks like a bloody good sport to try, I’m going to give that a go because I’ve seen it and I’ve and I stumbled across a video or I I saw an image and it made me just think, “God, that looks wonderful and I’m going to try it.” And I happen to be a mixed race or a person of color or, you know, a woman, a girl, you know, then then that is then we’re winning. Um and and we so I think one of the things that we kept coming back to when we were trying to make sense of all the data was it’s about narrowness. We we only give one a very narrow presentation and and you talk to mountain bikers and they’ve stumbled into this sport and they often as I say get hooked um and we do it for life. We’re lifers. Um and no one rides like that you know so we we know it um but it’s a bestkept secret. We don’t tell anyone else. And the thing about action sports like mountain biking is that you don’t see it anywhere else. You don’t pick up the Guardian or turn on the BBC. It’s it’s not there. So that so the only place it features is in our own media. And so we’ve got so it’s got we’ve got a disproportionate responsibility slash opportunity to to shape the narrative. Um and it’s really and it’s really challenging. I mean there are really good examples of where this is happening in both media on the media and the marketing side. um you know Cotic a really good example of not so much on well they do actually lots of things but for gender I say not not so much for gender diversity but that’s not fair but the example I’m thinking of is is in relation to sustainability so Cotic often say you know we’d make loads more money if we made carbon bikes but these are all the reasons that we don’t and so they’re doing a form of progressive transformative marketing and they’re aligning their brand with something that they believe in And I think there’s a lot there’s there’s lots of other brands and lots of other, you know, media outlets that do the same thing. But I think we c we could see more of that rather than a kind of well, this is how we’ve always done it, so let’s carry on. And and what and one more thing, um, before I get off my soap box, um, but I talk to a lot of men who also tell me that they dis they feel really disengaged with this sort of this masculineist ethos of mountain biking. and they, you know, and they say, “Well, how, you know, and all the kind of the things we write and say about kind of inclusive sport and what that means and how it feels, they’re like, I wanna I want to ride with you guys. This is this is much better.” So, it isn’t just this is not actually just about women. It’s feminism in it in its truest sense of the word, which is open for anyone. Yeah. Um, you’ve seged nicely into my next question. Uh but again a reminder for other people to chip in if you have any comments. Um but before I move on to that actually just just a practical thing. So one of the things you talked about was you’re putting a tool kit together for media and brands. Can you talk a bit more about that? Um I’m going to launch it um at the um the summit series conference uh for women in the cycling industry in September. Said it was going to finish it now. Um but it’s based on yeah it’s going to be a toolkit for marketing and media. Um it’s supported by a really impressive steering group um of uh really incredibly uh experienced experts who work in mountain bike marketing and media um who’ve given their insights and it’s it’s supposed to be it’s going to be um a toolkit for act action. So little actions that you can do if you work in brand marketing or in media to make different sets of actions, different sets of decisions that can chip forward and chip away at gender inequality in the representation of mountain biking. And it’s based on a um part of the research where we interviewed a lot of these um amazing professionals and you know self- selecting of course because no one who was not up for gender progress came forward and said I want to be interviewed. So mostly I interviewed really progressive people um and a lot of the time they were um in organizations that really cared um about uh gender and gender equality. Three of the people I interviewed were in um in um want the same organization in different parts of Europe. So they and they did they may have known each other but they didn’t work together and they all use the same language as she said it’s natural. It’s built into what we do which was really interesting. But there were also other people who were just exasperated. And I, this is one of the quotes was somebody said to me, it’s like shouting into the void. And I I always remember that because it’s like I’m trying to to point out to the people I work with that there are opportunities for change. We never show women in the pictures. And if we do, they’re standing next to their bike. they’re not riding it or they’re behind the bloke or that they’re a tiny image or we just don’t have them because we don’t they and then the answer is we don’t know any women who ride bikes. It’s like you know so you have so there and they and they can see it men and women this was not particularly gendered but they can’t do anything about it. So the toolkit will enable them to engage their organization in a conversation about gender progress and it’s coming soon. And then how do we uh how do we take that conversation to more modern forms of media or more Yeah. I mean like influencers for example. Yeah. You individual athletes and individual YouTubers. Yeah. Have you got a plan for them? I I haven’t and I know we’ve talked about this in passing um you know in the in the past and it is quite a different ecosystem. influencers were mentioned and ambass brand ambassadors were mentioned a lot in the research. Um there is a genuine frustration and I don’t know what quite what the word is but it’s close to frustration um by women of women ambassadors who sexualize themselves in order to gain followers. But there’s also an absolute understanding about why that happens. So, you know, if you if you’re a woman who’s, you know, a handy mountain biker or you’ve got some kind there’s a reason why you’re, you know, um, sponsored by different brands. Um, and you know, you need to justify your existence to get paid to get your get your free bike or whatever. And so, it’s very and you know that predom you know, 80% of mountain bikers are men and you know that there’s a real heteronormative masculine culture of mountain biking. So, it’s it’s a good way of doing it. as a strategy is to sexualize yourself and then to you know in order to gain followers and make your brand happy. It it’s it’s problematic for gender progress in mountain biking to do that. So there is a real sense of frustration amongst women about women who do that but also an absolute un understanding um and it’s really challenging. So he’s got a hand raised. Yeah. Go on Z. Hi. No, I was just going to say it’s really interesting because my daughter is is 16, is sponsored, and she is so aware of that. Like she sees the the slightly older women. Um she sees when they do uh certain angled posts of their behind, but she also sees the trolls and and the comments that people like Cara get. Um and she will go and comment on those. And and I think what’s really interesting and there are some brands and I know I particularly know of of a couple who work in marketing who are watching and seeing who comments on those things and they will not then sponsor those people. And I think it’s something that’s really interesting happened at an event we were at recently. Some lads went up to to the to the booth and were like, “Right, uh I I want you to sponsor me.” And he was like, “Whoa, that’s not how it works, mate.” Um you know, it’s not as simple as being good on a bike. and oh but I’m better than Cara Bill why aren’t I sponsored and he did an amazing job on um Instagram of putting a bit of a post together about look if you want to be sponsored this is this is what you need to bear in mind that brands are watching brands well some brands are looking for people that are going to be good ambassadors that aren’t dicks that aren’t going and commenting on carabil and saying you can’t jump and you know pulling girls apart or or men um But the brands are watching and I think it’s really valuable with the tool kits that you’re putting together, you know, based on our work with project f and the the toolkit we did that around the marketing because I think it’s really hard if you have no a clue where do you start and it can seem such a big thing and and you know every time I listen to you talk I’m just like oh my god we’ve just got so much more to do and we’re not doing enough and and then you can just feel like you need to bury your head in the sand and go oh I I can’t do anything. It’s just never going to change. But coming back to all those baby steps and every little thing does make a difference, you know, and we were we were at a race two weekends ago, 6% of entrance were women. There were three women’s categories versus I didn’t even count how many men’s categories because there were so many. You know, the girls were all lumped together. And but it’s not on people’s radars. Brendan Faircluff said to me, “Oh, what categories may in?” I’m like, “No, no, there’s no it’s not juveniles, not youth. It’s just 13 to 18. It’s just girls.” Yeah. You know, and it’s and it and I had lots of conversations. I will always talk about this when I’m at races because I marshall and I talk to people and because you’ve just got to raise that awareness because he had no clue because he’s never had to look at the girls categories, you know, and and and it’s the same for the organizers like they don’t they don’t need to make it more inclusive because they’re selling out anyway. Yeah. you know, but actually it’s chicken and egg. You know, there were three women’s categories. It was girls 13 to 18, it was 19 plus women, and then it was elite. Yeah. So, if I’m a 46 year old woman, I’m going to be in the category with the 19year-old, you know, girls. And and is that motivating to me to want to spend my very hardearned money doing that? um you know along with all the other side of women typically earn less money and have less free time and all of that stuff you know but but notwithstanding the fact that you’ve got 6% of these entrance at this race out of 330 people you’re standing in the uplift queue you’re waiting to drop in it is surrounded by men and they there’s no consideration of how intimidating that may feel and the conversations and the language that goes on and they don’t necessarily even notice that it’s a girl or a woman. No, I mean I think events are really really interesting and but I think you touched on a few really important things there. One one is invisibility um and this is what we we come up uh across a lot um in our work and I think it’s you know it’s completely reasonable um for this to be new. Um I’ve interviewed a lot of men uh as part of the project more recently and one of the things I asked them was you know how did you get into mountain biking and they tell this great story about you know you know riding with their mates at school and reading you know MBUK when it was launched in 1986 and all this kind of stuff and it was great and at some point I’ll say so did you you know did you did you have any girls do you have any friends who are girls who rode with and it’s always like no obviously not and one of the guys that I interviewed put it absolutely beautifully he said I said did did you question that he’s now a mountain bike coach, incredibly progressive, does everything he possibly can to create inclusive communities for women and and marginalized uh genders and so on. And he said, “Well, no, I didn’t notice it because if all you were ever shown is yellow cars, you wouldn’t ask why there were no blue cars.” So, and so it’s really So, it’s invisible. It’s really invisible. And so, you’re in a position where mountain biking is male-dominated. Mountain bike industry and cycling industry is male-dominated as well. And it’s actually the first challenge is becoming reflexive and thinking actually this is so Bren I’m not surprised that Brendan Faircluff had never noticed it. Why would he why would he notice it? It’s not it’s not um we don’t notice and I always think as a white person how many times a day do I not notice what it’s like being not white person of color? I would never notice. It’s it’s completely different. So I think you know the first thing we do is have conversations like this where we ask ourselves difficult questions and we chip away at particular parts of that ecosystem. I think there is really really good progress being made in ride leadership and in tutoring and in communities and I think events and races are really far behind and I’ve got a real bee in my body about events and races this year. So, I want to try and have a bit more of a conversation with um with race organizers and see what we can come up with collectively. And and it is really hard, isn’t it? And I literally have this conversation time and time again. It’s like it’s it’s chicken and egg. It’s like you don’t have the entrance, you don’t have women, you don’t have enough. You’re saying you don’t have enough to have women separate categories, but you’re not showing them that that’s a possibility. And therefore, they’re not going to maybe not enter. And it’s it is about saying, well, you always sell out. Could you hold back spaces for women? you know, if I’ve got to sort out child care or try and you know, a lot of women will wait till their friends sign up to something. Yeah. And it’s about understanding and helping race organizers understand women’s, you know, women’s point of view, but also how to um reduce the risk. So, if you know, if you’re a race organizer with a very very limited margin, um you don’t want to take a risk. That’s completely understandable and totally absolutely. So you so you so there’s got to be again a kind of um a set of tried and tested um mechanisms I don’t want to use the word toolkit again me tried and tested mechanisms to enable race organizers to take that step and hold back you know a quot for women entrance or or take you know in all in a way that reduces the risk and again we can learn a lot from Gravel because Gravel’s done um you know made huge uh strides in Yeah. And I I can’t remember which which event it was. I saw something very recently where saying, “Right, for the first half an hour of practice, it’s just going to be we’re just going to allow the women on the track.” I was like, “Wow, that was brilliant.” You know, I I raced last year and it was so intimidating if you’d had a little bit extra time just to get your nerves out the way and get down the track a little bit. Um, you know, and I think it’s that’s why it’s going to be really useful, I think, with the the things that you’re coming up with is concrete things to suggest rather than just sort of going to raise organizing going, “Oh, you’re just not doing enough.” You know, amazingly, I get one of the comments I get a lot a lot and and try not to spit your chips out at this point, Zoe. But a lot of the comments I get are, “Well, Enduro is just too hard for women. That’s why they don’t enter it.” What? Um, and we try and we try not to dwell on that that comment, but and then I say, well, you know, the Highland Trail 550 is pretty hard, I’d say. And that has an incredible um uh gender split and and because of proactive effort, right? Because of supporting women, showcasing them, raising the visibility, you know, making a massive uh song and dance about um the women who’ve done the Highland Trail 550 and oh, there you go. More women enter. Same with the Dragons Back. I don’t know if any of you are runners on the call. Um, but the Dragons Back is a a six day absolutely horrific ultra um running fell running challenge along the Dragons Back in Wales. You know, it is brutal. Pretty much an ultramarathon every day for six days. And they get a huge um number of women enter and they’ve subscribed to something called um She Races. She races. She races. Yeah. Yeah. With Sophie. Sophie set that up. commitment to, you know, doing lots of things. And so I think, well, you know, these are two of the hard I describe them as two of the hardest races in ever. Um, and if they can do it, we can do it in a man bike and duro. Yeah. And it does, but it also shows at at things like the hope and at FOD and the days where um there are women’s events like they sell out. I remember I don’t think Tim’s on the call, but when they put out about Project Evolve, that was three years ago that sold out. And I remember Tim talking at the time I spoke to him at the event and he said, “Oh, we’re really worried about this event and do we let the do we let them have it?” Basically, we had exclusive use of revs bike park and it was one of those days where you know you’ve got to get enough people so then hopefully cover the uplift costs and they went backwards and forwards with the organizers for for that with Vero and and um Becky and and uh Sean and he then he then couldn’t believe how quickly it had sold out. Yeah. um you know and and it’s like having faith that these things when they’re done well with integrity, not tokenistically, you know, they do sell out. And so when they say women don’t want to race, it’s absolute rubbish. It’s just it has to be sort of within a very specific set of parameters. And um you know, it’s a shame there are some women’s events that aren’t happening this year that um haven’t, you know, haven’t been taken forward. um like you’re saying about marketing budgets and stuff but it’s a huge untapped market I think um that is slightly different from the demographic and when we were um reframing MTB you know sat with with the head of marketing from Trek and Marin and it was like you know you’ve got this massive missed opportunity around storytelling around people on their bikes and yeah I love watching the Matt Jones videos but do you know what I’m not just going to go and buy a bike because Matt Jones ride it I’m more likely to go and buy a bike if I see someone that looks a bit like me and the bride’s a bit like me riding and telling that story and that you know that that whole piece a bit. I was like when was the last time you saw any marketing that was a featured a woman in her 40s, 50s or 60s. Yeah. But it it was just really interesting because he was like well we just want to sell bikes. It’s like well probably not just going to keep selling bikes if we just keep putting out the same sort of media right you know. But it’s great that so Cath good I’m just conscious of two people have raised their hands so I’ll move on but just it’s great it’s great news that um Kath Goody has been sponsored now and you know she’s you know you know Kath for president I say she’s amazing absolutely just before we let people ask their questions I just while we’re still on the basic subject I had a couple of points I suppose I mean one was there was a campaign by someone on LinkedIn and Ian might be able to remember remind us the name of person um la end of last year because British cycling reduced the number of women’s categories or refused to introduce women’s categories. I think it was in downhill or enduro. But I suppose the question I have for race organizers, not for you two, but but you know what I understand is there you don’t get many women entrance, but I don’t see the downside of actually allowing them to have their own categories even if there’s only two or three people in each category. There’s no extra real extra overhead for allowing people to have their own categories. Do you guys have any insight into that or? No. and and at the moment I’m um you know I I strugg I don’t want to speak when I don’t understand the situation. So you one of the things we want to do with the MB Wales work is is bring race organizers together and listen to them and really understand um what what it’s like on the other side. Um, and from a position of knowledge, then we can hopefully, you know, co-create something concrete that they can use to move forward. I don’t actually understand why you wouldn’t do that at the moment if I’m honest. So, yeah, but maybe there is a reason, but I’m skeptical personally. But um and the other more positive thing and it may be as a result of what the work you’ve been doing with bikeumbru but I noticed they were doing at some races this year they were having a a sort of a women’s sort of guided ride around the course before races which just seem really nice and really nice way of doing it. It’s that I mean that is that is an example that crops up time and time again. You know, it’s really it’s really, you know, Zoe hit the hit the nail on the head really saying that, you know, women’s experiences turning up and being in male-dominated spaces in sport specifically, but generally at all is is is is problematic. And I al think, you know, we’ve got this sort of, you know, political historical shadow cast over us that you can’t possibly understand if you’re if you’re not in that position. Um, and sport has been a male-dominated space for generations and it has been created as such. Um, and so we’re trying to unpick that. So women feel very differently to turning up to a to a male dominated space. Um, it it’s in sport and it’s it’s it’s deeply it’s deeply uncomfortable. It’s deeply problematic and it’s and it’s not because there’s one bloke being a you know being a wally on the uplift. It’s not anything to do with individual behavior. It’s cultural. Um, and it’s and it’s really hard to um to to to explain and and and that’s partly what I want to do is try and explain to people what that feels like and um use use research to do so. And proactive effort is absolutely required to help women feel like they own and and can own space in mountain biking. Um, and one of the best practice things we’ve come we’ve come across time and time again is, you know, women only, uh, practice runs, um, you know, uh, holding back tickets is really important because things like Odd Rock sell out in 24 hours. Women are unlikely to buy a ticket in 24 hours if they haven’t done the event before because they just think about and engage with this kind of world in a really different way. They will look at look at footage on YouTube. They will read blogs. They will talk to their mates. They will think very carefully about whether they can imagine themselves there. Um, and if they see uh footage of that event and there’s no women in it, it will create massive amounts of doubt in their brain as I don’t want to feel out of place, uncomfortable, I’m going to be on my back foot. I’m not going to be able to do this. People like me just don’t do this and it’s going to cause problems. So anything where you can carve out push back the tide and let women just find just take their time to find their own space whether that’s buying a ticket in the first place practice runs you know track walks anything like that that gives them a chance to make it their own is positive. It’s the same principle for the women only communities. And that’s really hard to do, isn’t it? If six% of those people turning up are women to make sure that you try and show, you know, in 50% of your marketing women, you know, actually, you’ve got to scroll through a lot of photos as a race organizer to try and find those pictures if you’ve only got 6%, you know. So, it’s it’s not an easy job and we know that. We know that it’s not easy for them. And so I think the work just the work obviously we’re doing Fiona is so so important and um yeah just we’re all chipping away. We’re all chipping away. Um I’m gonna Jez had along but I’m let Charlie come in first because she had her hand up put her hand down probably thought the conversation moved on. So uh it hasn’t. So Charlie go ahead. Thank you. Sorry Jez. It’s just it does actually relate to what Zoe and Fiona have just been saying actually. So, um, women buy differently, and until manufacturers and brands realize that, they’re still going to have a problem. Women don’t impulsively buy. Women are thinking about their kids school uniform that they’ve got to buy because their kids have had a growth spurt. Women are thinking about the grocery shop that they’ve got to do. Women are thinking about all of these other things and they’re prioritizing that over that new set of knee pads or that new bike or whatever it might be. So I feel very very strongly what you’re saying about giving women time and the same thing exactly applies to race entries. Um friends of mine um recently two female friends recently did the antifreeze up in Cuba Brennan and they waited until each other had confirmed each other’s participation before they both booked because that’s that’s how women work. Um, and just on another sort of slightly side note, I do my very best. The majority of customers that we have here are men. Um, but I have a super strong um, female contingent um, that support what we’re doing. Um, because I support them. Um, and at every opportunity I am shoving my daughter out the door to go and ride if there’s space on the uplift because I think it’s so important that people see women riding, see girls riding. And she rides the socks off 95% of our customers here. And it just it makes me so godamn proud that and my my boys ride well too, but it’s the fact it sounds awful. It’s better that she rides well to me in front of customers than the boys because the boys naturally they’re they’re a bit more showboaty and and they go, “Oh, your your your lads are little shredders.” Yeah, but have you seen Hattie Ride? Have you actually seen her? Because she’s pretty good, too. and and I and I try to make sure that um photos that I’m putting out on on our social media, both as have a trails and also my own socials equally feature a Hattie as well as the boys. Um and actually I think I’m probably a little bit the other way because I put all of my women’s rides on there, all of the women’s specific stuff that we organized. But as both Zoe and Fee have said, it’s it’s a slow kind of chipping away process. Um but that also applies to how women buy. So, thank you. Sorry, Jess. I’ll let you get on with what you wanted to say, but it it just related directly to to what what Zoe and Fee were both saying. Go on, Jess. Yeah, no problem at all. Uh, absolutely fine. Uh, Jess, single traction. Um, first things first, um, Cotic, they do do sponsor, they have quite a lot of women, uh, ambassadors. Yes, I know. Yeah. Yeah. And they did recently have a talk at the some I can’t remember what the lady did, but she’d gone somewhere and they so they they do do quite a lot for No, no, sorry. I I I completely agree with you. They’ve been really supportive of this project. It was just I I was about to say that they weren’t. I was just focusing on their their um sustainability as an example, but no, Cotic have been really really involved in pretty much everything we’ve done is in Fierce. Um I’ve been yeah, they’re huge supporters of what we’re doing. So I wasn’t that for the record. I was not. No, I’m a cotic rider so I’ve got to you defend them. Absolutely. I’m a big fan. But no, it was it’s interesting what you say because um I sort of I mean I’ve I I’ve been riding for 20 20 25 years and I used to guide uh and um I I had 50% women at one time. Uh but it it it it definitely was that you need if they didn’t see any another woman on the ride, you they really wouldn’t book. Um I also used to find that they would generally way better riders than their confidence level. They would always be questioning whether they’d be capable. You get BS turn up. They’ll just turn up and just, oh, I can do it. And they’re absolutely hopeless. I’ve had to push them back, feed them, jealate. Never had to do that with a woman at all. But you can I can see the difference. You know what I mean? They will generally be less confident and always feel like they’re um uh you they’re holding the group up and even if you explain it’s not it’s a social ride. it it’s very very difficult to get that feeling of comfortableness and possibly that’s why I ended up getting up to 50% because I tried to make people feel comfortable. Um but then everybody drifts off over time, you know, and then once you start to lose that group, unfortunately, it does drift off. But now, um well, the social media thing, it just made me think about what you were saying. I’ve been this weekend has been uh edr and things like that. uh that’s been on and interestingly my social medias definitely had a lot more women on it but I think it’s because I’ve been clicking on things because yeah the um what things like ride companion and various podcasts ke um had hand and was on and I found her fascinating so suddenly she’s been on my social media four or five times uh this week weekend and obviously she won uh but which was great. Um, so I do think the social media thing is working slightly better, but you have to be proactive on it. Yeah. But I was up at Glen Trest this weekend and the there was the cross country racing there and I have to say it was massively massively male dominated. All the kids, they’re all bloss. But on the plus side, there were lots of families riding bikes and it wasn’t dad and son, it was the whole family. So, I do think it does bode well for the future because I’m seeing much more of that these days than you ever used to do. Yeah. Yeah, it was always dad and son whereas I I you know see I even I even saw there was a ride and it and it was the this the son was younger so and and the the daughter was older and said I think me and mom should go first and I went first which was great to see you know I mean it was it was on the green route going but the the kids were tiny so it’s absolutely brilliant that that that’s that is moving forward. But I do agree with you that it is a it is just a male dominated industry that that needs to show more women because it be I’m I’m up at Hard Malls next month. I’m I’m a Martian. So it will be interesting to see if it’s changed because I I haven’t done it for four or five years to see what the uh the number of of women is. It’ll be interest to see if it’s gone up. And a couple of just last thing a couple years ago I had a friend she she was she got herself on the hard rock. Um now I marshall that a lot and she sort of rang me up and said I really don’t know what I’m letting myself in for. Can you take me rounds? So we had a day up there and I’m riding round sort of say well I’ll take you because you can’t well you’re not supposed the because it’s all on private land but I know which ones you can and which ones you can’t. So we went and I took her on a ride that was roughly yeah the right sort of distance and took her down two or three of the things so and point and then we went and had a look at some of the other and she said it was just fantastic because she said she felt so much more comfortable. she knew what she was letting herself in for and she knew how much more she had training she had to do to get to do the event because we did you know two or three months beforehand. So I think you do need that you do need that um uh yeah I suppose really it’s a safe safe space isn’t it for for for ladies because they just need that extra confidence. Yeah I agree I mean I agree with most of that. Um, I think I think it’s remember I’m an old no bloke. So I agree. I not disagree with you and it’s and it’s, you know, really interesting hearing your perspective. So thank you. I think it’s a bit I think it’s dangerous to um to to to rely on words like it’s it’s a lack of confidence. I’m not I’m not disagreeing with you. It often is and that’s how it manifests. But the problem is not women. No, the problem is mountain bike culture. So I I’m both agreeing with you and disagreeing with you in that sense. Um what I think you you know what I think your your stories show so clearly is that um women’s participation and enjoyment of mountain biking or lack of uh you know if you if you speak statistically is not inherent. It’s not natural. It’s not essential. It’s created. We made it. We made sport a sports culture. Many sports got not mountain biking is not particularly different to others in many ways. You know we made cultures in which women feel un you know uncomfortable and lack confidence. And if we made them we can unmake them. And what you see through you know things you’ve done but things that you know with a bit of understanding and knowledge and the right support you can actually put really quite simple things in place um and proact and be proactive and and change things. And so I think that’s what we’re seeing more and more um is that when when people understand that women’s experiences are different, amazing things happen and they will come they will join in and they will be you know and they will change it for the better for everybody. I think you know one of the interviews I did recently with somebody and I I said he’s a real a man but a real supporter of um diversity and mountain biking in all in all senses. you know, he’s he’s he’s uh he’s really interested in social class as well and mountain biking and all sorts of different really interesting conversations. And I said, you know, why why are you so passionate about diversifying mountain biking? And he just said, it’s just much more interesting. Well, true. That is that is that is very very true because the whole dynamic changes. Yeah. And it’s it just feels more natural if you’re on a weekend away and it’s a mixed bunch. Yeah. Otherwise it become there’s a bunch of blobs. It gets loud and it gets loud and they go all the testosterone gets going and I don’t like that to be quite honest. And there’s always somebody then gets hurt. Yeah. Well, it’s nice to have the choice, isn’t it? Yeah. Exactly. It’s nice to have the choice. Yeah. on on that point. I mean, you know, if you take a step back, we’ve talked about the media, which is obviously part of mountain biking culture, but obviously riding groups are another part of mountain biking culture. And I, you know, like like Jez, I felt the same way, you know, like if you you move to a new area and I, you know, a few well, when how long ago? I don’t know, let’s say eight years ago, I moved to Peas Lake in Surrey. So, I had to find a whole new set of riding groups. Um, and you know, it’s intimidating for for any newcomer to to those sort of ladish groups. And if they’ve been established for a while, because that was the culture, you know, that’s the sort of established culture. They are very, you know, ladish, for one of a better word, as you said, Jess, like they, you know, and they can be, you know, intimidating for men. And I imagine they even, you know, they’re even more intimidating if you’re a woman or, you know, from a from from some other, you know, from a minority group. Um, what can we do about that is a question I suppose to to to fear and to to everyone else. I think as much as I mean, you know, I I run dig days. If there’s any women there or girls, I always take pictures and make sure that they go on social media because you just the fact that if you if it’s seen, it becomes more normal. Yeah. But I suppose it’s almost like you know obviously the producing a toolkit for the media and for um for brands you know is there some sort of toolkit we can work on for you know because I don’t think it’s exclusion I mean a good example I’d use is is there a there’s a writing group in sorry called the the forest chumps um who are you know they’re all you know the vast majority of them are tradesmen they’re white van van man men um you know they’ve got quite a lot of disposable income but you know none of them have been to university they are they sort of live in that sort of lad ladish culture but actually you know they can be welcoming you know they’re not doing it deliberately do you see what I mean like once you get to know them and actually I mean um Zoe will know about this um you know it’s Russell’s daughter what’s her name Emmy Emmy of course yeah yeah Emmy came for rides and was made really welcome but you know like the point is that from the outside looking in if before you’ve been invited on a ride and come on a ride you wouldn’t know that they were going to be welcoming you but I think I think there’s I mean actually the group you’ve just described was was my first ever riding group. Not that particular one, but one in Bristol where I was very much the only woman. Um I was definitely uh oh yeah, I yeah, I was the the only person um who spoke like I do, she would say. I didn’t have a broad Bristolian accent and they welcomed me with open arms and it was great. Mainly because I could keep up as long as you’re fast enough, you’re fine, you know, kind of thing. But they were absolutely brilliant. We had such a good time and it was great. So there was very inclusive. I do think there’s a I do think there’s a difference between closed groups of mates and you know why should a closed group of friends include people that that aren’t their friends? I mean I think that’s completely you know reasonable. I think there’s a difference between that and groups, community organizations that set up and go, we are going to set up a group um for mountain bikers to come together who don’t know each other like Ride Bristol, you know, we have our Thursday rides. And that’s where you’ve got an opportunity to intersect and say, “Right, if we’re going to set up a group and make this a thing and have a monthly ride, a shop ride, whatever it is, then we’ve got an opportunity to make this as inclusive and diverse as possible. How do we do that?” um because that’s challenging and that’s what the the community building toolkit does. Um so we we we set out a bunch of different stages and and ideas for how you can make your you know open group uh diverse. Yeah. Yeah, for those of you on the call, I I’m I’m also in Bristol, so I sort of I’ve seen it close up, I suppose, that that, you know, how the ride Bristol rides, both the women only rides, but also the Thursday night social rides, you know, have have grown and developed. And yeah, it’s amazing to watch, you know, like it’s uh, you know, as was talking about before, you know, how gravel culture is completely different because it was formed in a different time. Yeah. You know, actually setting up something new is actually a quite an effective way of changing it. And I think there’s a real opportunity for trail associations, you know, for their own benefit, you know, not even for inclusion benefits, you know, just for the the benefit of growing growing their their group and their community and and and their trail association and people volunteering, working on their trails, you know, that mechanism of having a social ride and and you know, perhaps less frequently, but still doing, you know, women’s only rides is is is really effective about about building a really inclusive and positive culture. So how we do it in Bristol and again unsurprisingly it’s been really proactive and really carefully considered. So we haven’t sort of stumbled into having a a trail association ride community. We’ve thought about it really carefully. Um and we do a number of things which um have led to pretty decent numbers of women on the mix ride. So we have a monthly women’s ride that started first and that was actually running for a year pretty much a year before we decided that we should probably do a mix ride as well. Um so that’s that’s one thing and we proactively encourage you know badger the women from the women only ride to come to the mix ride. um it makes it easier for them to come because there are we they’re not led rides, they’re social rides, but obviously you always have a kind of host. Um and many of us are actually trained ride leaders as well. Um uh and most of the people who um let’s say lead those rides um are women. So there might be like four or five uh people who’ll take a group off into the woods and three of those uh on any on any Thursday night ride will be women. And it’s normally if it and if there’s a if there’s a bunch of ride leaders there at a ride Bristol Ride, somebody stands on a table and welcomes everybody and says what the plan is and which pub we’re going to. And it will pretty much always be a woman who does that. So even though it could be a guy, it’s like a it’s like an unwritten rule that we’ll we’ll just make that little comment, you know, that little sort of statement um on the ride Bristol rides and say this is a safe space. This is a comfortable space for for women and that makes a massive difference. Um the other things we do are um we always we don’t know who’s going to turn up. We don’t expect people to book. We we don’t we ask like who’s coming and but we never know how many people are coming. And we’ve had anywhere between, you know, 10 and 87 was our largest ride, but that was because there was pizza. Fair enough. Um there’s a lesson there, right? It was good on the solstice. Um but um yeah, we uh um we always say no matter who turns up, we commit to there being a ride for beginners. And even if that’s one person, there will be a ride for beginners. You never need to worry that if you’re, you know, on the fence um and you’re not sure and you and there’s all the chat on the on the WhatsApp group or the whatever it is saying, “Oh, I’m going to go off and shred these trails.” Don’t need to worry because there’s always a ride that would just do the blue trail and it’ll be really chilled and no, nobody ever gets dropped. And we commit that to that both in the women’s ride and the ride Bristol ride. And the only conversation we have really between the ride leaders is who’s taking the who’s taking the beginner’s ride and then the rest of it we’ll sort out on the night and that’s yeah just I mean just for everyone else’s benefit just to be a bit more explicit about that. So what tends to happen is there’s depending on the number of people there’ll be a certain number of rides that set off at the same time. Yeah. So a beginner’s one and an intermediate one people that want to ride off piece etc etc. It’ll vary depending on how many people turn up but then everyone will come back together again at the end. Yeah. and we all go to the pub and we we actively push the trail group as well. So we always talk about Ride Bristol at the beginning and we say, you know, we’re the only people that look after your trails and please give us money and please come to our dig days. And actually, you know, we’re we’re beginning to see a really lovely relationship between those community rides and those kind of um you know, those social networks that we’ve built up through rides and the digs and you know there’s there’s is a lovely moments on the women’s ride where we you know I do my duty. I stand up at the beginning and I say, “I’m a trustee of Ride Bristol and these are Ride Bristol rides and um it’d be great to get some more women on the dig days.” And then the women who’ve been to the dig days then start showing off about which bits of trail they dug and can we take the ride there and show everybody the bits that they dug and it’s absolutely wonderful to see. So, it’s really connected and inter, you know, interconnected that kind of feeling part of mountain bike culture and feeling included and then giving of yourself, giving your time, giving your money, giving your energy and and also buying stuff. It’s all it’s all part of the same kind of ecosystem. So, Charlie, you you um lead women’s only rides ride, which is a quite a big group now and around all the clouds of Breford of of riders, right? Yeah, I do. So actually it kind of I started um it was the other way round actually. So I’ve come from my local was the Forest Dean. I was kind of between Forest Dean and Bristol. Um and I started off my riding career if you like riding with the Dames with the Dane Forest cycling and um an amazing and totally inspiring bunch of women. And I was like we need we need that here. Um and no one else is going to do it. So I decided to go and and kind of do it and I started off organizing just general rides for breakfast and it kind of sort of snowballed a little bit from there. So I’ve been doing the women’s rides now for 18 months. Um I’ve got one on Saturday actually as it happens. This is my uh I do them once a month. Um and they have just gone from strength to strength. It has it has been amazing um to watch people who have openly admitted to stalking the group for a while just to know what they were signing up for and and and who they were likely to see and and all the rest of it. Um through to the women that have just come along and just got it evolved right from the beginning. Um through to people that coming back from injury and literally and everything in between. What I am super keen to do um and I’m trying to kind of expand my networks to do this is to encourage more girls um into the sport. So girls um that my daughter can ride with um when she’s you know when she’s in her kind of more into her teenage years. And so she comes out on every group ride, all of the women’s group rides. Um, and again, I try to kind of encourage other moms that have kids to come along and and and ride with us. Um, yeah, but it’s it’s it’s tricky. It isn’t it isn’t easy. I have a kind of a core group of kind of 10 women that come to come to most of them, but it it’s it’s hard work expanding that network. Um, and there are so many barriers that that are there and we’re just as as we were saying just just chip away at them slowly every every time. But it takes time. And have you noticed though since you’ve been I mean obviously been doing running the women’s right for 18 months and actually involved in running the mix rides for longer than that. Have you noticed the proportion of women on on the you know on the on the the non-women’s only rights grow over time or Okay. So this is something that I I just had a very quick look at the beginning of the call when we were talking about kind of percentages of of riders. Uh when I joined the club, there was um not it was not it’s not a very big club. Um there’s more people that go on the group rides than actually are members of the club, but that’s that’s fine. Um there was two women that were members of this group. I was one of them. And then there was another one that was a girlfriend of one of the committee members. So, she was on the club, but she didn’t ever ride. And I got her out last month. She came out for a ride. Um, and we now have um there are now it’s now 35% of our group is now women. And and I I I I’m going to blow my own trumpet. That is because of me. It’s because I took the initiative to say, “Come on, girls. let’s do it. My first ride I had three of us on it. Um and then it it’s just kind of grown and grown and grown. Um and but it it it it does it does take time. And then Storm Dra comes along and closes the forest for 5 months and yeah, things things like is it five months? Yeah. Yeah. Five months. Um and it it it just knocks you for six, but you’ve just got to keep you just got to keep going. And I’m I’m like genuinely really excited about Saturday. I love doing the women’s rides. Um And yeah, it’s it’s great. And I don’t dislike doing the paddle in a pipe that we do. Um, which is open to everyone. Um, I but I’m usually the only woman that goes on that usually. Um, but it’s I don’t know. There’s a different dynamic when you’ve got women and just women. It’s we it it just it’s just different. I can’t really kind of put my finger on why. Um, but it’s it’s not unpleasant riding out with men. I don’t I don’t dislike that. Um, I I tend to crash more when I’m riding with men. I don’t know what’s what that has to do with any relationship with the fact that I’m I’m possibly a little bit more compared to, but but yeah, that’s my own that’s my own problem, not anyone else’s. So, yeah. But you’re right. But you’re so right, Charlie. like we we go to the women’s rides. I run women rides and talking and um for the International Women’s Day, YT did a ride and it wasn’t exclusively women for International Women’s Day. It was for for men and women. And so my husband and the boys came along and I don’t think Paul had ever really been on a women’s ride, not surprisingly. And he was like, “Oh my god, this is so different from how we ride.” Like he just he hadn’t grasped the difference. He said, “Oh my god, all the weeping and the noise and the cheering and the encouragement.” He said, “It’s just so different from a guy’s ride.” And he’s been riding, you know, he’s been riding way longer than me. And I was like, “That’s really interesting, isn’t it?” Because I just, it hadn’t occurred to me because obviously as a woman doing this work, like you experience that magic and and you get that. And I also think it is really important that women do then move on to nonwomen specific rides and feel then comfortable in spaces because otherwise it doesn’t ever change. You know it doesn’t why shouldn’t we be able to Yeah. Exactly. We should be able to be in that space. But equally if all we ever do if if my daughter only ever rides with girls the lads the teen lads never see her riding. Yeah. And so their perception of girls rides and the ability that girls have is so out of line with actually girls ability. And so, but it very much takes it a little bit of time for you to build that confidence to go actually I am good enough to go on these rides, you know, whereas a lot of the time the guys don’t even question that, you know, whereas the whole yellow car, blue car thing, that’s exactly it. Just because they don’t know that they need us because we’re awesome. Um, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t know that. And and I think that that is that’s really really really important. Um, and it it it does it does come down to changing the women’s mindset a little bit as well to say, you know what, yeah, you’ve got this. You’ve totally got this. Um, and encouraging that atmosphere in a group ride generally also goes a goes a really really long way. There’s no reason why you can’t incorporate that level of support and excitement. I I’m genuinely I’m buzzing for like a week after I’ve done a women’s ride. It just gives me that kind of energy boost that I need to do. Um, and I’m in the process of, this is super secret, so you can’t sell anywhere, but um, I’m in the process, oh, it’s gone on the internet, isn’t it? Um, of organizing a a kind of a women’s festiva, takeover day, whatever you want for for Have our trails. Uh, I’m not banning men, but they have to come with a woman. That’s that’s the rules. And and I think it is very important to reflect on showcasing what what us women can do. Um, and recognizing the fact that actually with you and your kids and your husband, they’re part of your cycling journey as well. And and I think actually a lot of women do like to ride with their partners or their male friends. So actually I don’t think that should be discouraged, but I think it should be encouraged that the right atmosphere is available. 100%. And the the women’s takeover day at Forest Sadine, we Yeah, it’s open to everybody that day. We just want there to be loads of women. Um so that it’s just, you know, that that amazing vibe that we, you know, we want to bottle uh is there. But also, if there are women out there who are like, I’d like to be part of this thing, this mountain biking thing that I’ve seen or I’ve heard of or but I don’t know how to and I’m not very good and I don’t have a bike and I don’t know where to start. you will be able to turn up on your own and there will be social rides and there will be training and there will be coaching and there will be lots of fun and a raffle and probably lots of cake and it’ll be amazing. Um and so yeah that’s exactly the the kind of the point of the women’s takeover day uh in FOD as well which I think is going to be a fun day out on the 21st of June. Um, so I was meant to be bringing it to a close uh about eight minutes ago, but I am going to carry on for a little bit because this is a really good good stream of conversation. Zoe, I mean, have you got any insights because obviously you organize rides for people, you know, people who’ve never mountain bike before, don’t you? As well, uh, sort of they they need to have a mountain bike. Um, or we can obviously get higher bikes. There’s lots of places obviously in Surrey that that higher. Um but generally not total new beginners. We do occasionally run a green ride. Um but it’s about having because we’re all volunteers some it’s hard to then give up your riding time to do that. Um so it’s it’s like Fiona says you have to have a commitment of saying right this is what we’re going to run and we need every ride leader to step up and run one green ride a month. But it it’s really hard because we often find we don’t have enough of them to run a ride. So then it’s a bit weird when it’s just you and one other person. Like you do need a little bit of a a group to kind of make it kind of work a little bit. But we very much have blue rides and then uh pink and then black. Um you know and h and making sure that people know that there is progression if you want it. But if you just want to stick on the blues, that’s absolutely fine. Um but occasionally we sort of drag people up and say no, you’re definitely able to go on the pink ride. Um because as you were saying like people tend to stick in those in those groups or same with um like you know trail grading a lot of women will go oh no I only do the blues I don’t I don’t do the reds. It’s like well have you looked at the reds and we’ll go on YouTube and watch multiple you know videos of someone explaining what the drop looks like on on on YouTube. Um so when we originally started we didn’t we didn’t grade our rides um at all and we found that people sort of progressed a bit more in that way but then in order to try and streamline things we grade the rides because again people like to know exactly what they’re going to get whereas on a very mixed ride it was like you didn’t know who was going to turn up you didn’t know their ability and then did you have enough people to split off rides. So what we do sometimes do is have a blue/pink ride and we split if we need to or change which trails we’re going to do. um based based on sort of ability. Um but they’re advertised as advanced as one of those color rides basically. So you’d run one color one week and a different color the next week type thing. Well, we we run three rides a week generally. Um and we run one a month on a Saturday that I run. Um so we we have a good variety. Um but when it’s a volunteer organization, it’s down to us relying on the volunteers and them giving up their time, their ride time. So it varies depending on people’s commitments and child care and because again majority of the not all the women that are involved have children but a lot of the women that have do have children. So then we find that stuff obviously tails off in the school holidays maybe but then there might be more ad hoc rides rather than the exact regular ones. But we use an app um but it’s really easy for people to to see oh there’s a new ride come up. I can go on that at short notice rather than having to like plug it on social media a lot and be like oh there’s this ride this ride. Um and we do a lot with so we uh last month my monthly ride was the same day as the YT uh women’s ride so we just tagged onto that. Um you know this weekend it’s the Twisted Oaks uh ladies um kind of uh day so we we we’ve tagged onto that. Um so yeah that’s sort of how how we do it. But obviously what’s great about the toolkit that we worked on with Fiona is that there’s lots of different ways that you can do these groups and there’s not the tool kit is not prescriptive. It’s not right this is how you do it. It’s these are the options. Consider how you might want to run and um you know there’s lots of different ways of doing it and that’s what’s great about it. And and there’s some but there’s some really clear ways of having some things in place to ensure that it does continue because it’s really as Jez was saying it can be quite fragile. or you suddenly get a group of people and then it disappears. Um, and actually it’s about trying to make sure that all the effort that you put in is continued and doesn’t just fall by the wayside when the one person that was organizing it leaves, which is often how it is. Um, you know, if it’s a shop ride and it’s a token women’s ride because they’ve got a women employee, um, you know, when she moves on, you find that they drop off. Um, so it’s it’s how you do it with that intention behind it, I think. Um, yeah, really good point. Cool. Well, look, I am going to bring it to end unless anyone else has got anything they want to just add in that they haven’t had a chance to say or, um, any questions they haven’t had a chance to ask. It doesn’t look like it, but look, um, Fiona, thank you so much. It’s been brilliant. Um, I got a lot out of it. Hopefully everyone on it. Hopefully, everyone who watches on YouTube will get a lot out of it, too. Um, and thank you to everyone um, for your contributions. It’s been brilliant. It’s been a really Yeah, I’ve learned a lot certainly. Um, but yeah, thank you all so much. Hopefully see you next month. Yeah, see you soon.
1 Comment
I always encouraged the ladies but the big question is why don't more men play net ball?