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The Development of Riding, Digging and Filming!

Mar 29, 2011 at 9:44
by Elliot Graham  
There are few sports out there that allow for different scopes of talent like mountain biking does. One can ride dirt jumps, downhill, freeride, XC or street and still call themselves a mountain biker. What I have noticed, however, over the years of riding, that it is not only become a sole riding sport for me. Mountain biking opened my eyes up to filming, photography and digging. Read more to see how the love of biking and the help of you guys has led me into much more hobbies other then just riding!We've all been there, that day when you realise your love of the sport, that day when you hit that big drop for the first time that used to scare the life out of you. As you ride more your cheap bike becomes and expensive machine, your fear of 3 foot gaps becomes love of 30 foot gaps, your weekends of football become epic trips out to your local trails and your hands become stone from all of the shovelling you do.

What most people do not realise, however, is the affect this has on the rest of your life. I started mountainbiking seriously in 2008 when i bought my NS core which was, and still is, my pride and joy in the garage
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Don't worry the reflectors have gone!

I would head up to my local trails and watch other people ride amazing stuff whilst I was too scared to hit the smallest of drops. After a few trips, and a few falls, things began to get a lot more fluid. Me and my friends grew into the scene, learning from the older ones how to do stuff etc and that's when it all started. As we began to ride, cargo shorts became race shorts, piss pots became full face helmets and people began changing to downhill bikes. I remember going to the first time trials to watch in amazement
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'Thats almost vertical... no way' is now 'meh little drop in'

Once things got better, (once we got better basically) we began to build our own stuff. All that we succeeded in doing was pissing off the main guy there, but we stuck at it and, not only did we improve our skills at building, we actually began to impress the main guy and have others be impressed. Through riding our building developed rapidly and here's what we got done.

Views: 2,679    Faves: 50    Comments: 36


Along with building, I thought, during an injury, it would be fun to do a video. It was only then that I realised videoing was hard. But, as with both digging and riding our videos improved, a rubbish compact became a sony handycam which has now become a DSLR.

Things went from this

Views: 507    Faves: 1    Comments: 15


To this

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To this

Views: 1,634    Faves: 37    Comments: 19


As you can see in the video, both riding and videoing improved significantly and now the thought of injury actually pleases me as it means a video can be done! What also is noticeable is how things have changed! the guy in the coilair in the first video now rails a scott gambler, the blue kona in the second is now an iron horse sunday world cup and my beloved NS is now a giant glory

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Look it's still there!!!

The whole point of this post came when I was looking through old biking pictures and new biking pictures and I remembered about when I used to watch people riding thinking I would never be as good.

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'I could never hit this road gap'

Only 2 years ago was that a no go area for me, now it's literally what we warm up on.

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Look mum!

Just whilst writing this, I noticed my development in photography! The picture above originally was a great shot for me, now it's moved on to things like this.

photo

The reason this had such an effect for me to write this post was that now, when doing stuff like that road gap, I see other young people on their beginner bikes watching me and it just shows that every single rider goes through the exact same phase! A friend who rides occassionally with us has just started editing videos, another one wants to dig and another wants to get into photography. I write this post to help push others to do this sport as the rewards aren't as obvious as they seem, a little mess around on a bike has become a photo/video/bike/dig hobby and opened up many new things for me!

Author Info:
elliotgraham avatar

Member since Apr 8, 2008
5 articles

4 Comments
  • 1 0
 Great blog, and it's true everyone goes through the err that 4ft gap is massive and now its like i was really scared of doing that?!? :S
Nice one, when can we expect the next edit? Wink
  • 1 0
 Next weekend is a video day so get ready!!
  • 1 0
 I really liked this I'm wanting to be the same Smile
  • 1 0
 Sweet li'll blog Elliot!







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