How many of you like to bike? Perhaps you ride to campus, bike for fitness, or cycle just for fun. Some of you might own bikes with lightweight frames and thin wheels and use them to log some serious mileage. Or possibly you ride a comfort bike with a cushy seat and bigger tires.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Zachary Dominque, and I’m a mountain biker. Today, I’m going to take you on a tour of this exciting sport with a rich history. Our stops along the way will include an overview of mountain biking, followed by a brief history of the sport. We’ll also investigate the forms and functions of mountain bikes (as compared to road bikes), the different types of mountain biking, and some noteworthy bike courses. I’ve been racing since I was eight years old and won the state championship three years ago, so this topic is close to my heart.

To start, let me briefly define mountain biking.

Mountain biking is a sport that can be extreme, recreational, or somewhere in between. The ABC-of-Mountain Biking Web site offers a good basic definition: “Mountain biking is a form of cycling on off-road or unpaved surfaces such as mountain trails and dirt roads; the biker uses a bicycle with a sturdy frame and fat tires.”

Mountain bikes are built to tackle rough ground. They feature wide tires with tough tread, straight and wide handlebars, rugged but light frames, and eighteen to twenty-four or more specialized gears. The idea behind mountain biking is to go where other bikes can’t take you because they aren’t equipped to handle rough terrain. This might mean riding on backcountry roads or on single-track trails winding through fields or forest. It can involve climbing steep hills and racing down them. The focus is on self-reliance because mountain bikers often venture miles from help.

According to the Web site of the National Bicycle Dealers Association, mountain bikes accounted for 28 percent of all bikes sold in the United States in 2009. If you factor in sales of the comfort bike, which is actually a modified mountain bike for purely recreational riders, sales jump to nearly 40 percent of all bikes sold.

So, you see, mountain biking is popular with a lot of people. But the sport itself is fairly new.

The man in this picture is Gary Fisher, one of the founders of mountain biking. According to The Original Mountain Bike Book, written by pioneering mountain bikers Rob Van der Plas and Charles Kelly, they, along with Fisher and others from the Marin County, California, area, founded the modern sport of mountain biking in the early 1970s.

Early on, these guys decided to take on the adventure of racing down the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, or “Mount Tam,” in Corte Madera, California. Back then, they didn’t have mountain bikes as we know them, so as you can see, Fisher is riding a modified one-speed Schwinn Cruiser. Cruisers aren’t made for off-road use at all; they’re just supposed to ferry people around town on their so-called balloon tires. They have hard shocks, and the brakes aren’t remotely equipped to handle stops on steep descents. But this is how Fisher and others started out.

Very quickly, however, Kelly, Fisher, and other cyclists like Charles Cunningham began to adapt the bikes to their needs. By the mid-1970s, growing numbers of bikers in California were racing one another down the rough slopes of mountains on “fat tire” bikes. This activity led to the famed Repack Downhill Race on Mount Tam, which took place between 1976 and 1979. According to a brief history of mountain biking on the London 2012 Olympics Web site, the race attracted many participants and contributed to putting the sport on the map. Bit by bit, Fisher, Cunningham, Kelly, and others modified their bikes, adding gears, drum brakes, and suspension systems to the frames. As Van der Plas and Kelly noted in The Original Mountain Bike Book, it wasn’t until 1982, however, that standardized production of these machines began.

To get a better sense of what the mountain bike can and cannot do, consider how they compare to road bikes, the class of bikes that such cyclists as Tour de France winners Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong use.

Whereas mountain bikes are built to tackle rough ground, road bikes stay on paved, smooth surfaces. And while mountain bikes feature wide tires with tough tread, road bike tires are very thin and the frames are extremely lightweight, letting the cyclist race hard and fast on a road course. This is fine for them, because they’re all about productivity. If you take the road bike off-road, however, chances are you’ll destroy it. The thinner tires can’t provide the stability required, and without the knobby tires found on mountain bikes, road bike tires can’t grip the rocks, roots, and other obstacles that cover off-road courses.

The seats—or saddles as we call them—on road and mountain bikes also differ, as do the gears, suspension systems, and handlebar configurations.

Road bike seats are thin and hard to sit on. This suits road cyclists well because they tackle flat, relatively smooth courses. We mountain bikers need a bit more cushion, and as you can see our seats have a split in the middle so they bend with our gluteus maximus.

Road bikes are geared to go faster than mountain bikes, with higher or harder gears than those on mountain bikes. With mountain bikes, riders can rapidly adjust the gears to match conditions, using lower gears to overcome higher resistance (such as when climbing hills) and higher gears when the cycling is easier. The big gear on a road bike is probably twice the size of my big gear on this mountain bike.

The suspension systems on the two bikes also differ. Many mountain bikes have at least a great front shock-absorbing suspension system; some have rear-suspension systems, and some other bikes have dual suspension systems. Road bikes generally don’t have shock absorbers because they’re not supposed to hit anything.

A final feature distinguishing mountain from road bikes is the handlebars. Mountain bikes have flat handlebars. These promote an upright stance, so that cyclists don’t flip over when they hit something. The drop handlebars on road bikes require the cyclist to lean far forward to hold on to them. This position suits this type of cycling, which prizes speed.

I hope by now you have a sense of the form and functions of the mountain bike. The exact configurations of these bikes vary according to the type of riding they’re designed to handle—downhill, trails, and cross-country. Let’s begin with downhill.

Downhill biking is a daredevil sport. These bikers slide down hills at top speeds, and they go off jumps. As described on the Trails.com Web site, downhill racers catch a shuttle going up the mountain, then speed downhill while “chewing up” obstacles. Downhill racing has been compared to skiing with a bike, and in fact, in the summer many downhill racers do race on ski slopes.

As far as bikes go, downhill racers need a special downhill bike—one that has fewer gears and is heavier than other types of mountain bikes.

Now let’s ride over to trails biking.

Trails bikers hop and jump their bikes over obstacles such as cars, rocks, and large logs. Their goal is not to put their foot down on the ground. In trail biking, the course is set right there in front of you. This is one of the few types of biking where you can watch the entire race, and it’s done by time, not with a mass start.

Trails bikes look quite different from other types of mountain bikes. They have very small wheels, measuring either twenty, twenty-four, or twenty-six inches, and they have smaller frames.

A third type of mountain biking, cross-country, is my sport.

Cross-country biking—also called “XC cycling”—is the most common type of mountain biking. It’s also the type of mountain biking sponsored by the Olympics. That’s right. In 1996, mountain biking became an Olympic sport—just two decades after its inception.

With cross-country biking, you get the best of all worlds. The courses are creative, incorporating hills and valleys and rough to not-so-rough terrain. If done competitively, cross-country biking is like competing in a marathon. Done recreationally, it offers you the chance to see the great outdoors while getting, or staying, in great shape.

Cross-country bikes come in two forms: XC bikes are very lightweight, with either full or partial suspension, whereas trail/marathon XC bikes are a bit heavier, with full suspension. These latter bikes are designed for the seriously long ride.

Now that you’re familiar with the main types of mountain biking, let’s cruise through some notable cross-country courses.

There are many great cross-country courses throughout the United States, some designed for entry-level cyclists and others for the pros. Depending on what state you’re in, you may find very technical or very rocky courses. The McKenzie River Trail in Eugene, Oregon, goes on for hours through gorgeous, old-growth forest. In Utah you’ll find awesome biking meccas among the incredible canyons and mesas of Moab.

Our own state of Texas draws a lot of riders, with courses running through the desert in the south and flats and mountains in the west and north. My personal favorite is in Colorado. Breckenridge, a ski town in the Rockies, has some of the best courses I’ve ever ridden. Although I haven’t been to Fruita in Colorado, its courses are legendary.

You can find great courses in New York, Vermont, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico; in Ketchum, Idaho, and Downieville, California; and in many other areas nationwide. Trails.com is a good resource for exploring the variety of trails available.

Well, it has been quite a tour. Our course began with an overview of mountain biking and a brief history of the sport.

We also learned about the forms and functions of mountain bikes compared to road bikes, the different types of mountain biking, and noteworthy mountain biking courses around the country.

To me, mountain biking is the perfect sport—fulfilling physical, spiritual, and social needs. It’s a great sport to take up recreationally. And if you decide to mountain bike competitively, just remember: ride fast, drive hard, and leave your blood on every trail.