Unofficial Trail Authority · SV-11 · Revised 7 November 2026 · https://trailauthority.org/notices/sv-11/ · Uncontrolled copy when printed. The Unofficial Trail Authority is an independent fictional organization. It is not a government agency or land-management authority.
SV-11 · In force
Speed, Practice, and Getting Faster
Speed is a legitimate purpose. The Authority does not treat going fast as a failure of manners. It treats going fast as a skill with a record.
Training is the repeated, voluntary attempt to improve one's own previous interval. It may be done on a weekday, with no spectators, and it still counts. Getting better is the reason for the repetition. A person who returns to the same feature until it becomes familiar has complied with this bulletin. Familiar, here, does not mean removed. The feature stays. The rider changes.
A day set aside to compare those intervals with other people is, in ordinary speech, a race. This office does not use that word in its titles. It uses "trail speed assessment." The work in the legs is the same. The difference is clerical. The assessment is allowed to matter. A person may build a season around it, decline other appointments for it, and describe it, without apology, as one of the important things in a life. Operation: Trans San Marcos is the current example.
The bulletin does not require anyone to be fast. It refuses the opposite rule, under which speed must be excused. Ride the speed you came to ride. Practice the speed you do not have yet. Offer that pace to the people with you. Do not assign it.