Scott Forbes, whose On One 1/2 Inbred always him to train while on the job as a long-haul British Airways pilot, charts his cross-country race career ahead of his first elite showdown in the opening round of the British Mountain Bike Series at Sherwood Pines this weekend.

My first mountain bike race was in 1991 at the Rio Riva round of the National Championships down in Dorset. I had no previous bike racing experience and was totally new to this off-road riding fad. It was never going to last and I thought I must have a go before it slides off in to obscurity along with all the other fringe sports I loved so much.

My father, in his wisdom, said it would be best to walk the course the day before to save my energy for the race. After a good couple of hours wandering around the woods, hopping off the racing line to make way for people riding, I was knackered. Race day came and 120 juniors lined up in one single row across a grassy field and aimed for the sole five bar gate gap in the hedge at the far end. Youth exuberance on mass mixed in with meagre handling skills produced an epic start. Some how I managed to get sixth in a mud and rain infested first race and so my love affair with racing bikes began.

Two months before, on a family holiday to Florida, my biking dreams had come true. For me the trip was all about getting my new bike and everything else was just filler. I spent hours looking at pictures of my soon to be raced Raleigh USA Tomac replica. Grip shifts, RockShox, aluminum frame, white Porcupine tyres – this was THE bike and in my head I was the great JT himself.

I raced two more seasons on that bike and watched the sport grow to its peak in 1993 with the 7Up National Series. Racing was still in its infancy and hadn’t found the final formula but boy did we have fun. Every time you turned up it was a different format but we went with it and dug deep using every ounce of untrained skill we had.

Fast forward 10 years and after a number of seasons as a professional triathlete and then some time training as an airline pilot I bought back into this long forgotten sport. I had moved away from mountain bikes but they hadn’t waited for me, it was such a different and grown up thing. Even the old people who made Olympic decisions decided this was an event they wanted a piece of and the brains behind bike technology hadn’t been messing around either.

Within minutes of getting back on a mountain bike I realised how much I had missed this sport. So in my late twenties I embarked on a second attempt to race these pinnacles of off road excellence once more. It took about five years of training and learning to get my unpaved skills up to a level where I could consider myself a half-decent rider and in 2009 I won the masters title at the National Cross-Country Championships. It had only taken me 18 years since that first race to finally wear a national jersey and it felt so good.

Two years and a few more titles later I have decided that now, at the age of 35, to have a go at racing the elite category. With a full-time job that has me out of the country most of the year, a pair of knees that crack and pop more that a bowl of kids cereal and a back that has been cut open and bolted back together again, I must be mad. With the support of a very understanding wife, parents who have spent the last 22 years handing me bottles and some fantastic sponsors, I feel almost ready for this.

I know I won’t see the front of the race and I have no misconceptions that it will really hurt but I am as excited about being part of the elite class of 2011 as I was when I lined up for my first race all those years ago. And as I sit there on the start line waiting for the race to begin I will smile to myself knowing that many of my fellow competitors weren’t even born the first time I clipped in and heard: “The race will start sometime in the next 15 seconds.”

Scott Forbes works for British Airways flying the Boeing 777 around the world. When he does get a chance to train and race he does it on his On One Carbon Whippet bike. He raced professionally, in the late 90s, as a triathlete and was in the Olympic squad, rising to 14th on the world rankings. In 2009, racing mountain bikes, he won the national masters title and finished 12th at the Masters World Championships, while he won the British Mountain Bike Series masters category in 2010. This year he will be racing the elite national series at the age of 35.