Types of Biking
Biking is an activity that can be enjoyed by everyone, at any age! Additionally, it can be enjoyed further by exploring the many different types of biking that exist. For a new rider it can be difficult to decide what direction you want to go in. However, this hopefully will help you narrow down what your interested in. The spectrum of biking spans between what terrain you want to ride. On one end is sticking entirely to the road, and on the other end is riding rugged off road terrain. Inside of the road category there is: road biking, commuting and bmx. Inside of the offroad category there is: trail, downhill and enduro. The 2 that are in between is gravel biking, bmx and xc mountain biking.
The first category: road biking consists of sticking only to the road, and your main goal is to ride fast and efficiently. The next category: commuting, id say is the most common, this is because it is the reason most people ride a bike at all. This category is based on getting from point a to point b, no special bike required anything will do. The next category: bmx, is for skateparks, can be used for other stuff but not the best as sometimes they dont even have brakes. The next category: trail, this is fairly self explanatory as you stick to mtb trails, this is usually a bit of everything, a fair mix of downhill and hills. The next category: downhill is strictly riding downhill terrain, most likely from a lift access bike park as these bikes are heavy but have a lot of suspension. The next category: enduro, is a mix of trail and downhill, you still have uphills but you focus on riding the downhills more. The last 2 categories, gravel biking and xc mtb are pretty similar, gravel biking is road biking that can be taken a bit off road such as gravel paths, but built to ride much more rugged terrain. While xc is for riding mostly off-road uphills, can ride downhills but aren't designed for it.