Practicing Daily Hygiene & Health Assessments:

• Before leaving your home, practice a daily self-assessment check, like the one below. If you answer “yes” to any question, contact your employer and seek medical attention immediately and avoid going on a ride. Self Assessment Tool
• Do not go on a ride or a attend a session or teach an MTB program, if you: Feel ill or have COVID-19 symptoms, no matter how minor, or have been in contact with a sick person within the last 14 days.
• Wash your hands often with soap and warm water for at least 25 seconds.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, or mouth with unwashed hands.
• Cover mouth and nose with a tissue or elbow when coughing or sneezing, then throw the tissue in the trash and wash your hands.
• Stay informed and follow the advice from your local government and healthcare authorities.

General Guidelines During COVID-19:

• Take it easy and ride within your limits! This is not the time to have an accident and expose anyone riding with you to contracting COVID19 while providing you with first aid and bring further stress to the capacity of the medical system. You can still effectively learn and grow as a rider while mitigating risk. 
• If a participant/guest shows up with signs of sickness, we will send them back home and ask them to seek medical advice. We ask riders to clean and sanitize their bikes and equipment, before and after sessions. Locate and inform your participants of the nearest bathrooms and sanitization stations. 
• Remind your participants,  to wash or sanitize their hands after using the restroom, sneezing, and coughing, and before eating.
• Do not shake hands, high five or hug! It’s tempting but keep that minimum distance and encourage course participants to do the same.
• Be prepared! Beyond the usual tool and first aid kit instructors and guides are required to carry, we will be including a face mask, hand sanitizer, and rubber gloves in our First Aid kits.
• Do not touch another person’s bike, equipment, food, or water! Keep your hands to yourself and maintain social distancing measures at all times. We ask that each participant perform their own bike and equipment check, before each ride. As always, this will reduce the chance of mechanicals and incidents during the ride, which may require you to touch their equipment or may require help from other people. 
• In the event that we have to touch a participant’s bike to help set-up or repair, latex gloves will be used and disposed of, correctly. We will sanitize the equipment as soon as possible.

Safety Rules During COVID-19:

• Ride at your own pace! Stay in Control! Fun, no pressure environments are key for safe, effective learning, while reducing the probability of a hospital visit! Both instructors and students must respect their limits and ride smart.
• Leave each other space! Distance between each rider on the trails is crucial for safety and learning and is measured in seconds. While we typically recommend a distance of 3-6 seconds between riders, a distance of 6-10 seconds would be wise during COVID-19 to help reduce the transmission of the virus through heavy breathing from a preceding or adjacent rider. 
• If keeping a line of sight becomes challenging, use adequate terrain communication and guiding protocols, to ensure students can maintain spacing but also know what terrain is coming up and where they will be going or stopping. 
• Stop in a safe place! When stopping, all riders must stop to the side, so the trail is free for other users to continue through. When stopped, maintain at least 6ft (2m) space between yourself and others, at all times. 
• Finding an area or “pull out” to stop, so riders can maintain physical distancing, must be considered. Try to avoid narrow trails that do not have regular stopping points where riders can easily spread out and stand away from the trail.
• It’s not a race! Only pass a rider when there is at least 6ft (2m) space between riders when passing. Signal your intention, slow down, and wait for the other rider to provide sufficient space, before passing. Be kind and take it easy. If in doubt, do not pass.

Thank you for taking the time to read this document! 

• We are confident that together we can share the responsibility of maintaining social distancing and personal hygiene. That by following these common sense guidelines we can ensure that we are all doing our part to mitigate the risk of COVID-19. We are looking forward to coaching you and riding with you!