•  Bob Norris
•   Blog
• on Nov, 27, 2015
•  5 Comments.

Ok folks, were thinking of starting a once a week road session for our mountain biking crew riding road bikes to help build up strength and stamina. Most of us don’t like road riding because of the traffic but we have this little gem right here in Martinsville called the Dick and Willy trail that is 4 1/2 mikes each way. There are some hills and runs and if we ride it 4 or 5 times that’s 20 or 25 miles. Its winter now but just like night mountain bike rides we could run with lights and be safe

Road riding is a controlled environment and can allow for more accurate and targeted specific training. It’s much easier to measure distance, time, heart-rate, etc. when you’re not having to constantly adjust your riding to trail conditions. Intervals and other workouts can be performed on trails, but it will be more controlled and easier to measure on the road.

Road riding can build strength for Mountain Biking because of pedaling bigger gears. Take a look at road bike gearing as compared to a mountain bike gearing and it’s obvious that road gearing is quite a bit higher as compared to a Mountain Bike. Pushing big gears on the road can yield big results in terms of power when you get back on the trails. Compact gearing can allow training in larger gear ratios than most mountain bikes, but still allows high-cadence training.

The other benefit to alternate road riding is recovery time and safety. Road bike training is generally lower impact and can provide critical recovering time when preparing for trails. Although there’s no guarantee that road cycling is completely safe, your chances of crashing and injuring yourself can be much less on the road, unless there are cars around which there are not on the DW.

I think this would be a great way to cross train and improve our mountain biking skills. Anyone interested please reply to this post or call Bob Norris @ 276-340-9144

Could you imagine riding a road bike on a trail?