There seems to be a lot of mountain bikers that cross over to the world of road riding. But there seems to be far fewer “Roadies” who have given mountain biking a go.
Here are a few reasons Mountain Biking can be brilliant for the road rider taken from Cycling Tips.com
- Excellent practice for pedaling technique. You cannot grind and stomp those gears like you can on a road bike. Mountain bikers are known for having extremely good pedaling technique.
- Excellent training for your power component of fitness (MTB’ing contains lots of short explosive bursts)
- More use of core and upper body muscles. You gotta keep those working from time to time.
- Improved bike handling and excellent cornering techniques that can be transferred to the road bike.
- Riding enduro events solo is — not surprisingly — great for endurance
- Riding enduro events in a team is like doing 40 minute TT efforts
- Pleasant change of scenery
- No need to worry about traffic. Kangaroos are the main hazard to be careful of!
- No need to ride indoors when the weather turns miserable. Wind is never an issue on a mountain bike
- The opportunity to beat the blokes who you can’t get near on a road bike
- Mountain biking is generally considers to be a much friendlier and more inviting social scene than road. Easier introduction to start racing than road racing
- You can get a good solid workout in in less than 2hrs that will leave you completely spent
- Unless you hit a tree or fall off a cliff, wiping out a mountain bike is usually harmless.
Bicycle SA is running one of favourite events – the Dirty Weekend – on the first weekend of May. It’s quite possibly the funnest bike event you could ever take part in. The event format goes like this – you ride solo, in pairs or a team or four around a track we’ve prepared for 6,12 or 24 hours. Oh – and before we forget to add – you can’t stop smiling (at least for the first lap).
So if you’re a Mountain Biker reading this – please think of a friend on a Road Bike you can bring along. If you’ve never given mountain biking a go – here’s your chance 🙂
Read more about The Dirty Weekend below or read up on more about the Mountain Biking/Road Cycling cross over from Cycling Tips.
