Improve Your Mountain Biking Through Road Riding

I make it pretty clear that I’m not really a roadie kind of guy and it’s been my motto for a while that “Road riding is all work and no play.”

But I do have a road bike and it is one of the most effective ways to become a better mountain biker. That is even where I got my start in cycling and completely fell in love with the sport. The picture above is of me when I used to race triathlons.

5 Reasons Why I Love Road Cycling

1) Road biking improves endurance.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. You will likely spend far more time in the saddle on a road bike than on a mountain bike. Unless you live in an area with 50 mile trails, the temptation is just too great to cut out after your second lap and grab a plate of cheesecake pancakes. (Personal weakness.)

With road biking, you can ride everywhere! It is so much easier to ride 50 or 60 miles at a time when you’re not constantly passing by your car or the trailhead.

I shoot for a minimum of 1 long road ride per month. Usually trying to better the mileage from the prior month by at least 5 or 10 miles. This month I am hoping to do 50 miles in 1 ride as I rebuild my endurance.

2) Road cycling teaches you to pedal efficiently

Mountain biking really creates a bad habit of pedal mashing. While you’re pounding your way up a steep hill, the form you’re using just doesn’t really cross your mind. Even though it works, it’s not the most efficient way to ride and will end up costing you in parts and labor down the road.

Riding on the road, you aren’t constantly thinking about what obstacle you have to pass next. Instead, you can focus on making a perfect square or circle with your foot as you pedal. This will dramatically help you on the MTB with uphill climbing, preventing a loss of traction, faster clip-outs of your pedals and an increase in overall efficiency.

If you practice better pedaling form enough on the road bike, your feet will naturally carry that motion over to your mountain bike.

3) Riding on the road helps to… “numb the taint”

This may be a little bit risque to put out here, but it’s 100% true.

Cycling puts a lot of pressure on your most sensative area between your legs and it’s an enormous pain in the arse (literally) to deal with. Ultimately, elite riders have to create a callous there so that they can stay on their sit bones all day long.

Riding on the road keeps you much more immobile as you sit on your bike and essentially stay in that same position the whole time. Whether you are on the crossbar, in the drops, or laid out on aero-bars, you are always still sitting directly on top of your sitbones. Toughing it out on these long rides will help you to grow accustomed to the discomfort much faster than on an MTB.

4) Road riding improves your paceline ability

Riding in a paceline is standard stuff for any roadie. Tuck into someone else’s tailwind and let them do the work while you draft off of them. Drafting helps you to conserve energy while moving at the same speed.

While I don’t suggest drafting while mountain biking, (that could be very dangerous) it does help to prepare you for following behind another person or waiting to pass someone during a race.

5) Cycling on the road gives you longer controlled efforts

Mountain biking is very explosive. You will give extremely intense efforts followed by periods of slight rest, spiking and dropping your heart rate the whole ride. This is great because it gives you the same anaerobic results as doing interval work on a road bike. But you always need to spend some time giving more controlled efforts.

Road riding will give you a very even and steady effort from start to finish. This helps to build aerobic stamina in your legs and lungs, both of which will help you once you move back off-road.

Don’t believe that road biking can help you on the MTB?

Check out this quote from Bike198.

“Road biking increased my cross country efficiency and endurance. By concentrating on form and miles on the road bike, I was able to have the best trip to Rich Mountain to date. I could actually feel the mountain bike pulling forward faster with each pedal stroke. This increased efficiency allowed me to keep more in the reserve tank for the rest of the ride without having to slow the pace down to a crawl. Road biking has also increased my awareness of pacing the ride to make sure I do not blow up before the end.”

Cycling on the road isn’t my favorite way to get fit and train, but it is without a doubt still one of the best ways to do it.

What do you think about road riding compared with mountain biking? Leave a comment below with your favorite way to train on a road bike and let’s see if we can inspire each other.