![]() If you want to burn money on either sport, the great news is there’s literally endless opportunity, like buying the best lightweight mountain bikes under 10kg. And, without wanting to jinx you, you’re more likely to smash something off-road. And the range of prices for parts is pretty similar.īut you might start to feel the upgrade twitch sooner on a mountain bike since it’s easier to push your bike and its components to their limits. Hmm, getting started in mountain biking and road riding is probably about the same cost, in that you can have a year of fun on a rig costing anywhere from $600 to $10,000. Especially for the way it lends itself to weekends away. On singletrack, you won't be chatting away two abreast but mountain biking does lend itself to an agreeable level of hanging about with mates - pre-ride faffing, post-ride faffing, waiting at the tops or bottoms of hills, trail center segments, watching each other try ridiculous moves, that kind of thing. Road riding’s renowned for its cafe stops, and if you’re the right kind of riders on the right kind of roads, you can while away hours two-abreast on a stream of companionship that’s part free-flow musings, part setting the world to rights and part harmonious silences. For the way that cycling is awesomely about what you make it.īoth mountain bike and road riding have strong social elements (Image credit: Lapierre) Sociability A mudguarded-up road bike keeps you out whatever the weather you can cafe run on prime carbon, and if you want to see the world, you can load up a bike and stay away for years. You can be fully loaded for bikepacking, or bare-bones for racing social or solo daytime, nighttime.īut could road riding pip it? You can do crits, time trials, stage races, hill climbs, sportives and old-school audaxes. Disciplines within mountain biking are pretty broad, from mellow cross-country mountain biking to hardcore downhill mountain biking. Mountain biking is as varied as the landscape, and you can go from kid-friendly country parks to bermy bike parks to the wildest wastelands. Because of dirt, rocks, jumps, and drops. Mountain biking totally wins for the number of ‘I could have stacked that’ moments and even a humble blue route can be a buzz at speed.īoth types of riding give you the magic adrenaline of just being out there in the elements at any time of year, the buzz of tussling to keep up with mates or trying to drop them, and that special something of being in harmony with a machine and the landscape.Īnd if you’re racing, then both are perfect for an adrenaline fix from the moment you wake up, even if road racing can occasionally lapse into snooze-fests controlled by a lazy pack in a way that perhaps mountain biking doesn’t. For the liveliness that fitness brings to a ride, and the fact it’s easier to get fitter quicker on a road bike.įitness can make a big differance to how enjoyable road riding is (Image credit: Lapierre) Adrenaline But with mountain biking, there’s also more opportunity to have a brilliant session even if you’re not at your cardio best, thanks to things like uplifts, gravity, hanging out and just the general messing about nature of MTBing. Another benefit of mountain bike fitness is being able to pedal for longer, more easily. On a mountain bike, fitness also brings everything more alive, either for turbocharging your skills for clearing obstacles or smashing climbs. And the playfulness and fluidity that come with fitness are on tap all the time on the tarmac. On a road bike, there’s an almost scientific delight in being able to whizz up a hill, beat a Strava time or reach some far-flung place that’s a few miles further than you’ve been before. And as with skills, you’ll be amazed at how your fitness builds just by being out.įitness definitely enhances the pure pleasures of road riding though. FitnessĪs with skills, you don’t need any fitness to start enjoying the magic of cycling and the pleasure of being out. But every time you go off-road there’s a smorgasbord of skills you’ll be able to discover or hone. Most of the pleasures of road riding don’t need a whiff of skill. A lot of the skills simply come by doing it more. Luckily both disciplines really need no skill to get started other than just getting out of the door and being able to pedal.
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