The roads around my house are tough at best for riding my road bike, narrow shoulders, heavy traffic and poor condition. There are however many decent fire roads, trails and bike paths I can get to. I am thinking of getting a hardtail and using that for morning rides during the week. I currently use a computrainer with my road bike and during the spring and summer I can ride on the weekends on my road bike outside further away from my house.
Are there downsides to training on a mountain bike or anything special I should consider? The two bikes I am considering are the Marin Pine Mountain 2 and the Kona Honzo AL/DL.
I am training for a half sometime mid summer and registered from IMMD in October. I did a quick search and found mostly positive responses to mountain bike training.
thanks.
I did training for a 70.3. 95% of training time on mountain bike trails and that included running. did fine.
Not answering your question particularly, but would a cross bike be a good fit? I’ve been wondering about this for a while now - it would open up rail trails, gravel roads, and a longer outdoor riding season for me. But having said that…
I’ve often taken my tri training rides onto my MTB. 5-6 hours of solo riding sometimes gets to be more than I can handle on road, but getting onto some trail gets my interest right back. Great for pedal mechanics and bike handling, but I think you have to be very aware of effort level - it’s much more uneven than road… You know this. I’ll stop.
Best.
I have a friend that races professionally for United Health Care . He trained almost exclusively all this winter on a fat bike. Not a problem at all as long as you spend some time on your race bike, and it will make you a better bike handler.
Is there a rule that says training should not be fun? It sounds like the trails will be a lot more enjoyable so maybe you will be motivated to train more.
One potential downside is if you decide to get all happy on a downhill section and go over the handlebars and end up breaking your helmet, scraping up your body, dislocating your hip and unable to walk a week before the first race of the season.
Other than that it’s good crosstraining.
So… none of that can happen on a road bike? Good to know.
One potential downside is if you decide to get all happy on a downhill section and go over the handlebars and end up breaking your helmet, scraping up your body, dislocating your hip and unable to walk a week before the first race of the season.
Other than that it’s good crosstraining.
I recently built up a hardtail for training. I love it! I actually look forward to riding every morning. I never looked forward to my computrainer, lol. My $0.02 is that about three weeks out from a race you should start putting in quality sessions on your race bike indoors or out: make sure you can hold aero etc.
There’s some single track about six miles from my house. I ride the sidewalk there (too crazy where I live to ride on the road), do about 20-30 minutes of hard/fast laps, and then ride back home. I’m using a powercal to gauge my effort. It’s an experiment but I like how it’s going so far 
Do it, it works. But do it hard enough that it’s HIIT and VO2 style, not sub-T style. Hills and continuously hard stuff for a good long while on a MTB is perfect training, AND gives you that whole “hey I can actually handle a bicycle!” thing that’s often missing in the tri world.
And it’s fun. And no cars. And no exhaust. And no street noise. And because nature. Do it.
The only thing that I would suggest you look out for is the difference in saddle height between your MTB, road bike, tri bike. A couple of years ago after the season, I did quite a few weekly rides on the trails, but when I switched back over to my road bike and tri bike in the spring my knee flared up with some ITBS. Not saying that this will happen to you, but you might watch out for this as it set me back a few weeks trying to heal. Hope this helps.
As long as you get some time on your TT bike in position it can help. More time in the saddle is a good thing. I did some mountain bike riding before I did tris and can handle a bike a lot better than most people on the course, probably due to the trail riding.
Put in some hard intervals when riding to work on your FTP, most of the time for me it was that or going backwards down the trail. Call it a small motivator to suck it up.
I have been training easily 95% plus of my riding time on my mountain bike because the trail system around here is far superior to the roads (more hills on the trails, no stop signs or traffic lights on the trails, far better scenery, no hazards from texting drivers, etc.) However, I do like the variety of hand positions possible on a road bike, and wanted to get a steeper effective seat tube angle, so I modded the 29er MTB into this thing. Easy mod, low cost, and it has worked great for me.
Thanks for the feedback, think I will head out to the LBSs this weekend and pick something up.
So… none of that can happen on a road bike? Good to know.
One potential downside is if you decide to get all happy on a downhill section and go over the handlebars and end up breaking your helmet, scraping up your body, dislocating your hip and unable to walk a week before the first race of the season.
Other than that it’s good crosstraining.
You downhill techy singletrack on a roadbike? My hat is off to you, sir. Guess I should have been more specific. In my n=1 experience, people tend to crash heaps more on mtn bikes than road bikes (unless they get hit by a car, which is all too common)
There are many benefits to training on a mountain bike. I also do a lot of my training/riding on the trails. You don’t realize how much climbing you actually do on a mountain bike until you check out your post ride data. Your MTB is also a lot heavier than a road/TT bike so your legs get extra workout. I’ve got a alloy Cannondale Trigger 29er. It’s about 31 pounds. It’s a heavy beast but a fun trail bike. When I get on my road/TT bike, it feels so light and fast.
Another benefit to MTB aside from being out in nature is that you learn bike handling skills. I’m not talking about doing crazy stunts on jumps or speeding down black diamond runs at Whistler. Yes sure you may crash sometimes, but it’s at a much slower speed than it would be on a road bike.
Which brings me to my last reason to train more on a mountain bike. Cars cars cars! I hate riding on roads because of idiot drivers. On the trails, it’s most likely my fault when I crash because of my own mistake/miscalculation. On the road, you are at the mercy of dickhead drivers who are either not paying attention to the world, don’t give a crap about cyclists, or are purposely trying to hit cyclists. Yes I am bitter towards motorists. I’ve had far too many incidents on the road with numb nuts drivers.
Of course I still need to ride my road/tt bike to keep mybody used to being in an aero position. But I keep it to a minimum.
Been into Tri for a very long time but never had a MTB. Because of similar reasons to you I decided to get off the roads this winter. I live in a forest area which is quite flat but even so the hills we do have take some work. Coming out of this winter I would say I’m fitter than in a long time - previous winters have just been pain cave time. Perhaps its a mental thing but I also feel less inclined to beast my self like I do on the road and yet a 3 hour ride through the forest still give an incredible workout. I would say its mentally refreshing after years on the roads and wish I had done it a long time ago
I know very little about MTB (so I’m not going to give advice on what to get) but after a lot of research and help from the guys at my LBS I bought a hard tail Giant and I love it.
The only downside I experience is that I’m anal about keeping my bikes spotless and as my partner rides with me I get to spend a lot of time cleaning the crap of the two bikes - therapeutic in its on way I guess!!
Funny of all the people I know who ride there have been way more injuries from mountain biking than road riding, I know cars are a factor but in my n=1 world right now, all I seem to see are mountain bike injuries, some really bad…
training on a mtb is pretty good
- flexibility of location to ride (road, bad surfaces, gravel, trails, anywhere)
- slower (less wind chill factor in winter), and if you use it to commute you get a longer workout
- fun
- when I was commuting a lot, I put a p2max mtb power meter on it so that I didn’t lose out on valuable TSS
I just make sure that during a race build, I also do a lot of time on the TT bike. But sometimes not even that much. During this winter I was training for Ultraman, and most of December and January there was snow - so I did a fair number of training miles on a Fatbike. I probably did less than 4 hours on my TT bike between November and February, and I was perfectly fine in the race, other than a stiff neck (due to lack of aero time in training).
Funny of all the people I know who ride there have been way more injuries from mountain biking than road riding, I know cars are a factor but in my n=1 world right now, all I seem to see are mountain bike injuries, some really bad…
It all depends on where you ride and how you ride. If you’re bombing down technical tracks without much experience… yeah, you’re going to get hurt. I don’t see much risk for injury if you’re riding fire roads and beginner single track.
Went out to a few LBSs this weekend, I was pretty sure I wanted a hard tail but most places tried to talk me into a full suspension bike as they had a lot more variety of those in stock and more higher end models as well. Not sold on the idea of full suspension so still trying to decide.