My riding is pure pleasure at the moment! Since making the conscious decision to leave the road bike alone (for a while) and concentrate on the mountain bike I'm really enjoying my riding again. Don't get me wrong, I love the road bike, but mountain biking is where my passion is and let's be honest, mountain biking is a whole lot more fun than pounding tarmac.
I made the conscious decision a couple of weeks ago to do the rest of my Epic training on my mountain bike. Basically my base fitness is in place so it's time to get back to building my MTB skills and getting some intensity work in. In doing so I've also opted to do fewer rides but longer in duration. So this week for example is an 'overload' week of 16 hours and I've already done 11½ hours in two rides which is fantastic! My next ride will be a 5 hour ride on Saturday afternoon. Also, in deciding to do longer rides to get the hours in I'm finding that a 5 to 6 hour MTB ride is a very different ball game to the same amount of time spent on the road. Not least the sheer rolling resistance of the knobbly tires makes for a different kind of ride. Mainly though, I was finding 5+ hours on the road quite tedious whilst on the MTB one simply doesn't have time to consider the tedium of turning the cranks for hours on end. Having said that, it is much easier to manage the heart rate zones on the road.
I'm also quite excited as I'm going to be trying out a BMC Trailfox for the next week. My bike shop (Helderberg Cycle World) are transferring all my bits off the Mongoose onto the BMC so I can get a feel for the differences and make an informed decision as to which would be best for the Epic. I'm picking the BMC up on Friday and hope to have a ride over the weekend. If not, I'll definitely get to ride it on my normal Monday morning ride.
Mountain biking as a workout.
9 months ago
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