Last year I based my training on Joe Friel’s Mountain Biking Training Bible. I found his book to be great for organising a structured training plan and as a result of following the advice I lost a load of weight and my fitness and performance on the bike has increased dramatically.

As well as enjoying mountain biking more due to my new-found fitness, I’ve caught the road cycling bug. As such, in addition to doing some more mountain bike events next year I’ll be doing some road ones and have just entered the Wiggle Dragon Gran Fondo.

So, to get to my question(s). Is Joe Friel’s Cyclist Training Bible worth buying in addition to the MTB Bible I already have, or is it essentially the same building blocks for the plan (in terms of Build/Base/Peak/Race, and similar workout types)? Bearing in mind that I’ll also be entering some MTB events, my thinking is that I can just follow the same plan structure, but mix up road and MTB rides. It seems to me that, apart from skills practice sessions, most of the workouts in the MTB guide should translate well to all kinds of riding. Or should I be thinking about some more road-specific workouts? Any other training guides I should take a look at? I’m not going to be troubling the podium in either discipline, but I’d like to perform as well as I am personally capable of, and to improve my fitness further.

Bump for the mid-afternoon crowd!

The non mtb version is basically the same but more detailed and will probably leave you yearning a power meter. I’ve got both and his over 50’s guide. They’re good reference material imho

Joe Friel’s Cyclist Training Bible is the go to guide for most cyclists, and is well worth having in your library. Having said that, if you already own the MTB Bible, there’s not a huge difference between the two, and yes the training plans are very similar. I’d recommend instead one of the below books as your next buy.

As @cnud mentioned, most training guides (and coaches) recommend you get a power meter. To that end, Hunter Allen’s Training And Racing With A Power Meter is a great book – even Joe Friel recommends it. It goes into great depth (sometimes too much!) about the sports science behind the training, but I found it quite interesting for that.

For us older folks (I’m not quite there yet, but still bought the book), I also really liked Joe Friel’s Fast After 50.

Finally – the book I use most for my own training is Chris Carmichael’s Time Crunched Cyclist. The second edition has info on MTB plans, and including training into your commuting. Chris Carmichael and CTS have fallen out of favor a bit in recent years, but I found his training plans (based on 6 hours of focused training per week) fit best with my own lifestyle.

Just thought of this – another good one – not for fitness but for race strategy is Reading the Race: Bike Racing from Inside the Peloton by Chris Horner and Jamie Smith.

Thanks for the pointers. I think I’ll just be using HR and cadence to train this year as a new road bike is required and I doubt the budget will stretch to a power meter.