I absolutely hate the idea of road riding but my lack of time in the saddle due to various reasons has obviously affected my fitness. I used to love all types of mountain biking but my lack of fitness is really taking the enjoyment of it for me and I just get frustrated!

I have a few good mates who like road rides and aren’t too fast, is this going to be a good route to solving my fitness issues or should I just MTFU and get back out on the trails more?

Also what type of used road bike should I be looking at sub £500?

Thanks in advance for the advice and abuse 😉

Thanks in advance for the advice and abuse

You’re the last mountainbiker on here.

Go for it.

May as well, every other bugger has got one.

I went out for the first time this month this morning. I had missed those trails so much and my smile far outweighed my fitness worries. If getting to the top takes a little longer so be it, we all know its what’s on the other side of the hill that counts!
And fwiw I could never see myself on a road bike, I hate any road sections we have to use to link trails. Just find it dull and I don’t trust half the folk on some of the skinny roads we use.

Maybe I should head back over to Pinkbike?! 😉

Oh and one other thing my bro in law does 40 miles most mornings before work on his hybrid. So some weeks he puts 200 miles in on up/down Derbyshire type roads. Get him back on the mountain bike and the first technical ish climb he’s blowing out his ring. Don’t know what it is but the road miles just don’t seem to help his mtb fitness on sharp trail type climbs.

Ribble have a killer deal on for 599 summer special

Please don’t buy one,you will only come back on here shouting about how brilliant it is.

Please don’t buy one,you will only come back on here shouting about how crap it is compared to ripping up the trails .

Please don’t buy one,you will only come back on here shouting about how you now need a CX bike .

Please don’t buy one,you will only come back on here shouting about how fast and brilliant you are.

All,or any of the above are really annoying..
So ,please don’t buy one.

🙂

Bikes are great.
The more bikes you have the more greatness you have.
So yes.

No. Buy a spin bike instead

Pick up the Tri-Ban 3 from Declathon, but make sure it’s the red one.
Absolute bargain £299.
Loving mine, & it’s so nice to be able to head out straight from the door. Yes, I can head off road from the door but it’s a compromise when Cannock is 15mins away. Putting full guards on mine for Winter.Still prefer my mtb, & always ewill but I enjoy each bike more because it’s such a different riding experience.
So glad I didn’t splurge £500-£1k on one.

I was in the same boat a few months back. I found a like-new Trek 1.2 for 280 so took the plunge. I’m a mountain biker at heart so at first I found it dull, a but same and planned to sell up until I started to set myself some goals such as PBs on strava, longer loop times and trying new routes. I found a really nice local 30 miler door to door and really started to enjoy it. It will never replace mountain biking but when its too late to travel to anywhere with the MTB in the car being out on a warm evening really makes it worth it.

I bought one recently, love riding it but the downside is getting constantly ribbed by everyone 🙁

I absolutely hate the idea of road riding

I absolutely hate the idea of being stabbed in the eye, should I go stand in front of dart board and ask fat people to throw darts at me?

Seriously, wtf? If you don’t want to do something, don’t spend £500 on it! Get out on the mtb more if you like that, or go running. Something you enjoy.

I got one to commute on and now I ride it for pleasure. Still prefer monkeying about on the trails but road riding is fun in it’s own way and it’s nice how much ground you can cover.

Yes.

Road bikes are a great way to get fit quick & you don’t need half hour washing everything off when you get back.

It can get very addictive though.

For £500 Id be looking 2nd hand on here or Bike Radar 😉

I got a rode bike earlier this year.

I got it as I wasn’t getting out enough because of the weather and my fitness was getting worse and worse.
I enjoy it as a training tool, and riding with mates is great. But, given the choice between going out for a mountain bike ride or a road ride, I would choose the mountain bike every time.

The road bike to me is a tool, really.

Yes buy one, a specialized allez will be just what you need

I mix it up a bit, but if I have a choice it’ll be MTB every time. I use my road bike for commuting occasionally just mainly for fitness and keeping the legs spinning. And my best mate is a very keen roadie and he keeps on saying we need to get out into the Alps and do some of the big famous climbs and cols – which does appeal to me as I find riding on the flat mind numbing and much prefer the challenge of a decent hill, and it would be fantastic to be up in the Alps, but to ride with him i’d need to be much fitter.

But road riding on british roads is pretty dire. Roads are small, potholed and very busy. Its a far cry from riding on the continent. It is a bit boring, but I do find it very satisfying as it is a very good way to keep fit and far better than a gym. Also my MTBing has improved from the increased fitness.

I’ve got a Cannondale CAAD8 which I got in the end of year sales for £550 and feels like a pretty good bike and certainly gets good reviews. So anything from the Cannondale, Specialized, Giant stable will be perfectly fine.

Worth trying, you might like it. But for me road biking is just like mountain biking, with absolutely all of the good bits removed.

But there’s nowt so queer as folks- some people like to dress up in nappies and crap themselves, others like road bikes, vive la difference I say.

Get him back on the mountain bike and the first technical ish climb he’s blowing out his ring. Don’t know what it is but the road miles just don’t seem to help his mtb fitness on sharp trail type climbs

I’ve noticed this too – been riding a lot on the road – got back on the MTB this week and was struggling up fire roads! Maybe different riding position? Was crap on the techy down sections too!

Genuine story, only person who I ride with who road rides loads and I expected him to be like a whippet on the ups, not the case. The gnarly grindy bogged down with pine needles just kills him. Spose its the lack of skinny tyres and bugger all rolling resistance?

@stumpy – somyoundont ride an mtb in the wet but you will ride a road bike ?

OP if you have the road bike itch scratch it but if it were me in your shoes I’d just find some all weather mtb routes and ride those, I usually ride more in the autumn/winter than in summer if the weathers foul I ride firm trails in the woods to keep out of the wind and rain. I’d much rather do that than get scared to death with motorists screaming by on wet roads

I got a pre loved but discarded C2W bike for next to nothing, rode to work a bit, roade out when I didn’t feel like hitting the Fells on my own, now I’m in Tas everyone has them, I use it for general fitness and something different some of our local trails are not that weather proof so rather than trash them I take the road bike out (roads dry quicker than trails here) and just get something done. As someone said above it doesn’t make you fully mountain bike fit but it covers the base. Ever serious MTB’r here has one and is out a lot.

MTB > Road > CX > Fat = STW Progression™

The road bike is much more of a “pick up and play” option, requiring comparitively little faff pre- and post- ride compared to the mountain bike. So it’s great for just the odd 1-2 hour rides here and there, before or after work.

Worth trying, you might like it. But for me road biking is just like mountain biking, with absolutely all of the good bits removed.

–

I think it depends where you live, how true that is. Where I am on the Isle of Wight there are some absolutely brilliant sections of road that are just as exhilarating to ride as the best off-road sections. The roads being largely empty helps. If there were miles of dreary suburbia between me and the open road I might not be so keen.

Strava keeps it interesting as well.

And I don’t see how it can do anything but help your fitness for mountain biking. Any time spent in the saddle is going to get you fitter, innit? So if you buy a road bike and end up cycling two or three more hours a week as a result, it’s not going to do you any harm.

A good MTB ride beats a good road ride but it’s easier to get a good road ride. Where I live there is plenty of good road riding from the door and you can work out what the conditions are by looking out of the window, and whilst there is ok MTB routes they’re a drive and can be weather/condition dependant which makes it a bit more hit and miss. With restricted time road rides are a bit easier to fit in, more reliable and build base fitness.

I just got this last week for exploring the back roads of Tassie, further & faster than an MTB.
I don’t intend to do training rides or go racing at all, hell, it was cheaper than my new Rock Shox Pike.

Can’t imagine why anyone would get so vexed by someone else’s preferred type of cycling, bizarre.

I’ve seen a big difference in fitness since using the road bike on a more regular basis.

xiphon – Member
I’ve seen a big difference in fitness since using the road bike on a more regular basis

But would you not have got that if using the MTB on a more regular basis ?

I’ve started to commute to work again (16 miles each way now, was 10 miles) on the road bike – doing this on a MTB is just too slow to be practical.

So by combining a ride home with a “training” ride (or rather, ‘cardio’ ride) it has raised my fitness level. When I do go out on the MTB, I can reap the rewards…

Oddly, I’ve got a similar question in my head at the moment. Unlikely to fully answer it, as I can’t afford a new bike anytime soon.
So I’ve bunged some skinny slicks on my rigid bike and off we go! Its quite enjoyable, to a degree.
Strava makes it a little more fun / interesting and im doing it mostly to keep my fitness up. Plus I can get a decent 40 mile ride with a fair amount of climbing in less than 3 hours.

At the risk of opening up a whole new front of disagreement..I think that road is more likely to improve fitness due to the easier access to the type of surface inductive to maximum effort, otherwise known as a road.

Out the door 2, 3, 4 hours not stop uninterrupted effort at whatever level you want is accessible to most on a road bike. Thats more difficult to achieve on the MTB (is for me anyway) which whilst I can string some long loops together more of it will be backing of for the loose surface and all the hazards that make it fun.

I also don’t think you can replicate the sensation on mtb with slicks, road bikes only really come into there own at 19/20mph+ even better if thats in a group. The fitter you are the better it gets, which is usually encouragement enough.

Not being a little fit would be like sending me down Fort William Downhill and concluding it is crap cos I had to walk most of it.

FWIW thats my experience of being a regular MTBer and Roadie.

I hate fire road sections, road links, and dull singletrack on my MTB, but I still love getting out on my road bike. Horses for courses int it.

Over the winter I’ll no doubt do a fair bit more on the road than on my MTB. Love riding on the road in the dark mornings. I’m not so keen on dark, muddy, slippery off road trails.

If you just want to ride with your mates who aren’t terribly fast… just get some 700c wheels for your MTB. You’ll roll as fast as them, climb pretty much as well as they do. On fast flats and downhills you might get frustrated at running out of gears. If you do get frustrated by that – keep the wheels and build a road bike around them, if you don’t then swapping back and forth between road and MTB wheels takes moments

The 700c wheels I bought for my inbred are now on a Merckx.

I was a fast Mtb-riding roadie able to average 18+ over 30 miles with around 3000ft climbing on my Rocket Rons. Bought a Triban 5 this weekend expecting to see this fabled 20% increase and to my horror, am no faster than I was on the MTB 🙁
Going to persist though, I don’t like wearing out a f/s Mtb on the road 🙂

I’ve just taken the plunge and bought some 1.1″ Conti Grand Prix tyre to convert the rigid HT to a road orientated bike. Easy to swap back to an MTB if needed too.

Have a similar problem to some of the previous posters. I’ve got a Scott hard tail for trail riding however i’d like to start riding to work but the Kenda’s are pulling the legs out of me on the roads. So I’m considering getting some 700c wheels for the commute to work.

Don’t want to spend a fortune for the daily commute so have been considering the Mach 240 complete wheel set from Halfords at £90 for the pair.

Anyone got any suggestions or advice on this particular set of wheels?

I find that my mtb riding is better stamina wise from riding my road bike.My main discipline is MTB, but I do find that coming home doing 70 miles including climbs a good ego boost as well. I do know that it frustrates my mtb mates that I have more speed as more speed= more adrenalin.
In fact, although the latest wife has a very nice Santa Cruz, which she commutes on during the days ( on road sadly) I have just got her a Caad 10 Cannondale from Pauls Cycles reduced from £1400 to £900 , which is great. She is keen on riding it to work and doing sportives too. Also means I dont have 2 mtbs to clean in the winter.
Any reason to get on a bike is a good reason, so go for it.