I saw this statement and wondered of peoples opinions here. I’m of the opinion that road riding provides more aerobic training than MTB but:

“Riding an MTB 20 miles for 2 hours at 200w is the same as Riding a road bike 40 miles for 2 hours at 200w”

Im a bit obsessed by strava miles, but as I race XC maybe accordimg to that I shouldnt be.

Thoughts?

That makes sense to me, 2 hours at 200w is surely the same whether you’re riding an MTB, road bike or penny farthing?
It’s just done at different speeds for the amount of work done.

As long as you’re actually riding the two hours on the MTB (not faffing) then why wouldn’t it be the same?

What did you think was intrinsically better for you about being on a road bike?

If everything is equal, then 200W for 2 hours is 200W for 2 hours. However it would be pretty hard to do a MTB ride with the same power profile as a road ride – I tend to pedal most of the downhills on road, and it’s not all that hard to get a fairly constant power profile.

If you race XC then you need to train to duplicate the efforts involved, which do tend to be more stop start – but then that would still be good training for road racing, and TBH you can do interval training (for that’s what it is) on road or off. Still useful to get steady miles in though, and that’s much easier to do on road.

It’s been a few years since I did my Sports Science degree but even so, that statement is so lacking in any kind of information it isn’t even a valid statement other than, in the way it’s been presented, it’s completely not true.
Riding a (road)bike or a (mountain)bike for 2 hours at 200 watts is exactly the same as each other. You may well travel a little further on one rather than the other but the training effect will be exactly the same.
Needs more detail and even then, I can’t think of a (super contrived) situation where it would be anything like correct.

What did you think was intrinsically better for you about being on a road bike?

More miles (stravism) but the ability to hold things like threshold watts more evenly.

This is like saying a person is very fit. It’s half a statement. Fit for what? Compared to what or who?
edit; Now you’re adding a little detail, it gets clearer.
If riding at a continuous threshold on a terrain designed for each bike (on a fairly flat road and on a lumpy, bumpy, rootie, rocky trail for each respective bike), then yes, the road bike would be better suited to the task. But isn’t that very obvious anyway? You’d struggle to ride at continuos ftp on a technical mountain bike ride so the original statement is still rubbish.
further edit. ‘miles’ are just miles. On there own, in isolation and in large numbers, they indicate an ability to sit on a saddle and pedal for a long time, not much else.
Specificity. Be specific in your goals and your training to reach them.

More miles (stravism) but the ability to hold things like threshold watts more evenly.

You seem to suggest you already know the “more miles” thing is a fallacy, and the glibness of the original statement seems to invite us to assume “all other things being equal”, which of course they rarely are.

But then again, sometimes they are.

Anecdotally – the super dry year we’ve had so far has meant I’ve pretty much dropped road biking the last few months but been riding the same amount.

I haven’t got any less fit, but I have got worse at pedaling a road bike.

🙂

Yes, i do believe the statement is true.
As already covered, the main reason for riding road is its rare to find a mtb route where you dictate the effort 100% rather than the terrain.
Unless you are doing a group ride where you need a road bike to keep up, i’d also argue for doing base training on the road on your MTB too.
A) Gives you even more scope to keep power on on the downhills.
B) Gets you used to pedalling in position on your MTB, which will always be subtly different and use muscles slightly differently to road bike.

Base in the winter is hard though. Where I ride, doing 3hrs winter base in the slop and roots would see a very inconsistent power & hr on the Mtb. On the flip side, sliding around is probably good for skills/core.

It was probably written by someone who lives in Southern California eh?

Your arguments are valid, but trumped by road bikes just being much nicer to ride on the road. I’ll just throw in a little anecdote too – used to regularly see Liam Killeen out training on the roads around here, he was always on a road bike.

“Yes, i do believe the statement is true.”
Your belief is hugely flawed.

You seem to have strong opinions – care to share them?

200w for 2 hours isn’t even the same for different road rides let alone between different types of riding. The power profile for an MTB ride is likely to be more spikey and variable. Not that this is a bad thing, but it’s different from a road ride with constant power and a few longer efforts thrown in.

I stopped even looking at my distance stats once I got a power meter. Actually made me enjoy riding more as I wasn’t just tacking on loops to make up more distance.

Quality not quantity 🙂

Part of the answer lies in what “2hrs at 200 watts” actually means.

Averaging 200w over a ride tends to be a harder effort on the mtb IMO as there is more freewheeling which can rapidly drag down the avg power, meaning you need to put in a lot more time at higher wattage to bring it up to the same average.

Be interesting to know how people use their PM’s on XC bikes. I’ve got one on mine but not ridden with it much. I’m not even sure I’d bother having it displayed on my Garmin. Maybe with a long average to judge pacing.

“You seem to have strong opinions – care to share them?”

I tried to, a little, up there but hey-ho, what do I know?

Averaging 200w over a ride tends to be a harder effort on the mtb IMO as there is more freewheeling which can rapidly drag down the avg power, meaning you need to put in a lot more time at higher wattage to bring it up to the same average.

May be harder perceived effort but by the same token you are getting more time freewheeling. Whereas you constantly have to smooth your effort out on the road.

There is the normalisation on power meters for mountain bikes to allow for this?

I only ride MTB, but I do perform long efforts on more linear paths to a set power. It’s just emulating road riding really.

Go out for an hour and try to achieve 200w av by alternating 20second max efforts with (lets say) 40second recoveries. Another day ride at a steady 200w on the road bike.
You won’t manage the first and the second will be easy.

Personally I train both regularly. Can’t hurt, and the road stuff feels like a rest day compared to the more specific off road training. Well for the first couple of hours anyway.

Pragmatism wins for me. Long base miles off-road in winter can be horrible, you get wet and cold and because of that train less well. On the road, with mud guards and wrapped up warm you don’t get half as wet, makes it more pleasant!

Opposite for me Ferrals. I love long, muddy mtb rides with mates over the winter, always becomes an epic. Setting off on a four hour road ride in the cold and wet can be a bit depressing.
Tend to mix it up though. Any hours spent in the saddle tend to make you faster in the long run.

The odds are the MTB will be heavier, so hill climb training will be harder and make your road bike feel a breeze in comparison.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW47gb01FeA[/video]

My best effort so far up Old Winchester Hill on my road bike (http://www.strava.com/activities/1047098434/analysis/3457/4004) vs my one effort on Thursday on the Wazoo (http://www.strava.com/activities/1059909803/analysis/4857/5494)

Unless you are doing a group ride where you need a road bike to keep up, i’d also argue for doing base training on the road on your MTB too.

That would be totally grim though. So much effort, so little speed. I’d never bother going out on the road if I had to take the MTB…

Meh, tbh its not that bad if you’ve got some quick XC tyres on a 29er. The only time you notice a real lack of speed is on long shallow descents, but that’s actually a good thing as it makes it easier to keep HR/Power in desired zone.

Go out for an hour and try to achieve 200w av by alternating 20second max efforts with (lets say) 40second recoveries.

It’s a good point. So doing a string of koms last week with warm-up and recovery for 2 hours yields about 190w. And you’re broken but I guess that’s because of reaching into your anaerobic, and getting those big peak watts.

I say just mix it up. Mountain biking benefits from all sorts of training but it’s natural territory is power efforts rather than constant effort so we need to make sure we get out and do constant effort as a focussed ride.

I guess it’s just easier to control effort on road. Which I’ve never done not liking the road environment.

Meh, tbh its not that bad if you’ve got some quick XC tyres on a 29er. The only time you notice a real lack of speed is on long shallow descents, but that’s actually a good thing as it makes it easier to keep HR/Power in desired zone.

Agreed, other than wind resistance position of a road bike you can get similar benefits with certain types rides and a well setup 29er. I have a nice light rigid for those occasions.

http://road.cc/content/feature/142647-dirty-cross-training-and-why-peter-sagan-can-climb

Thats a good article Paton. Having discovered 2 years ago through power profiling I had a sprint, carry lots of speed over small hills yet am not very good at long climbs it makes sense. Perhaps unfortunately for me I went on to train my weaknesses and this year my sprint is noticably less effective. Why? Becuase I did too much training on the Turbo for long efforts. I’m fixing that now and for 2018 by reverting to outdoor unless not possible.

After posting this last night I went on to research some of the world class riders training plans. The thing that was common is that the use a higher ratio of road biking in the winter for base – say 60/40 keeping a couple of MTB rides in for skills maintenance. As we get toward the MTB season that changes to pretty much 70/30 in favour of MTB intervals.

Todays planned ride is 90 mins of “Endurance” with a section in the middle of 8 x 30secs minimum maximal efforts up a singletrack climb with 5 mins recovery between each. I’ll probably ride max 30k today. This week, I’ve raced, done a race like effort training ride, a 30 min sprint session and then this. I won’t have ridden 100k this week which niggles at me a bit, but I guess the effort is there.

Ha Ha

My point that I didn’t get across being that for MTB racing, training on an MTB correctly is probably more important. But I guess we all know that.

What about 200w for two hours on a cross bike? Would that be more fun?

Must depend on standard deviation, surely? And I’d expect over interesting terrain, mtb power would be more variable. As an obvious example, how about a 50 mile time trial at 200W plus or minus 15W, compared with two circuits of Swinley?

The odds are the MTB will be heavier

my mtb is lighter than my road bike