Mountain vs Road Biking - Cycling Mob: Road Cycling, Mountain Biking and More

03-10-2005, 03:58 PM

I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of whether to
get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other. I
would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.

I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking trails
within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to get to any
trailhead. For road bikes I can be on the road in 1 minute but I don't know
if riding bikes on florida's roadways is a good idea.

Thanks in Advance

George

03-10-2005, 04:18 PM

"Chris" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in message
news:Ca5Yd.163202$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ].c om...
> I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of whether
> to get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other. I
> would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.
>
> I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking trails
> within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to get to any
> trailhead. For road bikes I can be on the road in 1 minute but I don't
> know if riding bikes on florida's roadways is a good idea.
>
> Thanks in Advance
>
> George

Well, there's always the option of getting a hardtail mountain bike and
putting slick tires on it when you want to ride on the road...

--
Scott Ehardt
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

03-10-2005, 04:21 PM

"Chris" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in
news:Ca5Yd.163202$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ].c om:
> I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking trails
> within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to get to any
> trailhead.

I have a mountain bike and a road bike. I have pretty much abandoned the
mountain bike since the nearest nice trails are a 30 minute drive away.
I can ride my road bike out the front door and find nice roads immediately.
Eliminating the 1 hour (round trip) commute gives me 1 hour of more fun.

03-10-2005, 04:46 PM

Ken wrote:
> "Chris" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in
> news:Ca5Yd.163202$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ].c om:
>> I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking
>> trails within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to
>> get to any trailhead.
>
> I have a mountain bike and a road bike. I have pretty much abandoned
> the mountain bike since the nearest nice trails are a 30 minute drive
> away.
> I can ride my road bike out the front door and find nice roads
> immediately. Eliminating the 1 hour (round trip) commute gives me 1
> hour of more fun.

More or different?

I don't enjoy road cycling (I live in London) I do enjoy mountain biking,
fortunately I'm within a few miles road cycle of good off road but to me 30
mins drive to good off road cycling would be no issue.

pk

03-10-2005, 05:04 PM

Starting over from scratch a few months ago, I picked up a used mountain
bike, thinking that this would be all I wanted. A mountain bike still
makes a lot of sense in my neighborhood because the streets are
sometimes rough (pot holes, etc). When I rode years before, I had one
and used to go back and forth between paved roads and sidewalks so I
could avoid vehicular traffic and mostly keep moving always and the
mountain bike was a plus there.

Several of my friends had road bikes, or both types, so I was naturally
curious about the road side of riding. Eventually I sprang for an el
cheapo 25 yr old Fuji RB to see if I'd like it and I did. So recently I
bought another nice used road bike with better components than the Fuji.
Now I find myself riding the road bike most of the time.

I needed to get adjusted to the harder ride of a road bike, but it gets
up to speed faster and easier and goes faster than the MB. It took a
little getting used to riding down on the road bars, but that has a nice
tradeoff too, as my hands and palms don't get so tired as they did on
the mountain bike. I like having several hand positions on the road
bike vs. basically one on the mountain bike. I plan to keep the MB to
ride with family and when the weather is nasty, but the road bike is
going to be my preference.

My total investment between the two bikes is not 1,000 and I have about
twice as much in the road bike as the mountain bike. I am really glad I
figured out what I wanted before I got something good.

03-10-2005, 05:07 PM

"Chris" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote:

>I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of whether to
>get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other. I
>would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.
>
>I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking trails
>within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to get to any
>trailhead. For road bikes I can be on the road in 1 minute but I don't know
>if riding bikes on florida's roadways is a good idea.

A couple thoughts...

There are plenty of good places to ride a road bike in Florida - but
it's such a big state, it's a bit like asking about "riding in the
US"...

Most of the "mountain biking" (a VERY relative term in Florida) tends
to be fairly non-technical, or at least most of the riding areas have
non-lethal trails. That would open up the option of having a single
cyclocross bike - plenty capable on the road for anything you're
likely to want to do (short of out and out racing, and even then
probably wouldn't be much of a detriment). It would also allow you to
carry panniers and use the bike to commute or run errands - kind of
the ultimate pizza combo.

I know if I could only have one bike (shudder...) it would be a
'cross.

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]
Home of the $695 ti frame

03-10-2005, 05:46 PM

"pk" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in
news:d0qpo8$8ed$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ].ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com:
>> I have a mountain bike and a road bike. I have pretty much abandoned
>> the mountain bike since the nearest nice trails are a 30 minute drive
>> away. I can ride my road bike out the front door and find nice roads
>> immediately. Eliminating the 1 hour (round trip) commute gives me 1
>> hour of more fun.
>
> More or different?

By not having to drive to and from the trailhead, I get 1 hour of *more* fun,
per ride. Driving to the trailhead is not much fun.

03-10-2005, 06:54 PM

Chris wrote:
> I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of whether to
> get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other. I
> would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.

I have only a mountain bike, which I ride both on trails and on the
road. My typical road course is 22 miles, and the lack of multiple had
positions is very noticable, although I'm guessing bar ends would be a
big improvement. Also, the road bikers always passed me, but I'm
guessing I got a better workout.

I think off road is more fun, although on-road is probably better
exercise. Either is far better then watching TV.

I have numerous trails within 25 miles, but still ride on-road more
often due to the convenience of being able to ride right out of the garage.

Rich

03-10-2005, 07:33 PM

"Chris" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in message
news:Ca5Yd.163202$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ].c om...
> I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of whether
to
> get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other. I
> would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.

You can always ride a mountain bike on any road, unless you want to ride
with a group that likes to ride fast, however you cannot ride a road bike
on any mountain bike trail regardless of the riding conditions.

My riding is about 75% off-road, 25% on road, I feel much safer when riding
on the mountain bike trails than in street traffic, plus in my opinion
off-road riding is just more fun.. But to each his own, there will many
that disagree with me.

03-10-2005, 07:33 PM

Chris wrote:
> I'd like to hear from those of you who had to make the choice of
whether to
> get a road or mountain bike. I'm going to purchase one or the other.
I
> would guess it would be a while before I could afford the other.
>
> I live in Florida and there are a good number of mountain biking
trails
> within an hours drive. But it's still at least 45 mins to get to any

> trailhead. For road bikes I can be on the road in 1 minute but I
don't know
> if riding bikes on florida's roadways is a good idea.
>
> Thanks in Advance

It may depend on where you are in Florida. I've ridden on-road there,
but never off-road. What are the off-road conditions like?

It seems to me that you'll have little use for the super-low gears of a
mountain bike, because (as I recall) the biggest hills are the freeway
overpasses, right? Unless you're using low gears to plow through sand,
which isn't any fun anyway.

IME, riding a mountain bike on the road is close to drudgery. Riding a
wider-tired road bike off-road is possible, except for crazy-extreme
terrain - and again, I thought Florida lacked such terrain.

My mountain bike hardly gets used, despite having a forest preserve
less than a mile from my house. So my preference would be either a
'cross bike, or perhaps a touring bike. I wouldn't want my cycling to
be limited to special occasions - as in, load it on the car first. And
I wouldn't want to ride a mountain bike much on the road.

But it occurs to me, you might want to talk with local cyclists,
perhaps at a bike shop. On one hand, they may point out lots of great
off-road that you don't know about; and on the other hand, they may
point out miles of pleasant back roads that you've yet to discover.

You might also want to check out places like
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ] for info or advice.