My friends and I like to ride our street bicycles for exercise. We usually have several routes we can take but we never vary the way we ride. Can anyone suggest some exercises that we can do that vary our workouts on the bike- ie different ways to ride, drills, intensities…whatever?
Hey Koawala, I ride moutain bikes seriously enough to do a few races a year, but not seriously enough to have a structured training routine. Nonetheless, here are a couple of ideas that maybe someone more experienced can flesh out:
Simple mileage. Long rides at a steady pace are superb for endurance, and gettting these miles under the belt is essential for competitive mountain biking, and probably great for all round aerobic fitness. Its also a powerful way to lose weight, if that is relevant. When I say long, I’m talking around the 3hr mark or longer.
Intervals. This is what its all about when it comes to building strength on the MTB, so its probably a good way of developing strength all round. Find a steep hill and ride up it at just below race pace, then ride easy back down and repeat. Your fitness will dictate how long the climb can be sustained for, and for how many times you want to repeat it.
Speed work. 100% redline effort on a sprint, so we’re talking around 30secs of effort. Recover, and repeat.
So basically you’ve got low, med/high and high intensity workouts. Mountain biking on the trails is such fun that its easy to work these into a ride; this is critical, you don’t want the cycling to turn into a chore. How you keep things interesting on the streets is another question, one for the roadies to advise on.