Distances during the week

[madisongrrl]

Hey there,

I'm curious to find out if you ladies do the same thing to prepare for your off road rides on the weekends/night riding..

Lots of miles and lots of hills. You will see huge payoffs in your mountain biking if you do a lot of hill work on your road bike with an occasional long ride thrown in.

I normally try and bike about 120km or more- if i'm not lazy- during the week and each ride work on speed, hills,cardio & general distance. In addition, my road rides are just practice for off road & normally think about how i can apply the skills on my mtn bike.

As far as applying mountain skills on the road, there are two aspects you can really focus on (not that it prepares you to ride technical single track, but it might help a little) 1. Counter weighting the outside of the bike/pedal when you turn a corner and trying to take those corners tighter (also being comfortable moving the bike to either side beneath you and having your body stay vertical) 2. Climbing super steep hills....boobs to the tube, seat on or hovering on the nose of the saddle and a nice even/consistant cadence. Practicing technical climbing will help get you up super steep goat hills that many people can't ride.

Oh yeah, Is 120km too short a distance?

It depends on your personal goals and what type of riding or racing you are trying to participate in. Any riding is good riding....especially if you make the most of your miles and time by choosing harder training rides tempered with nice easy recovery rides.

How many KM's off road do you do a week???

For me, 50 miles/80.5 km on a bad week & 150 miles/241.5 km on a superlative week (both on and off road). But it depends on what kind of races I'm doing, if I'm in a build phase, peak phase, recovery phase etc. And it depends on how busy I am....life happens and sometimes you can't ride your bike because of it.