I just took both a beginning road biking class and a beginning mountain biking class from REI, and I loved them both although the road biking class was not really very useful (except that I used one of their bikes and got to see what it felt like to actually be able to reach the hoods). I took the women-only classes, and we had the same instructors for both, and they were great. They also both expressed the opinion that the women-only classes are superior in every way -- they said the skill levels were more consistent, and not necessarily lower -- the women who took the mixed classes, often with a male partner, had lower skill levels than the women who took the women-only classes. Weird, huh?

Anyway, the problem with the road biking class, which the instructors acknowledged when I talked to them about it the following week, is that there were some people who were taking that class because they didn't know how to ride a bike at all, or had not been on a bike in 40 years, period. So we had skill levels all over the place, and the class wound up being less useful than it could have been ... but I still loved it, just because I really liked the instructors, and we had a great group of women, and it was a lot of fun. I would not pay $50 to do it again, but it did not feel like a total waste of time.

The mountain biking class attracted a much younger group, and all but one person had done a lot of riding, just not necessarily mountain biking. That class was excellent in almost every respect. We spent about two hours on skills drills and bike fitting, and then two hours on some singletrack that was hard enough that we all had to walk some sections. With just that one four-hour class I have a night and day difference in my skills ... my husband is really impressed. I will probably take the beginner class a second time (they do different trails, and this was their suggestion) and then take the intermediate class in the spring.

The only downside I saw to the mountain biking class is that there were only two instructors, and the one who led the group went a little too fast. We had two people who had some singletrack experience, and the three of them wound up way up ahead, and then the people who needed more help were in the back, and so the rest of us were often on the trail all by ourselves without any coaching. We did fine and had a good time, but I wound up hanging back a little at the end so I could get the benefit of advice from the second instructor.

If those classes were typical, I would say that the beginning road biking class would be most useful to anyone who has ridden a hybrid or a comfort bike but never ridden an actual road bike, whereas the beginning mountain biking class would be useful to anyone who either hasn't ridden any singletrack or has ridden singletrack and had no fun at all because they didn't have the basic skills. The mountain biking class was much more challenging and less of a "here is how you shift, here is how you get on the bike" sort of deal.