Question re bike speeds

mattylevan

Hi,

I did a duathlon yesterday, that's run bike run and I was slowest by about 25 minutes. The thing is my run speeds were not that bad comparitvely I wasn't even slowest on the first run, but I lost most of that time on the bike leg.

One of the other competitors looked at my old mountain bike and told me that they are slower and more work on the roads so now I'm wondering. If I was to do something similar would it be possible to make up the difference between me and the next slowest competitor just by more bike training or would I need a road bike to see a big difference.

My times are run 1 4.2km 29:39.0
cycle 16.35km 01:15:28
run 2 4.2km 35:31.5

alathIN

Depends on what your goals are.

Road bikes are made to go faster. The biggest difference is tires - much lower resistance on road bike tires (you can put road-ish tires on your MTB for an inexpensive speed gain). Also road bikes are lighter and position your body more for speed.

If your main goal is to use cycling as one of your fitness workout options - just get on a bike and work your heart and burn calories - then changing to a road bike may not really help you much. Yes, you would go farther distance in a 2-hour bike workout, but from the fitness standpoint you would still be doing a 2 hour bike cardio workout so the fitness gains and calorie burn would probably be about the same.

If your goal is to race in duathlons and improve your finish, then yes, switching to a road bike would improve your times - probably fairly dramatically - right off the bat.

Some other plusses about road bikes:
- if you are trying to get to a specific destination sooner
- if you want to participate in group rides (very challenging to keep up with other cyclists who are pushing you!)
- if you want to ride long road distances
- personally I find it a lot of fun simply to be going faster

Some minues about road bikes:
- generally more expensive for the same quality level
- need to be well fitted to your body (you will probably need a professional to get this right if you're new to road bikes)
- road bikes and especially road tires do not handle potholes, gravel, snow, wet, etc as well as MTB tires
- may be somewhat of a challenge to get used to initially; road riding position requires more core strength and upper body flexibility than the upright position most people ride MTB or comfort bikes

If you decide to modify your MTB with road-ish tires, another thing to consider would be some means of locking your feet to the pedals so you can start using the whole circle pedal stroke. "Power grips" straps are one way to do this, or you can try the traditional cages. You can also get cycling shoes with cleats and pedals that fit them and install them on your MTB. This does generate a significant power/speed gain if your feet are hooked into the pedals and you're powering all the way around, instead of just mashing down.

SingingSingleTracker

Hi,

I did a duathlon yesterday, that's run bike run and I was slowest by about 25 minutes. The thing is my run speeds were not that bad comparitvely I wasn't even slowest on the first run, but I lost most of that time on the bike leg.

One of the other competitors looked at my old mountain bike and told me that they are slower and more work on the roads so now I'm wondering. If I was to do something similar would it be possible to make up the difference between me and the next slowest competitor just by more bike training or would I need a road bike to see a big difference.

My times are run 1 4.2km 29:39.0
cycle 16.35km 01:15:28
run 2 4.2km 35:31.5

A couple of built in benefits with a road bike are the skinny tires for better rolling resistance compared to wide mountain bike tires, and the probability that the position on the bike might be more aerodynamic since you probably wouldn't be sitting as upright as you do on the mountain bike. That all depends on your fit and how you currently ride your mountain bike (upright, or bent way over in a nice tuck). You could easily run narrow slick tires on your mountain bike to improve the rotating weight and rolling resistance.

Looks like your speed on the bike could be trained to pick up the tempo quite a bit. Skinny tires would help for sure, but if you could train to maintain a tempo and average speed that would net you some minutes - that would start to close the gap. But certainly not the full 25 minutes. I could see picking up 5 - 10 minutes on the bike, but that's going to be a much faster pace than you rode and involve a lot of tempo training and some threshold work (and skinny tires or a road bike in combination).