Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
For the off-road triathlon, you can still do a portion of your training on your road
bike. Easy days, technique days, where we emphasize spin, and you should ride between
80 and 100 rpm's. 90 is ideal. Most triathletes are in the bad habit of pushing too big of
a gear and it's not efficient. It overly taxes your muscles and doesn't put enough onus on
your cardiovascular system. So try to work, on those easy day, on a smooth pedal stroke,
sitting real square in the saddle, and pedaling nice circles. Equal pressure on the pedals
all the way around. For your long days, those are great ones to do on a mountain bike because
those are days that you can get out and have fun, explore some trails and work on your
handling abilities. And, there's no better way to prove your handling abilities than
to just challenge yourself by finding difficult technical trails. If you can spend some time
with other riders who are skilled in off-road riding and pick up tips from them, that'll
help as well. But, one thing that you do when you ride off-road is you have to shift your
weight around a lot to maintain traction. And so, if you can find a challenging trail
and actually time yourself on it and do repeats on that trail and try to clean up your turning,
clean up your shifting of your weight, where you shift on the shift gears and those things.
That'll help you improve. But long days can be done on the mountain bike. In a base period
we do more extensive endurance, which can be done on a road bike as well, you don't
get the skill development piece. Long rides at a low intensity, which as you get closer
to the season, that intensity should come up and the duration of the ride should come
down. Interval days for an off-road triathlon should be done on your mountain bike. And,
those should be specific to the kind of challenges you'll face when you race this. So, if the
courses you face will be very technical, ride the technical trails. If they'll have lots
of short, steep climbs, find a place where you can do short, steep climbs. And, if it's
extended climbs, same sort of a thing. Do intervals, especially climbing intervals for
the off-road triathlon that replicate what you'll face in your race.