Road Bike Vs Mountain Bike Efficiency
Another reason to think about mountain biking over road biking is that there won t be any cars.
Road bike vs mountain bike efficiency. My son s pushing the mountain bike version. Based on the speed test i found the road bike rolled on average about 11 faster than the mountain bike. Apparently his road bike had broken the day before and he was doing a 100miler on his mountain bike instead. Less popular as difficult to film and televise and is the only mountain biking event at the summer olympics.
On my reasonably flat commute i average around 16 mph on my road bike but your average speed is dependent on many different factors. The road bike was running standard road bike tires at about 80psi. The pressure on a mountain bike tire is typically in the 30 s of psi let s say 1 4 of the pressure in a road bike tire. One interesting thing to note is that a lot of the speed difference in the test seemed to come in the first 10 yards along the test track as the bikes accelerated up to speed.
Others call it a 10 speed hello progress. One can now have 18 or more speeds road bikes are made for speed with narrow tires for. He rides his road bike to work with mountain shoes and sometimes keeps his mountain bike shoes on all day during work. Some people call it a racing bike.
Typically that s only a change of 2 3 mph. Mountain biking became a sport in 1970s and has since then diversified into cross country riding became an olympic sport in 1996. A general rule of thumb is that if you are switching from a mountain bike with knobbies to a road bike you will be between 15 20 faster at the same watts effort. But it s also much wider say 3x wider than a road bike tire which will shorten the contact length for a given pressure.
My local bike shop thinks a road shoe and pedal is best vs. An interesting post though a lad at work wants to do ridelondon on a mountain bike i ve been pushing him down the road bike route for ease. Mountain bikes are created for off road cycling in non paved rough environments.