rsbob 

A good friend had a serious off while mountain biking alone resulting in a cerebral bleed and was wearing a helmet. He nearly died but fully recovered after a prolonged convalescence and has since given up said activity. He now rides a gravel bike on logging roads and rail to trail conversions. His surgeon warned him if he ever had a similar type of crash there is a good chance he wouldn’t survive. Now he plays it very safe and runs more than cycles.

mschwett 

personally, i ride for a fixed amount of time, not distance or calories or watts. time is the constraint, always. my average output is very consistently 200w +/- 10% whether i ride for 2 hours or 6, so the actual work done is the same regardless of the bike chosen. i choose the bike to maximize my enjoyment. on a heavier bike with more drag it’ll be a shorter ride in terms of distance, probably less fun, but the same amount of exercise. not more or less.

mschwett 

rail trails that connect to major roads are probably pretty close to the safest thing. less pedestrians and dogs, no cars, limited obstacles and limited grades.

i have unusual health considerations and just wouldn’t ride somewhere an ambulance couldn’t drive to within visual range of my location. every person’s situation is slightly different, but that’s part of my objection to the blanket statement that off-road / MTB is “safer.”

big john

I rode off-road motorcycles every weekend for 10 years. Been road riding for close to 40 and mountain biking for over 30. All of the deaths and all of the horrible injuries I know of were on road rides. My worst crash was on a road bike on a bike path. I actually can't think of anyone ever being injured while I was on a mountain bike ride, except myself. Got pretty banged up when I fell off a cliff but I rode out and didn't miss any work.

koala logs

You'll have to do it a lot faster if training with lightweight equipment to get quality workout.

koala logs

Yeah, permission from God and country!

A roadie group came by and told me to get back to the paved road. I don't like sharing road with cars, so no thanks!

livedarklions

The difference is probably negligible, and the heavier bike gets a small speed bonus on the way down which may largely offset any difference on the ascent.

Sy Reene

You must have your riding down to a pretty exact science, in that you have it timed so perfectly that at the end of your allotted time, you're back home or at your car (or wherever you wanted to finish).

mschwett 

obviously there are small variations, but we're talking minutes. i have maybe 10 basic routes that i regularly enjoy, with lots of little variations that add or subtract 5, 10, 15 minutes. in practice it's really simple - if i have 1.5 hrs free at lunch between meetings, route X has been 1:15 moving time ±5 minutes for the last year, i ride it and add a little 15 minute loop at the start or the end.
of course there are days when it's just "i'll go see how i feel" but those are maybe one in ten rides, at most. maybe when i'm retired and the kids have moved away ?

Sy Reene

Obviously, but that was kinda my tongue-in-cheek point. A 30 mile ride up a constant 2% hill might take 150 minutes on a 22lb bike and 147 minutes on a 16lb wonderbike. I think it's a bit of stretch with many indicating how they'd all adjust their chosen routes if they had heavier vs lighter bikes.

terrymorse 

The difference between a light and heavy bike is not what I would consider negligible, as the time difference on an up-and-down course is significant.

The time gain descending with a heavy bike is small, and that gain is overshadowed by the time difference during the climb:

1. descending speed is high so wind resistance is dominant force,
2. wind resistance increases as the square of speed,
3. much more time is spent climbing than descending.

Example using Kreuzotter calculator:



The heavy bike takes an additional 39 seconds to complete the ride, a difference of 6%.

mschwett 

interesting that you use that example. i found that in almost those exact same circumstances the calculated result virtually identically matched my real world result on a known grade that i frequently tackle. there’s also a potential virtuous side effect if you’ve maxed out your low gear where the ability to ride up the hill a little faster gets you into a gear and cadence that’s more efficient - and a lot more fun.

in my case it was an 8% difference in total weight - 196lb vs 212lb. also lost about 15lb over the course of tackling said hill, so the total difference over time was more like 14%. the descent did not get any slower because it’s fear/skill limited.

Eric F 

I've crashed more often on a MTB, but road crashes tend to do more damage, mostly because of higher speed. My most serious single injury was on a MTB - broken collarbone.

big john

This reminded me of a friend breaking his collarbone years ago on a mountain bike ride. We were descending McGill trail on Mount Pinos and he launched off a jump and clipped a tree branch while in the air. This changed the trajectory of the bike and he couldn't recover it. I don't know why I couldn't remember that when I wrote that post the other day.

This is the same guy I rode the Lockwood Valley loop with the day after my 40th birthday. He had slid into second base during a baseball game and dislodged some old football injury crud in his knee but he wanted to do the ride anyway. His knee locked up with miles of climbing to go. I felt like crap but tried to hammer back to the car and when I returned to pick him up he was pedaling with one leg and the locked up knee hanging out in the air.

Eric F 

You've gotta stop riding with that guy. He ruined two of your rides - LOL.

My incident was descending Josephine Peak Rd, in the days when going as fast as I could was my goal. I was ahead of the rest of the group I was with, lost traction in a turn, and was on the ground in an instant. I was able to get down the hill steering with 1 hand.

big john

I haven't ridden with him in a long time. My 40th birthday was 28 years ago.

I used to do club rides with a group which included a tough ex marine who was a bit crazy. He broke his collarbone like 40 miles from home and insisted he could ride back. He gave it a shot but the pain eventually convinced him to stop and call for a ride.
Same guy would not wear a helmet, didn't have one when he broke the collarbone. Said if he could survive Viet Nam and 2 helicopter crashes he didn't need a helmet. One day he crashed descending Angeles Crest and it put him in a coma for several days. Still, no helmet.

I saw him a few years later and he had a helmet on. "WTF?" I asked. Seems he met some lady who wouldn't ride with him unless he wore one. After that he got used to it.

Eric F 

LMAO. A man's gonna do what a man's gonna do...until his lady tells him not to.

livedarklions

So basically, you just ride 6% farther on the workout with the lighter bike. Problem solved. Workouts equalized. I don't think this is significant in the context of defining a "good" workout.

terrymorse 

Yeah, I had to complete a ride with a broken collar bone once. Not a good idea. Not like I had a choice.

Midweek, when almost nobody is on the MTB trails, I had parked my car on Skyline Rd in the Santa Cruz Mountains, planning to descend to the Purisima Creek Redwoods entrance, then climb back to my car.

On a steep section, I dropped my front wheel into a rain rut and was launched onto my left shoulder. Snap! There I was, injured on a descent that is rarely traveled, so I had no choice but to gingerly descend to the park entrance. Every little bump prompted an involuntary scream. It's interesting how much pain you can tolerate when there is no other choice.

Then I took a more tame fire road back to my car, about 1500 feet above. Climbing was the least painful part.

When I got back to my car, I couldn't manage to lift the bike onto the car rack, so I asked a woman passing by to help me. Then I drove myself to the hospital, one handed. Glad my car had automatic shifting.

big john

Ouch! In 2007 I was descending a 15 mile trail in the San Gabriel mountains with 8 friends. I was between the fast guys and the slower guys on a steep descent when I went over the bars and fell off a 40 foot cliff. Don't know why I did that but the bike stayed on the trail. I got pretty banged up, compression fractures on 2 vertebrae, tore my rotator cuff again, etc. I first had to climb back up to the trail then ride 2 hours back to my car. No cell service and no way to get a car to where we were. I knew I had to hurry before things started to swell up so I went faster than before I crashed. My friends were impressed.

rsbob 

Oh so true. I have crashed literally dozens of times on my MTB, and just had a few bruises and some cuts, except for one bad shoulder injury incurred at 15 MPH with a tree. However with the hardcore MTB crowd, the number of broken bones they have had seems to be a badge of courage. For me though, not so much and think they may deserve another kind of badge. High speed crashes on a road bike, especially involving the head can be, as we all know, catastrophic.

rsbob 

And here I was thinking that the prospect of him getting romantic with her, drove him to wearing one.

big john

Well, yeah!

Eric F 

That's exactly what I was trying to imply.

mschwett 

these are the same dudes who tell me how much safer it is than riding on pavement 😂