I shot the bull with a couple of fellow riders recently about the relative alertness required when riding a mountain bike vs. a road bike. John said he thinks road bike riding requires less attention than riding a trail on a mountain bike. He won’t even listen to music while riding a mountain bike for fear of getting distracted and crashing.
Jim, on the other hand, said he’s OK with hearing his music while mountain biking as well as road biking. To him, a road bike also requires close attention at all times. He said, that on a road bike, the second you look away, get distracted by a thought, whatever, is when you’ll either hit a chuck hole you didn’t see, a squirrel will dart in front of you, or you’ll have to correct course to avoid going off the pavement and into the dirt. Without fail!
We agreed, it’s like Murphy’s Law. You’ll get caught in a no-man’s land for a split second if you’re distracted. And sometimes you can get out of it, other times you can’t. Like these fun little road bike scenarios:
• You forget to unclip one foot before stopping. You stop, and you can’t unclip fast enough to catch the tipping bike. Result? You fall onto the road, clipped into your bike.
• You’re not watching the road in front of you closely.
Result? You hit a bone rattling chuck-hole BAM-BAM, that immediately spikes the irritation meter. Damn! I never saw that hole!!! Hate it when that happens!
Hey, gotta forget the jarring bang-bang smack up and move on. But it’s easy to kick yourself for letting it happen. Oh, and right after that if you hit another chuck-hole you didn’t see right, all you can do is let out a primal scream!
• There are small deep grooves at a railway crossing that you need to keep your tires from slotting into. You don’t. Result? You’re front tire locks in, and you’re thrown off the bike. Arrrrghh!
• You’re agitated thinking about something or someone annoying while riding along, and your not nice thoughts seem to attract a road hazard, bet it a twig or branch, a rock, or an unmoving squirrel in your path. You see one of the above at the very last milli-second and make a quick evasive move that in itself almost makes you crash.
But sometimes you don’t react in time and you ride over a twig while leaning on a turn, causing the one or both tires to skip laterally, bringing a split-second loss of control.
Result? You kick yourself and mutter, oh that was stoopid, bro!
So it’s true what John said, that on a mountain bike there’s so much information to process, you have to pretty much be on red alert at all times. Mountain biking is a series of stop and go sprints and constant preparation for riding through whatever’s ahead on the trail -- just to stay upright.
Road cycling tends to be more rhythmic and steady, so it’s a lot more conducive to periodically zoning out. Instead of seeing what’s on the road ahead, we don’t pick up an obstacle until the last millisecond and sometimes make a panic move. Which, yes, can cause a crash.
It truly is like Jim said. The second you stop paying attention on a road bike, it seems, without fail – BAM!! -- something unexpectedly funky pops up. If we’re lucky it’ll only be annoying instant and not the cause of a crash! Yep, plenty of focus is needed while riding the road bike, too.
Sand riding experiment
Sand bogs down tires and quickly slows down most bikes, even a mountain bike with thick, knobby tires. So it’s usually something most riders either avoid, or ride through as fast as possible to keep from getting thrown off the bike. One rider buddy, though, who rides both a road bike and a mountain bike, told me he just bought another bike with four-inch wide tires. Whaaaat?
These fat boys, he said, are made for riding through sandy areas. When I saw him this past week he was about to find out if this rig and its wide tires work in sand as advertised. He plans on riding across the exposed sandy bottom of Folsom Lake, a large reservoir that these days looks like a moonscape. It’s almost empty because of the nasty California drought over the past four years.
He’s looking at it as an adventure in the making. Will the fat tire bike negotiate a sandy, shifting surface that hasn’t been packed down by vehicle tires of any kind? Knowing this guy, however his experiment turns out, he’s gonna have fun with it. Rock on, bro.
Clipping in, clipping out
Unclipping from pedals can be a dicey move – especially if you can’t get out of your clips the very second you need to, and you, uh, tip over. Some clips hold tighter than others, and the lateral movement needed to pull out of the cleat can do a nasty twist of the knee if it’s too tight. I learned the hard way to adjust my mountain bike’s SPD clips, which are kind of like old-style ski bindings, so that they’re fairly easy to kick out of. Other style cleats make unclipping very fast and smooth, which is ideal. But a fast and smooth cleat release won’t necessarily stop a tip-over every time. I’ve found, and other riders I’ve talked to about this have agreed, that whenever you need to clip out super fast, you’ll usually be leaning the wrong way, and your wrong-way momentum will bring you down, clipped in! Yep, Murphy’s Law applies to cleats. But hey, really can’t blame the cleats. It’s mostly the result of good ol’ operator error!
Til next time, remember to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely and don't forget…have a blast.
-- Mark Eric Larson
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