What's reasonable?

[lexi]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me - what is a reasonable speed/distance to travel? I'm fairly new to cycling and am planing a 1400 k ride. Due to the rough roads and the availability of fire trails where I live, I have a mountain bike. Is it reasonable to ride 100 k's a day with this, as I'm planing a trip from Sydney to Adelaide? I'm middle aged and slightly overweight and where I live is very hilly. On the hills I average 12 k's an hour. There is nowhere flat here, so I can only make an assumption of around 15k's an hour on the flat. Could or should I improve my times - or are these reasonable, in using a mountain bike?

 

[gman0482]

Your question is really impossible for anyone to answer but yourself. All I can say, is it all depends on you. Some people can ride all day, others 1 hour. If you ride 1 hour, my advice is you should gradually increase your km's over time. That also goes for your speed. If you normally travel at 15 kph, gradually test out your limits. Nobody can tell you what your average should be but yourself. Also, if you're only riding 1 hour, attempting to go for 1,400 km's in a short amount of time could be tough on you. Preparation is everything.

As for the MTB, IMO on the road, MTB tires will be not as comfortable and economic as road tires. But that's just my opinion, again, different strokes for different folks. IMO, I would definitely try to get a hold of a road bike, or at least switch your tires on your MTB.

Hope this helps,
-Greg

 

[jhuskey]

I would advise riding at least 50 km distance for a couple of consecutive days before hand and see how you do.
MTB's are generally around 4.5 kms slower on average than a good road bike.

 

[frenchyge]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me - what is a reasonable speed/distance to travel? I'm fairly new to cycling and am planing a 1400 k ride. Due to the rough roads and the availability of fire trails where I live, I have a mountain bike. Is it reasonable to ride 100 k's a day with this, as I'm planing a trip from Sydney to Adelaide? I'm middle aged and slightly overweight and where I live is very hilly. On the hills I average 12 k's an hour. There is nowhere flat here, so I can only make an assumption of around 15k's an hour on the flat. Could or should I improve my times - or are these reasonable, in using a mountain bike?

Well, if there's nowhere flat and you average 12kph in the hills, then you're looking at 8hr/day of riding time. Add in a couple stops for stretching, lunch, repairs, resupply, etc. and you're easily looking at a 10hr trek per day over rough roads for 14 days. 2-3 days in a row of that sounds pretty grueling to me, so I'd say you're likely overextending what would be considered reasonable.

If you're newish to cycling, this endeavor will require a lot of training, so hopefully your fitness and speed will improve during that time. Possibly you could get to the point where 100k/day would be doable for a 2 week stint, but at this point I'd guess it's not.

 

[cyberlegend1994]

As for the MTB, IMO on the road, MTB tires will be not as comfortable and economic as road tires.

Very true. The knobbies on MTB tires - combined with their extra width - will add a lot of rolling resistance, so more pedaling effort will be needed. I found that out the hard way myself - I would ride the MTB for only about 8 miles, and my legs basically turned to Jell-O...

In addition, the gearing on a MTB is different from that of a roadie, this is by design so one has more power in the dirt. You can keep the gearing as it is if speed is not an issue, but I would strongly recommend using different tires on the road.

 

[lexi]

Thank you everyone. All this info has given me something to work with.