SOuLooShUNz

So, you ride. Ride all the time. Ride Road all the time. AND your Fast, Fast as hell.... ON the Road. Once you get in the woods, you feel like a rookie.

Maybe you have considered that so much hammering on the road is good for fitness, but does hardly nothing for your technical skills. SO all of that fitness you got, is useless.

Does this sound like you?
I know it happened to me for a while. On the road I could hang with the A group, in the woods the A group would drop me like a bad habit.

Of course the simple solution is to ride more in the woods. BUT, that may not be easy for some of you, and the Road is all you got.
My advice -- is to Dirty up your road ride a bit.

So today here are some tips to work on your off road skills while riding on road.

You have to first realize that your road bike is not made of butter. It can very well handle more then what you give it credit for, so have no fear to ride it in above average manner. Have no fear of putting your POWER on the machine. IF, riding your road bike in Obtuse manners bothers you then pull out the Moutain bike and go for it. Keep the Knobbies on, consider it resistance training.

The first thing I recommend is sidewalk surfing. Often the Sidewalk will have twist and turns. It will be tight and it will wind with uneven pavement. Lot's more elevation changes at time then the road it parallels. Map you out a good loop of all sidewalks and it works on a couple of different skills.

Focus. Singletrack riding is inherently harder because you are having to work at going fast and at the very same time, negotiating 101 tiny obstacles and a terrain that is not static but dynamic. Sidewalk are the closest paved simulation to this. Riding sidewalks will help you develop and maintain the focus you need for riding singletrack.

IMPORTANT: Remember, when sidewalk surfing, ride towards traffic and always check all your directions when approaching intersections. You want to ride towards traffic so that you can see a car planning to turn vs. having a turning car in your blind spot.

Make your Road Ride More Technical. Yes you can make it more technical,

how you ask?

Different ways.

Take a drive and find the roughest roads you can. The kind of roads that rattle your bars. Keeping a smooth stroke and trajectory on nasty roads is a good skill to master. Find a route with lots of turns and lots of starts and stops. This simulates the tight switch backs and accelerations you may have to encounter when doing particularly twisty trails and or trails with steep or tight switchbacks. Finally, find a good dirt road. I started my road bike dirt road riding 6 years ago. I had a little 3 mile loop that I would time trial. I simply love hitting a corner at 17mph and feeling the road wheels drifting on the sand. SKILLZ...

SEEK the elevation. Find a route that has all of this. Sidewalk, starts and stops, dirt roads, LOTS OF CLIMBING. Not only add Climbing to your regular route but also seek to make it harder and more technical. (example: THE SAMURAI ROUBAIX) BTW there is no sidewalk on the roubaix.

Now use these tips, not only can you get a little better skills transfer when you go off road, but it will make you a better ON road cyclist as well.

comments??

Take care,

Laters,

The NaKeD InDiaN