What's your average length mountain bike ride?

[Tony S]

Mtn bike by hours, road bike by miles

Right. I figure, VERY ROUGHLY, and on average, for where I ride, that one singletrack mile is worth about three road miles in terms of effort.

This is the section that gave me the willies Tuesday, today was better.
But boy-o-boy, if you tipped over, its a long way down.

Oh wow, that kind of ledge. The kind you ride above, not over. I can see how that would be scary. When we have a situation like that here (rare, for several reasons), you can't fall far before you hit a tree. I guess that's better.

 

[Wilhelmson]

Hopefully you'd bounce off enough cacti to slow you down.

 

[scott43]

Hopefully you'd bounce off enough cacti to slow you down.

Pinball wizard...

 

[Tricia]

Right. I figure, VERY ROUGHLY, and on average, for where I ride, that one singletrack mile is worth about three road miles in terms of effort.



Oh wow, that kind of ledge. The kind you ride above, not over. I can see how that would be scary. When we have a situation like that here (rare, for several reasons), you can't fall far before you hit a tree. I guess that's better.

With this, you tumble down a bunch of jagged rocks before you go into the Truckee River.

 

[Ski&ride]

With this, you tumble down a bunch of jagged rocks before you go into the Truckee River.

Reminds me of Downieville, 2nd & 3rd divide

 

[Tricia]

Reminds me of Downieville, 2nd & 3rd divide

As close as we are to Downieville, I've never ridden. @Philpug has, as has @DeAnn Sloan's husband.
I get the feeling that its a bit over my head at this point in my riding game.

 

[luliski]

I'm overdue for my first mountain bike ride of the season

I completely forgot that I mountain biked in Santa Cruz in April. Second mountain bike ride of the season will be tomorrow

 

[luliski]

I'm overdue for my first mountain bike ride of the season

I completely forgot that I mountain biked in Santa Cruz in April. Second mountain bike ride of the season will be tomorrow after skiing

 

[Primoz]

I wanted to write "only around 50km nowadays", but seeing most of replies, I will skip that "only" This year is pretty bad, with not much of mtb weather (sorry +10c and rain is ok running weather but certainly not mtb weather for me ), so most of my rides around around 45 to 55km and some 1000 to 2000m of ascend... nothing spectacular, but it's still a while, before I will change bike for skis sometime in October, so I'm hoping for better second half of mtb season.
That would be my yesterday's one

 

[Tony S]

 

[Josh Matta]

between 5-25 miles and 1 hour to 3 hours.

 

[newfydog]

Our standard is 50 km (31 miles). We call that "a schnitzel". It comes from our mt bike tours in Europe on the hiking trails to Santiago. When we were young and tough, we would limit ourselves to 50 km more or less to savor the trip. As we got older, 50 km became a good goal. On one trip through Germany and Switzerland, we reached a wonderful hotel restaurant on a lake right at 50km, only to find it closed. I whined, "I'm tired, I've done my 50 km, and I want someone to bring me a schnitzel". It stuck---any thing less than a schnitzel is a casual ride, anything over a significant ride. An honest schnitzel should have 1000 meters of climbing.

 

[Tony S]

Our standard is 50 km (31 miles).

I don't know what your terrain looks like, but from where I sit you and Primoz must be smoking something. Around here, 50k of singletrack is a full-on all day endurance event.

 

[scott43]

I did an 80k MTB event back in the day and yeah took me four and a half hours to complete. That was survival mode..

 

[newfydog]

I don't know what your terrain looks like, but from where I sit you and Primoz must be smoking something. Around here, 50k of singletrack is a full-on all day endurance event.

Did I say single track? Our rides in Europe are a mix of everything, single track, double track, grass, sand, rocks, hike a bike,even some potholed paved sections. The tracks were laid out for hikers. We average in the 12 km/ hour range. My wife doesn't like to ride anything less than two hours, and feels best on hours 3-5.

Around here, it is mostly single track though, with some double track connections. To confirm what a whimp your are, I checked the results of a recent 12 hour race on the single tracks here. The top 60 year old rider cranked out 88 miles and did the first 33 in 3 1/2 hours.

Edit: We don't smoke anything but since the edibles became legal in Oregon we are well stocked with those!

 

[Primoz]

I don't know what your terrain looks like, but from where I sit you and Primoz must be smoking something. Around here, 50k of singletrack is a full-on all day endurance event.

Maybe not smoking is the key here But thing is, we are not all same, and while I can say, I'm still in pretty good shape, I'm not anything near racers, yet I can still comfortably climb at 800-900m/h if climbs are long (1-2h). I still prefer to ride single trails, but it's pretty much mission impossible around here to get 50+km loop consisting only of single trails, so yeah there are normally some gravel roads and sometimes also some asphalt in between, but normally my rides are 70-80% on singletrails. But for me, average speed depends more on amount of climbing then on amount of single trails. I can easily ride 20+km/h average on single trails, while there's no way for me to have 20km/h average on 50km loop with 2500m of ascend in it.... even if it would be all on US style fire roads (gravel roads in Alps are "a bit" less polished .
PS: Sella Ronda Hero (just as I'm currently having fun on mtb around these places) is 80km, has 4000m of ascend, and it goes up mostly on old first World war roads around Val Gardena passes, and for down, most of it are pretty damn rocky (I never made whole 80k loop, but made few times "short" 60km loop but never during race, and most of those trails are too rocky for xc bike to be fun) single trails, and winner this year needed 4h 30min, which makes it almost 18km/h average

 

[Tony S]

Maine

This conversation is a bit of "the blind men and the elephant."

 

[Ski&ride]

I don't know what your terrain looks like, but from where I sit you and Primoz must be smoking something. Around here, 50k of singletrack is a full-on all day endurance event.

Having lived and ridden both east and west, I found it nearly impossible to compare distance.

I was the same rider and rode the same bike. My 4 hr weekend ride in California typically netted me a good 30 miles easily, give and take. Still have energy for a swim at the end. The same 4 hr ride in the east typically nets me only 20 miles on a good day. And I’m usually totally beat by the point.

Road bike is the reverse. Longer in the east and shorter in the west. In fact, our group in the Bay area only count elevation rather than miles!