Mountain Biking to aid Mountain Running

donothoponpop

I've been keeping the hills to a minimum in training recently, while a calf injury slowly repairs itself. In order to be ready for next years imra season, I bought a mountain bike so that I could get some uphill training, and have been taking to the hills, on and off trail. A lot of the better imra runners who post here have often cited mountain biking as helping their uphill running, so I'm curious as to what sort of training this entails. Just hit the mountains, long and steady climbs? Or find a gradient and cycle furious repeats uphill? Or something completely different? Perhaps there's no magic formula and I should just do whatever feels good and hard? I'm starting from scratch here, so any advice will be gratefully received, thanks.

Enduro

I reckon that the most fitness benifits comes from hitting the hills on the roads. Personally I prefer the variety of doing one big loop over lots of different hills rather than doing the same thing over and over. Makes training more of a journey than the chore of repeats. Having said that MTBing in technical terraine seems to improve explosive power, as that's a requirement for keeping the bike upright through the tricky stuff! All the above is just MHO!

Krusty_Clown

Any suggestions of locations? You're talking about staying on the road Enduro? In that case, an MTB isn't really necessary, is it (except for the crappy surface of the roads, around where the good hills are (Sallygap, etc.)).

Peterx

the many benefits of mountain biking as a form of training whilst recovering from ankle/calf injuries sustained hillrunning can include;

#a strengthening of the muscles you'll need for uphill running
#fresh air in the same environment as hill running
#a somewhat similar exertion effect of very hard up and relatively easy down
#the option to race and thus keep your racehead working
#you get better at judging the correct line to take which can aid downhill running
#it can improve your balance

The fresh air and strengthening of the muscles you can get on a hilly roadbike spin.
The racing is only really available in the summer but is freakily useful, standard hillruns are about an hour long and standard MTB races are about 2 hours long which neatly gives an equivalent level of fatigue and more importantly gets your head going on managing the pain of race effort and trying to stay the guys in front.

It's FUN too

Peterx

starting from scratch either visit Ballinastoe woods or join in your nearest clubs club spins. 3 rock has plenty of fairly easy to find routes.

Sheet 62, a sense of adventure and a few hours of daylight will get you and your MTB bike into all sorts of fun too.
The Harvey's maps have more tracks marked on them then the OS ones and Pat Healy has maps of various bits of Wickla.

Slogger Jogger

Trails around Carrick Mountain Glenealy, Croaghan Kinsella and the Wicklow way.. down our way. Look forward to joining you on some or all of these.