Use the roads this spring

Early spring is usually a downer for Midwest mountain bikers. The trails are often closed due to winter thaw and runoff. And then come those famous April showers. But if you love to mountain bike, you don't have to sit around grousing when conditions have shut down your local bike trails. Instead you can use that time to hone your mountain bike skills on the roads. That means leave your road bike in storage, at least a couple of days a week, and instead head out on your mountain bike.

Ideally, you should stick to roads that have little traffic. Given the amount of deaths and injuries suffered by road cyclists in the past couple of years, I have eliminated many of my previous favorite routes. They really are just too dangerous in this age of cell phones, texting and parents distracted by their children.

While we still have many rural roads close by (within a half hour) in the greater Milwaukee area that are hilly and have very little traffic, I've discovered that the best biking starts with my own driveway. Just today, when we hit an unexpected warm spell in southeast Wisconsin, I headed out into the surrounding subdivisions on my mountain bike and only encountered two cars during the entire 90-minute ride.

So how in the world can you master mountain bike skills on smooth and wide asphalt roads when mountain bike trails are usually twisty narrow dirt paths littered with roots and rocks? The answer becomes obvious when you consider the basic skills needed to safely and skillfully navigate those challenging trails. Let's look at a few of them.

The full column appears in the April 2012 print edition of Silent Sports. Don't miss an issue! Subscribe here.