Road: off road mileage equivalence

muchalls

Does anyone have ideas or views on this?
what I mean is what the equivalent road mileage would be for, say, 50km on fire roads?

One way I looked at it is time/ ave speed, so if 2 hours off road I can cover 36km, on roads I bike at 24km/h (sloooowww) so should cover 48km?

This is primarily as I am mainly MTB but converting to roads & looking to do a Century Sportive thing.

Bronzie

As a very rough rule of thumb I'd say around 1.5

So 13 mph av off-road => 19 mph av on road

BUT of course it depends a great deal on the off-road conditions. Anything technical or muddy is going to slow you down a lot. On fast, flat fire roads you will probably average not too much slower than road speeds.

ALSO depends on how good your bike handling is off-road. I have generally been likened by club mates to look like "a pig on roller skates" when on my MTB

explosifpete

I rode a xc race the other week with a avg of 12.8mph for 2 hours and it was so much harder than a 50 mile solo road ride at 19.5mph. make of that what you will

mrchrispy

i reckon anything inbetween 1:2 to 1:3 depending on the terrain and weather.
20 really tough miles off road is about the same effort as 60 road miles.
IMO

andrewgturnbull

Hey Muchalls!

I grew up in the house just on the top left point of the 'M' in your map!

Cheers, Andy