Road to offroad equivalent for miles / height

I would say it is so dependent on terrain that you could not really have a 'rule' or calculation. Only a judgment.

Yup,too many variables.

That I can understand, if it helps at all, and I am not sure it will, ride is 290 ish miles and 19000' of up offroad.

I had a feeling it might be a damp finger in the air job, and given I am asking companies for money I want it to be as accurate a guess as I can guess :/ Tricky.

I've seen various rough "rules of thumb" on here over the years including the suggestion that 1km off road was equal to 1 mile on (although I seem to recall that was for flat terrain).

As soon as you start to introduce hills, terrain (smooth gravel -> -> -> full on gnar-core) and type of bike (XC / trail bike vs enduro for example) the calculations all fall to bits.

Thanks @crazy-legs I had a feeling that might be the case, this is some full on stuff at the beginning and (I hope but suspect not too much) gravelly bits in the middle and meh at the end so a whole gambit of riding.

Sounds like a guessing game will ensue but thank you all for the input, it helps, or at least reassures me a guess is as good as it gets :/

James

I agree it’s impossible to quantify for the general case.

Could you estimate how long it would take you to ride the event? Then estimate how far you’d get on road with similar effort levels.

What about looking at calorie consumption from your Strava history?

I'd assume something like two hrs hard road riding = one hr "hard" mountain biking, assuming you aren't spending most of those two hours tucked inside a large peleton on the road and the mountain biking requires zone 4 or above HR.

Fwiw if you are putting together information for sponsorship, especially if it's for organisations which are not already knowledgeable about what you are doing, then I think a road cycling equivalent is probably less relatable than other comparisons. I'd be more tempted by relating the metrics to known things (eh how many times up Scafell / Empire State building or something, London to Paris distance) 

I’d say it also depends on trail conditions and weather too.

Weather a major consideration. I did the Coast to Coast (200)road miles and that felt really tough as it was solo with a tough head wind in long flat sections. (Strava says 14 others but that was for parts of it, there was a very long flat section with massive head winds). It felt equivalent to the off road ride also pictured. The off road was harder, but the weather conditions helped almost equalise it. If the wind wasn’t so strong and I wasn’t solo, the road would have been a lot easier and faster….(single speed didn’t help)
The SDW ride was off road and bikepacking on a heavy bike and was day 3 of a fairly long set of days. Might help give a view in terms of height climbed, distance ridden and calories burned.

Thanks @w00dster that's a useful comparison and agree @riklegge (for the record 4.5 times Ben Nevis or 1 x Mount Kilimanjaro 😉

There are a few road bikes in the sponsors I am going to ask hence trying to make it a little more obvious it is a little more than a road bike ride 🙂

Thanks all really useful input.

James 

Bloke in our club who was into all the cycling tech and statistics said MTB was about 3x harder than road riding.  Think this was based on a power meter, but as said above there will be a lot of variables on the day.

You could put the route into komoot, it would give an idea of time for various fitness levels. But that's only a rough guide too, a wet bog can be slower than walking, let alone road biking...

Thanks @tthew and you've given me an idea @thecaptain as I could use Komoot to compare road to offroad route and time #fabulous

Thanks all

I always think of it as 2.5 to 1. That's related to the sort of riding I do though, Cannock Chase off piste and Staffordshire Shropshire roads.

The off road depends on the type of tracks as well, you will cover much more gravel miles on easier tracks, compared to trickier singletracks.

Roadbike miles to singletrack mtb is easily 2:1 distance wise for the same time/effort.

From my strava history my rides are twice as fast on a road bike compared to a mountain bike but the average mountain bike ride has twice the elevation.

For the sorts of mtb rides I do at the moment -- at a guess, an equal amount of road, rough gravel, and moderate tech singletrack -- I'd say 100km equals 100 miles of road riding, given an equal amount of climbing and assuming trail conditions are OK.

Overall, I'd say, assuming the same elevation change:

the easiest mtb rides are about 1.5 times harder than road riding assuming good trail conditions. Decently surfaced forestry roads -- i.e. literal gravel riding -- is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 but aren't really mtb;

really steep and techy stuff and/or bad conditions like constant bogs or deep snow, and mtb can probably get to a limit of about 4 times harder than road riding. I say limit as, if you are averaging less than 3-4mph -- i.e. a fourth of a reasonable speed on the roads over a long ride -- then it's probably more of a walk than a ride.

So a range of 1.5-4 seems reasonable to me.

Decently surfaced forestry roads — i.e. literal gravel riding — is somewhere between 1 and 1.5 but aren’t really mtb;

<Cough> Gatekeeping <Cough> 😉

Thanks for all the kind viewpoints and I think the answer of "it depends" is valid and as I don't actually know what tracks I am going to be hitting, many I am riding for the first time, I simply don't know but for the purposes of comparison (to get money from corporate sponsors( go for the biggest obviously 🙂

There is going to be a lot of uphill, 19000', and that scares me more than the distance to be honest but lots of time to train and get fitter and lots of hills to ride before then.

Thanks again all.

19,000'????
That's nearly a yearful!

Yes @bigjohn it's quite big as rides go, first couple of days are 5000'+ hence I am already training for it but it's for a charity I really care about so time to dig deep 🙂 

James

Climbing is always the limiting factor rather than distance.

Once you get to 3,000m/10,000ft it becomes a big day.

The other thing is the ratio, m/km (must be a similar ft/miles ratio)

Anything above 20m/km it becomes tough (Calderdale averages), 30m/km takes you into Lakes territory.

I have done 19'000ft in a day, but that was for the Old 240 Audax which was ~240 miles in 24 hours
Thats 15m/km or 76ft/km

Based on how far I can go in an hr round the pentlands compared to on road at similar effort, I’d say 2:1 is fair

Dammit 502 error lost my long post.

London to Luxembourg and as much climbing as Killamanjaro would be my suggestion.

Bloke in our club who was into all the cycling tech and statistics said MTB was about 3x harder than road riding.

I've always doubled it as a rule of thumb, but I'll take 3 times!

Anything above 20m/km it becomes tough (Calderdale averages)

When I lived just down the hill from Hepstonstall I had a ride from the door that was 1000m climbing in under 5km. Some places; the averages just don't apply. 😂

Thanks all, much appreciated. Thankfully my 19000 is over a the first three days mostly, so get that out the way and a little less stressful for the final three.

A single day doesn't worry me, but 6 days back to back scare the hell out of me hence training already 🙂

Nor possible surely? Too many variations. To me MTB feels easier as there is an awful lot of freewheeling where as the road is a place to push on.