Читать книгу Tour Climbs: The complete guide to every mountain stage on the Tour de France - Chris Sidwells - Страница 22

Mountain bikes have triple chainsets and very low gears, but their tyres are designed to grip in even worse conditions than cyclo-cross tyres, so they are especially heavy and will cause excessive drag on the hard-surfaced roads of the mountain climbs.

You need to swap these for what mountain bikers call slicks. They are the same diameter as normal mountain bike tyres, but come in a number of widths. As a general point wider tyres are more comfortable to ride on than narrow ones, but no mountain bike slicks are that narrow for this to become an issue. So go for the narrowest you can get.

Otherwise your mountain bike is excellent for climbing mountains, and especially good for descending them. Mountain bikes have a low centre of gravity and they are longer than the equivalent-sized road bike, so they are very secure when cornering.