How to turn your mountain bike into a road bike

The first thing to do is to remove those draggy, knobbly tyres and fit some slicks, that’ll make the biggest difference to your overall speed.

If you can, lock-out the forks or even consider fitting some fully rigid ones. They’ll be significantly lighter and you won’t waste energy bobbing up and down.

• What’s the difference between a road bike and a mountain bike?
• Does mountain biking help your road cycling?
• Mountain biking versus road cycling: Which is best for developing bike speed and strength?

You won’t need the massive spread of gears that a mountain bike typically has on the road so fit a smaller range cassette. This will save you a bit of weight but, more significantly, the smaller jumps between gears will allow you to maintain a more even cadence.

Look at how you can make your position on the bike more aerodynamic as an upright mountain biking posture is going to cost you a lot of speed, especially into a headwind. Fit narrower handlebars or even cut down your existing ones. You can go slightly narrower than your shoulder width but this will compromise the off-road capabilities of your bike. A longer stem should also allow you to get a bit lower but can also affect off-road handling.

I’ve seen people fit aerobars to an MTB, but you’ll probably also have to adjust saddle height, saddle fore/aft and stem length to get a decent position. Totting up the financial and potential time costs from all these tweaks, a second-hand road bike could be a better option.

More bike advice

• £500 road bikes: 3 of the best reviewed
• What type of mountain bike is best for an off-road triathlon or duathlon?
• When should I upgrade to a tri bike?
• The best road bikes for triathlon
• Mountain biking: do bigger wheels make you faster?
• What should triathletes look for when buying a mountain bike?

220 Triathlon Team Journalists, reviewers, coaches and athletes

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The 220 Triathlon team is made up of vastly experienced athletes, sports journalists, kit reviewers and coaches. In short, what we don't know about multisport frankly isn't worth knowing! Saying that, we love expanding our sporting knowledge and increasing our expertise in this phenomenal sport.