Cross country mountain biking is a fun way to get out on the trails and enjoy nature, work on your fitness level, and even compete against other riders. It’s also the perfect mountain bike discipline for group rides, and a good way to get your start in mountain biking. Unsure whether XC riding is right for you? Read on to find out more.
Cross country mountain biking: the basics
Cross country mountain biking as a discipline
Cross country, or XC, mountain biking is a riding style and discipline of mountain biking that typically involves riding on flatter trails usually with a focus on speed and distance traveled, instead of rough and difficult terrain.
XC mountain biking can involve riding on winding singletrack trails, fire roads, through fields, and just about everything in between. Cross country riding also often involves both climbs and descents, which can even be steep, but often times are mellower and less demanding compared to trails ridden in other types of mountain biking like downhill or enduro riding.
Where both downhill and trail riding tend to focus more on riding difficult terrain and steep descents, cross country riding is much more about getting through less technical terrain quickly and efficiently.
Cross country mountain biking can be done in a variety of landscapes, and through a variety of seasons. XC style riding is the most popular type of winter mountain biking because of the relatively flatter terrain it involves.
Cross country mountain bikes
While different types or disciplines of mountain biking often use mountain bikes with particular characteristics, there is no hard and fast rule about what a cross country bike looks like.
Hardtails
Most cross country bikes are hardtails, meaning they have a suspension fork in the front, but a rigid rear (meaning no rear suspension). Hardtails work well for cross country riders because they give them the best of both worlds in terms of suspension.
Suspension in the front can soak up a lot of the impacts from uneven trails and hitting obstacles, and the front suspension helps give a hardtail’s front wheel better traction.
And by having no rear suspension, hardtails maintain the pedaling efficiency that can be lost to pedal bob (when the rear suspension saps energy from your pedal strokes). This is useful for cross country mountain biking because unlike downhill, it involves lots of pedaling.
Also, because there hardtails do not have the rear shock as an extra component, this allows hardtails to be lighter compared to bikes with full suspension mountain bikes, important for
Full suspension
Some cross country riders do use full suspension bikes for cross country. Typically, riders using full suspension mountain bikes for this this type of riding stick with less suspension travel (100mm to 120mm) to avoid the pedal bob issue from the rear suspension and to make the bike more efficient for pedaling.
Shorter suspension travel
Regardless of whether cross country riders use a hardtail or full suspension, their cross country mountain bikes will usually have less travel in the front suspension as well compared to other bike types. Typically, this means somewhere in the range of 100mm to 120mm. By comparison, trail bikes usually have 120mm to 140mm of travel, and downhill bikes would have 140mm of travel or more.
This is because the trails most often ridden for XC riding are less severe in the types of obstacles and terrain found on them.
By having less suspension travel, even in the front, bikes are able to be more agile and faster for pedaling and climbing, both of which are important parts of cross country riding. This also helps to reduce how much the bike weighs.
Fully rigid
There are also cross country bikes that are fully rigid, meaning they have no suspension. By having no suspension, fully rigid bikes can be a harsher ride. These bikes typically don’t fare so well over rougher terrain, but they can work perfectly if all of your cross country mountain biking consists of smooth, flowy trails.
Wheel size
While most modern mountain bikes have wheel sizes of 27.5 inches or 29 inches, mountain bikes with 29 inch wheels, also known as 29ers, are increasingly becoming popular amongst cross country riders and other mountain bikers of all kinds.
A major reason why cross country bikes ridden today are more likely to have 29 inch wheels is the added roll speed they allow you to have. Given two mountain bikes of the exact same size except for their wheel size, typically the larger wheels will roll faster and outperform the other bike in terms of pedaling efficiency. Both roll speed and getting a lot out of your pedal strokes are keys to speed and fast times if you’re riding XC competitively.
Weight
For any cross country bike, its weight is an important consideration. Because cross country mountain biking is focused on distance and speed on relatively flat terrain, as opposed to the more technical terrain you’d hit on a trail bike or downhill mountain bike. any weight that can be saved helps to improve your efficiency on the trails.
This is one reason why the typical cross country mountain bike takes a minimalist approach to its suspension, because it saves weight.
Geometry
Downhill mountain bikes usually have the slackest head tube angles, and trail mountain bikes are also usually slack, but less so than downhill bikes. Slacker head tube angles help to keep the wheels of these bikes out in front of the rider on descents, and better equip them for tackling steep descents.
By contrast, cross country bikes have have steeper head tube angles, usually in the 67 to 71 degree range. This gives riders a feeling of being more on top of the front wheel, and helps to make cross country bikes better at climbing, by making it easier to put weight on the front wheel, and also more comfortable and efficient for pedaling longer distances on flatter terrain.
XC racing
Cross country racing is one of the oldest and well established forms of mountain bike racing. It is a test of not only a riders handling abilities, but even more so their fitness, endurance and mental fortitude.
Olympic cross country
Olympic cross country mountain bike racing involves timed laps, usually around 5km in length, that include a variety of climbing, descending, and flat sections of singletrack trail.
This type of race suits riders with excellent fitness, but good control over the bike, including on climbs and technical descents is also very important. It is a great test of both fitness and all-around riding skill.
Olympic cross country races start out with all riders starting from a start line at once, so maneuvering around and through other riders is a key skill in this type of racing, especially right off the start line.
Long distance cross country racing
There are also long distance or marathon cross country mountain biking races. Long distance mountain biking races can vary from around 30km at the low end of the range all the way up to around 150km for the most demanding races.
Obviously whether you participate in any of these types of races will depend on your own fitness and desire to slug it out over long distances.
Benefits of cross country mountain biking
Fitness benefits
Mountain biking in general is a great sport to participate in if you want to improve or maintain your physical fitness, and XC mountain biking is even better than other types in this regard.
The reason is the amount of pedaling involved in cross country MTB. It involves pedaling over relatively flat terrain, sometimes over quite long distances, with a focus on pedaling speed and efficiency instead of being able to handle technical terrain like trail riding and downhill.
Better endurance on long rides
Even if you just do cross country mountain biking some of the time, its fitness benefits should spill over and improve your stamina for when you go out for longer trail rides. Just think, by riding XC and improving your fitness level, you’ll be able to squeeze in that much more fun on every ride!
Popular for group rides
XC riding is a very popular style of MTB for group rides. If you’re the social type and like to link up with a group of riders and hit some trails, cross country mountain biking will probably be your best way to do this.
A key reason why XC is so popular for group rides is that its more accessible to a wider variety of riders. Not everyone is willing, able, or brave enough to go hit steep descents, or a trail with jump lines and other features requiring a lot of skill.
But most mountain bikers are more than willing to hit trails through relatively flat and non-technical singletrack. So for group rides, you have a bigger pool of riders to choose from.
Frequently asked questions
Trail mountain biking is geared more towards all around riding, whereas cross country mountain biking focuses more on riding relatively flatter, less technical terrain for speed and efficiency.
Trail riding can include cross country sections, but also usually includes rougher and more technical terrain, and can be more challenging in terms of the types of features, like jumps, drops and other features.
Cross country trails often include some climbs and descents, and these can even be steep, but the bulk of cross country riding is on flatter terrain.
Cross country MTB is easier in some ways than other types of mountain biking. For instance, XC trails are usually mellower than other types of trails and usually have less demanding terrain.
XC can be more difficult than other disciplines though, because of how physically demanding it is. XC is all about pedaling your way over distances quickly and efficiently, and it requires good fitness to excel, much more so than downhill or trail riding.
XC bikes can be expensive, but are usually more affordable than mountain bikes built for downhill, enduro or trail riding. This is because cross country MTBs tend to have less suspension in order to keep them lighter and more efficient for pedaling. They also do not usually require as powerful of brakes as downhill bikes.
The extra suspension and more powerful brakes required on other MTB types usually makes them more expensive relative to cross country bikes.
Conclusion
So if you want to put your fitness to the test, compete in XC races, or just want to get your feet wet in the sport of mountain biking, cross country is probably a riding style you will enjoy. It’s also a great way to meet other riders through group rides, and is a lower risk way to get your feet wet in mountain biking compared to more technically demanding disciplines like downhill. Go give it a try!