What Mountain Biking + Climbing Taught me about Mountain Running

Life Lessons in Cross-Training

For the last 6 months, I’ve been training for the Kusam Klimb—a 26km trail run up and over Mount H'Kusam with 1500m elevation. With 1.5kms of the trail being technical downhill terrain off the back of the mountain, followed by 5.5kms down loose logging roads, I’ve had to train moving quickly through unstable terrain. 

This is where my experience with mountain biking surfaced to support my training. I already have experience moving quickly down technical terrain on my mountain bike—and I’m moving much faster on a bike. That’s key. 

Life lesson # 1: Momentum + Selecting your Line 

When mountain biking, especially through rooty, rocky terrain it’s important to maintain your momentum, which totally feels unnatural. When you get scared and uncertain, naturally you want to slow down and control your movement, but when you do that on your mountain bike you’re more likely to fall. Instead, when you maintain momentum and feed your front tire the terrain, your bike glides over the obstacles effortlessly. 

The same is true for mountain running.  

Pick a line and commit to it, maintaining your speed. When you brake heavily, leaning back, your feet are more likely to slide out from underneath you. Especially when you’re on loose terrain like the logging road. 

While mountain biking helped me with my downhill training, my climbing experience has benefitted my uphill. Since 8km of the race is up a 25%+ incline, you must have strong, powerful legs to move quickly uphill. But there’s an art to moving efficiently uphill without burning out. And what is climbing if not moving up the steepest terrain there is. 

Life lesson # 2: Take Small, Incremental Steps 

The biggest mistake beginner climbers make, on the trail and on the wall, is to take large, powerful steps—like walking up the stairs two at a time. Do that over and over and over and your legs are going to burn out. Instead, you want to take small incremental steps. 

You’re probably not very invested in my training program, but since you’re here you probably enjoy personal development. You might even see exercise as a form of personal development like I do. That’s exactly why I bring this up. While cross training has benefitted my race prep, cross training exists within our lives as well. When you grow in one area of your life, that growth rarely stays confined within that one specific area and instead usually tends to spill out into all other areas of your life. 

When you practice yoga regularly, you might notice your body becoming more flexible. That flexibility doesn’t only exist in your hamstrings. Your mind becomes more flexible too, able to adapt when things don’t go according to plan. Your personality becomes more flexible, able to see others’ point of view, even if you don’t agree, without getting offended or outraged. 

When you lift weights regularly and you get stronger, that strength doesn’t only exist in your bicep, but rather you have more inner strength and are better able to stand up for yourself. Your values get stronger and you’re more comfortable saying no to things that don’t align with those values. When you grow your range of what you can lift you grow your range of what you can tolerate, better managing stress as it arises. 

As I’m writing this, I’m one week out from Race Day, and I’m realizing the training was never just about preparing for one race; although a sub-four-hour time was the goal for the training, this was just the game within the game. The real goal, the ultimate game, is to live a life well-lived. To gather lessons along the journey, and the lesson I’m gathering now is how different disciplines subtly teach the same principles in different languages. Mountain biking teaches me to trust momentum even when the terrain feels unsteady. Climbing teaches me that small, incremental progress gets me where I want to go faster and more efficiently than big, bounding strides. 

Maybe that’s the real nature of cross training—not just between sports, but between all the ways we practice being human. The body learns one lesson on the trail, the mind translates it in daily life, and eventually you start to notice the overlap everywhere: in how you handle uncertainty, how you pace yourself through difficulty, how you choose your line and commit to it. If I’m taking anything into race day it’s this: the training was never just physical, it was training me to navigate the myriad of terrain that is the human experience.