What are they and which should you do?
The second part is easy - all of them!
As to what they are:
Road cycling
This is the oldest, most prestigious and generally most accessible form or riding. Most useful too, in that you can get around riding on the road.
One good bike is all you need, until you reach under 19's and adult competition when you might want a TT bike as well.
Competing in road cycling means joining a school team or club, then working your way up to Tour de France.
You can stick your road bike on a indoor trainer. This is handy when it rains. You can do virtual rides using Zwift.
Track cycling
A friendly cousin of road cycling, track cycling involves riding around in an oval really fast.
You need a completely different bike for this. It's like a road bike but much simpler, with only one gear and no brakes.
Like road cycling you can compete through school or club, but it's a little more complex because you need to be near or travel to a velodrome.
It's worth it, because it's a lot of fun. And you can work your way up to an Olympic medal.
Mountain biking
In New Zealand it seems like mountain biking (MTB for short) is considered the coolest type of biking, and maybe is the most popular. It's a common site to see a family set of mountain bikes on the back of a car heading out of the city on holiday weekends.
It's also a good way to break your neck.
Mountain biking is like a distant relative of road cycling. It's younger, first emerging in the 70's and getting more evolved from the ‘90’s.
MTB bikes still bikes, they have brakes and gears but are very different aside from that. There are different types of mountain bikes too, depending on whether you ride cross-country (XC), downhill or down and up hills.
Most mountain biking involves visiting a mountain bike park. There are clubs too, and a school mountain biking competition. Cross-country MTB is an olympic sport - go NZ!
Gravel
Gravel is like a brother of road cycling. The looser, kinda cool but less serious sibling.
There are a few places around NZ where you can do gravel rides. People you like gravel riding are really crazy about it.
Jona doesn't have a gravel bike, but has done some gravel rides on his MTB. A gravel bike is like a road bike with wider tyres and probably different gears.
