Cyclists-Expert advice appreciated!

No expert here. I just bought a road bike, which I'm learning to love, but my first, and true love is my mountain bike. Most important thing is fit. Get one that fits, by someone who knows what they're doing. I'm on the short side, and once you get the right fit, ahhhh, there's nothing like it. Test ride if you can, get an idea of how much you want to spend. You can get a decent bike for around a thousand. Others, who know much, much more than I on this will chime in. It's what you can afford. My new road bike is sweet, I can lift it over my head and do presses with it. I just need to gain experience and confidence, it all comes with time. Ride on!:flowerforyou:

Ditch the road bike idea and get a mtn bike :-)

Why? The OP stated that he wants to ride distances, a road bike is far more suitable for this than a mountain bike. mountain bikes are great for riding trails, they're built with sturdy, heavy frames for a reason. A road bike (whether it's aluminum or CF) will be lighter, faster and more comfortable for riding long distances.

Aren't you sharp as a tack. It was a joke.

See what I did there? ;-)

Ditch the road bike idea and get a mtn bike :-)

OP says he wants to do road riding, not mountain biking.

It was a joke, boss.

I have some knowledge, since cycling is my cross training sport of choice.
I dont train to be pro at cycling, but I do train for competitive inline speed skating, which is quite close.

When you say "long distance", you should specify the amount of hours you want to workout per session.

Road cyclist, in my eyes, are ****ing insane in terms of distances. What some cyclist call "fondo" it's actually more like an ultra marathon or a "grand fondo", talking about waaay over 2-3 hours of riding. From what I've seen, that's usually the norm for road cyclists. Based off your profile pic, you would have to lose sh*tloads of muscle to compete at those distances. And even if you do not compete, you will have to have spot on nutrition to not lose as much as you are gaining at the gym.

I am a long distance junkie, don't get me wrong. But, for me, that means 2 hours max. per session. Anything over that... it's not long distance. It's more like ultra long distance.

My point is that you'll want to focus on a distance (based on hours, more than km) and train for that. Explore for yourself and understand what you like and what you don't. I'm just telling you the reason why I can't train with my local road cycling club, even though I train real hard to compete and I'm stronger at shorter distances than most of their riders. But when you do rides over two hours long, the body requirements change to a whole different level. What gets you riding fast, wont get you riding long. And what gets you riding long, won't get you riding over 90-120mins.

In terms of bike setup, I would recommend you to get a new bike. If you knew enough of the sport, or one of your friends was pro at cycling materials, you might get a good deal off of craiglist. But if you don't have access to that knowledge, I would go for the cheapest of the mid range quality bikes if you are on a budget, or aim for a ~1000$ bike if you can invest a bit more. Those will be cheap bikes, but you can find really good bikes in that range. Anything over 1500$ will more than probably be top quality non carbon materials. Carbon get the costs to rocket sky high, for really small margins of improvement, so I would avoid it for any entry level bike, even top quality ones. Also, anything under 800$ probably wont have enough quality for you.

With that in mind, I would go to local stores, and spam them with questions. The store that can stand those million questions without a problem, or feeling awkward, will be the one you should buy from. That's what you actually need as a newbie, someone who can teach you the sport, not someone who can sell you a bike. Almost anyone could do that, imo, even someone who has no freaking idea. Just be a little skeptical, and you'll be fine.

I hope this helped. I don't read the forum very often, so if you have any question regarding training or anything else, feel free to send me a message or a friend request. I'll be happy to help in anything I can.

Happy riding.

bump

Ditch the road bike idea and get a mtn bike :-)

Why? The OP stated that he wants to ride distances, a road bike is far more suitable for this than a mountain bike. mountain bikes are great for riding trails, they're built with sturdy, heavy frames for a reason. A road bike (whether it's aluminum or CF) will be lighter, faster and more comfortable for riding long distances.

^^This, so true. And, you know, it's okay to have more than one bike for different rides. Really.

I.........I just can't. Have a nice day.

You're fooling yourself, Pedal pusher. You know you really want to put on that spandex and deal with cars being in the way.:bigsmile:

For starters, you're going to want to figure out what size you need...likely you will need to go get fitted. Having a bike that is too small or too big means not very much fun riding.

I currently own a cross bike...when I got into all of this I really sat down and thought about what I was likely to be doing most of the time. I ultimately determined that while I would love a road bike, most of my riding would be done on rougher roads (not well maintained rural roads) so a road bike was going to be pretty brittle for that task. I ultimately went with a cross bike...I throw commuter slicks on it for road riding and I've done a couple 1/2 centuries on it...I'm not going to win the Tour de Anything with this bike, but I have fun and finish rides. I'm planning on a full century next spring.

Bonus is that I actually got into cyclocross racing which wasn't even on my radar...I simply went with the cross bike because it had a similar geometry to a road bike but was a bit more heavy duty...discovering actual cross racing was a hug bonus. My 2nd season starts up here in a couple weeks and I am pumped....

All that said, if you're really wanting to race road...either endurance or criteriums, you're going to need a road bike. I'd personally start in the used market...you're still going to drop some cash for a good used road bike, but not nearly as much as you will new...and you can use this purchase to help determine what if anything you will need in the future.

Find a Felt Dealer and see if they have a Z100 in your size. Fantastic entry level endurance bike at under $800. With helmet/shoes/shorts/etc figure on spending $1200 out the door and into your new addiction

http://www.feltbicycles.com/USA/2015/Bikes/road/endurance/z100.aspx

What do you mean? lol.

6366kcal... WTF!
Two full hard training days worth of calories... in one session. Exactly, that's what I mean!
My goodness, that is insane :P

The max distance I've rode is 130km, and I felt pretty sick after it. Almost like if I could feel my muscles eating themselves. It just doesn't feel right to me, lol.
Kudos for the 100mil ride!

1. Yes, to the LBS. Go in tell them what you want to spend, then discuss what you are getting for your money, and what you'd get for less and/or more. A good bike shop won't try and just sell you want you want.

2. No, you don't (or won't) have to lose large amounts of muscle to be a distance rider. The muscle won't benefit you much but unless you are REALLY serious I wouldn't worry about it. My husband races MTB and is still a pretty muscular guy.

3. I second the recommendation to think about a CX bike instead of a road. What kind of terrain are you riding? I'm looking at one just because most of my road riding will be done in the winter when conditions aren't the best.

4.And disk brakes are awesome.