Road Cycling - My first ride ever on a road bike

Wow, much more comfortable riding position than on my hybrid and the ride wasn't as harsh as I would've thought, OTOH, it's a 10 year old lugged steel frame :) Anyways, the bike felt faster than a hybrid and I liked the drop handlebars, they have so many hand positions to offer. Too bad it's still dusty and/or wet around here (they put gravel(?) on the roads here to make the roads less slippery during winter), I wont be riding this bike before it's a little drier and the dust has been washed off by rain, but anyway I liked the idea of a road bike and I think everybody should give it a try!

If no one else is going to say it, I guess I should:

Welcome to the great drop bar family! Ain't it great?:D

Welcome to the "club". Road bikes are all I own. :D

Riding a road bike after riding a hybrid is kind of like changing from a big family sedan car to a sports car. More fun, fast, and exciting.

Originally posted by Ovara
Wow, much more comfortable riding position than on my hybrid ...

I would have said, "SEVERAL much more comfortable riding positionS ..." The availability of 5 or 6 distinct hand positions is the greatest benefit of drop bars. For the record, I have three drop-bar road bikes and one mountain bike, all with steel frames.

Originally posted by John E


I would have said, "SEVERAL much more comfortable riding positionS ..."

Yeah, that's what I actually meant :) Today I rode a 5 mile round-trip to my friends house and back on my hybrid and it felt like a tractor or something, can't get a nice hand position at all. Tomorrow I might ride the road bike again if the weather permits, I hope it will. By the way, it's amazing how nice a well kept 10 year old road bike can be, it has Dura-Ace components (except for 600 STI-shifters) and the shifting works very smoothly, I also kind of liked the frame and overall handling, though I'm not all familiar with the bike yet, only 15 miles ridden on it. Anyway, looking forward to summer and daily rides :)

If you want to keep the hybrid as a "beater," consider putting drop bars on it. A cheaper option would be mountain bike bars with extensions, which at least would give you 2 or 3 positions.

After riding my road bike, riding my MTB feels like driving a bus. Don't get me wrong -- it's a GREAT mountain bike -- but those fat tires, heavy forks and flat bars do take some getting used to. I guess that's why I've started riding a cross bike on the dirt.

My everyday commuter, well most days, is a hybrid that I have completely rebuilt into more or less a 'cross bike/tourer. About the only original parts are the frame and seatpost. Even though it is quite heavy with rack, fenders, lights, etc., with slick 25 mm tires it feels pretty much the same as my road bikes. Narrower tires and a drop bar make a huge difference.

Congrats, Ovara! IMHO, steel road bikes rock! I have two of them, an 11 year old Fuji Roubaix, and a 12 year old Schwinn Paramount, and I dearly love them!! I started with a hybrid, just as in your case, but I knew there had to be more to this biking thing! As a matter of fact, three bikes, 2 sets of tires, over 3,000 miles, and exactly one year ago today, I took my first bike ride! And this year I will do better!! Keep having fun out there, you won't regret it!!

Since I started riding a real road bike, I find it very uncomfortable to ride upright with traditional or straight bars. Just today, I picked up a used road bar for $15 to put on my old lugged-steel frame bike, which I completely overhauled and now use in crappy weather conditions. I already had a pair of used brake levers which I found a few months ago, so I am set to go.

Yes, road biking is great.

I've just gotten into it in the last year and I'm a young guy (It isn't "cool" to ride a road bike according to my friends.) Then I just go flying by them, and they seem to close their mouths very quickly....
that is until we reach the gravel path
heheh.

I switched from a hybrid to a roadbike this year too and it is GREAT.Getting use to a different saddle,roadpedals and and walking in roadshoes have been the biggest things to get use to.The riding position feels much more comfortable.I love the feel of grabbing the brakehoods especially when standing up to pedal.I'm using the hybrid for the Tunnel Hill Trail (rails to trails) and bad weather.Drops are great.I used newk combo drop/barends http://www.newkbike.com/pr.htm to get me through for a fews years,but theres no sub for a roadbike.KC

See my story is a little different from most of yours. I have been ridding road sence i was 8. I'm 15 now and just started MTB. Love my road bike and most of all my nice yellow c'dale tandum (road), but im finding that MTB is much better sence i moved to the country!!! not to many roads :) but i will forever love my road, just as much if not a bit more than my MTB.

:beer: to a nice road and the ride that fallows

Jared

Road cycling is the greatest form of cycling. You will spend many hours on your road bike and love each and every minute of it!

Ovara -

Welcome to the roadie world. I am a reformed MTB'er, and I gotta say that I love the road (even after being creamed by a van).

Also, don't knock steel lugged frames - they are a work of beauty - Cologno and Waterford make beautiful bikes. The biggest difference is that lugged frames won't have a "compact" geometry.

Anastasia

Wow. After reading your posts I know what will be my next thing to discover. I’ve never tried a road bike, but I thought about it today. You see, I biked a 83 km mainly on the countryside. The weather was excellent and the roads literally EMPTY! It was wonderful, but I was still on my hybrid... I guess a roadbike would really add to the experience, not to mention the speed.

BTW Ovara, I guess you have the same lovely weather in Finland as we have in Sweden now, happy riding! :)

The first time I rode a road bike i was amazed. They are so efficient and instead of pounding down on the pedals to reach speeds of 15 like on a mountain bike you pedal slowly and steadally and reach speeds of 20+ with ease. The ride is so smooth and using a road bike makes those 100 mile rides easy. I remember the first time i road 100 miles on a road bike, it was hard but it was a breeze at the same time. The farthest I've ever road on a mountain bike is 75 miles and those 75 seemed so much longer than the 100 on the road bike. Road is the only thing i ride now.

Riding my vintage 10 speed this weekend for the first time, oh man did I get sore. The riding position needs a little tweaking by raising the bars about an inch. Heavier riders with more "up front" need to beware of bearing too much weight on the joints. I think once I lose about another 10 or so pounds, I'll be able to bring it down again.

The wind was miserable this weekend. Guess I'm somewhat of a fair weather rider... at least for now. :rolleyes: I decided to lay off and observe other riders coming down A1A which is a very popular riding road. Probably saw a hundred bikes. What I observed were mostly male riders (about 80% male) riding with locked elbows on the hoods. In my mind, that has to be very uncomfortable and not very healthy for the upper body joints. I mean, what's up with that? Of course female riders were stretched out too far and likewise locked elbows. Maybe it's because I'm pushing 50 and I feel the road long after I'm off the road more than someone younger, but how can one ride more than a few miles like that?

Another observation was that road bikers of all ages are thin. Not just fit, but lean. Now did they get thin by cycling or were they thin before they took up the sport? I'm talking 99% were that way. There was this one young woman riding in a pack who was very large. She stuck out like a sore thumb in her cycling shorts and too tight jersey. And you know what?? She impressed me more than the lot of them cuz she had to get over herself big time to do that. Not only was she riding, she was riding with other cyclists which means she had to seek them out. Kudos.

Scuse the rambling. I'll ramble outta here now.

Kathy

Originally posted by Altwegg
Road cycling is the greatest form of cycling. You will spend many hours on your road bike and love each and every minute of it!
I totally agree with Altwegg, once you have tried riding a road bike you won't ride another kind of bike be it an MTB a hybrid or a recom, no offense meant on all those riders

If you have a drop bar bike which can take wider tyres, you can ride on just about any conditions. Fit 25mm for fine days, and 32mm for gravel or winter riding.

Its surprising how much off-road riding you can do on a road bike. I took my brothers Canondalw with 25mm rubber on long rides over farm tracks.

In my experience there's a place for both my road bike and my mountain bike.

The place for my road bike is on the road. The place for my mountain bike is in the shed, although it does come out when the weather gets really nasty.

Guess i`m another one joining the - my hybrid seems so slugish now - club .
Having owned my road bike for several weeks, i am afraid it has relegated my poor old faithfull hybrid into a mere shopping trolley.
That is the only journey`s it has made lately , i look at it with sadness and step aboard my shinny, sleek, fast road bike .
I glance at my hybrid almost with a tear in my eye, it seems to be looking at me and saying "please ride me" ahhhh, sobbbb,

Life can be so cruel to poor old cycles :)

Sometimes you want the smooth luxury ride and practicality of a big cadillac, others you want the all out speed and road feel of a ferrari. So why not have one of each? I'm not trading in my all around general purpose comfort bike for a road bike. They both serve their purposes.

Kathy

The first time I ever rode a road bike, I fell off, forgetting to take my feet out of the straps on the pedals. That didn't stop me though because I liked the ride so much that I had to get me one.