Road Bikes are Over-Rated
I got a road bike about 6 weeks ago, and have been using it on and off. I also use a trainer and go to spinning classes, but live in the Northeast so riding outdoors is not the norm unless it's warm out. Haven't had any problems with the road bike - can get a good sweat on it, and rarely fell over, even on my first time on it. Have gone up to 90 mins on it
I'm not sold on it. It's not bad, but I far prefer my trainer. I can go much, much harder and focus on power, which seems to be the most critical thing.
I heard a ton about the "technique" benefits from riding the road bike, and I'll agree that you need a lot more technique to hold a line on the road bike compared to the trainer. But, it's not THAT hard, and as well, I seriously question if it's that important to have a bike-riding degree of balance anyway. To me, the degree of line-holding is irrelevant to real-world trainer riding. Far more important in fast spinning classes are fast reaction times and experience. The rapid swerves you need to pull out when someone in front of you goes down (has happened to me) have nothing to do with trainer skills. I feel a bit like road riding skills are like knowing to do wheelies - more difficult to real world riding, but largely irrelevant in terms of actual training and spinning.
Someone convince me to keep riding this road bike.