Bike Selection for New Rider
I am 59 and my wife is 55 years old. We have just this year lost 140 lbs between us (most of it me) and have gotten in shape. We both work out at the gym six or seven days a week.. We do a half hour cardio to warm up and an hour of weigh training 3 days a week. On the other days we do between 1 and 1.5 hours of cardio training... After all that leadin, here's my question.
We have decided to buy ourselves bicycles for Christmas. Most of our riding will be on pavement. We live in a rural suburban area near Fredericksburg, VA where the "bike routes" follow secondary roads with no shoulder and many blind curves. Rather than taking our chances with the pick-um-up trucks and their sport of trying to hit cyclists with their mirrors, we plan to start our riding by taking the bikes to the battlefield parks within our area. There we can do 15 to 20 miles on well maintained, little traveled roads. We plan to work up to doing 30 to 40 mile trips on places like the Mt Vernon trail and the W&OD trail.
I've received advice that we should buy a comfort bike or a hybrid. Last saturday we went by our local bike shop where he let us test ride bicycles through the adjacent subdivision. We tried a Trek comfort bike and a Trek hybrid and a road bike. We much prefer the hybrid.
Does anyone have any recommendations regarding a Trek 7300? I went on the internet and did a comparison between the 7300 and the 7200. The primary difference seems to be different types of deraileur mechanisms, but those differences don't mean anything to me.
I would appreciate any comments or advice... Thanks... Jim