Originally Posted by
Steve Sawyer
I find myself running a lot in urban settings that may not be the ideal glass-smooth surface that I associate with road biking. Sections of bad pavement, debris, railroad tracks, curbs etc. are all things that I encounter from time-to-time, and I'm wondering if a road bike is in any way contra-indicated for these kinds of environments?
Not in my experience.
I live in the city, and I work in the city. (Hell, I work in da 'hood.) Most of my cycling is in the city. I commute by bike daily. I haven't missed a workday of bike commuting since July 2006. And yes, I live on a Great Lake and that includes lake-effect.
All I own are road bikes.
Modern road bikes, sensibly equipped, are not the frail little flowers many folks make them out to be.
Mainly it's wheels that need to be sensible and take your weight into account. Yes, I once bent a rim. I was drafting an SUV at over 35MPH and hit a pothole. The pothole had a little collection of hubcaps nearby too. Was the bent rim the bike's fault? I'd argue it wasn't.
(Now that I think about it, there was another time I bent a rim. That was when I was t-boned by a Pontiac. Again, not the bike's fault.)
Debris you handle by riding around what you can, and using puncture-resistant tires.
Bad pavement, railroad tracks and whatnot are best handled by using your knees and elbows as suspension. When encountering bad pavement, lift your butt out of the saddle and let the bumps lift the bike up to you. You do this by keeping loose and relaxed. If the bump is pushing up only the bike, there's no problem. When the bump is pushing up the bike and then the bike has to push you up, yeah, it's rough on the bike (and your back). Using this technique, I don't even slow down for speed bumps. Six inches of butt clearance for a four inch speed bump, leaves me room to spare at 25 MPH.
Curbs? Why are you riding on the sidewalk? Once in the past 30,000 miles I had to jump a curb as an emergency maneuver. I bunny hopped it, same as you would a pothole. When I use sidewalks on the way to parking, I use the wheelchair ramp at the corner. If I'm mid-block, I stop and lift the bike. There's no reason to abuse any bike--road, MTB or BMX--by crashing over curbs. Although when leaving parking, I do ride off curbs--sensibly.
I started out on a hybrid. (And yes, I once rode a 72 mile ride on it. It can be dons. But it was sheer torture.) One of the reasons I started on a hybrid is that it seemed more rugged. Hogwash. All it was, was heavy and ponderous. I had more wheel trouble with the hybrid than I have with all my road bikes combined--including the aforementioned bent rims.
So don't worry about riding a roadie in the city.