Commuters thinking about transitioning to Road Biking
 

Essentially I have been debating for a while trying to transition from casual commuting to road cycling and I am wondering if anyone else has been thinking about this. Today I stumbled across this thread in the Road Cycling section of BF and it was totally inspirational to me:

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=416312

A lot of roadies commute and a lot of commuters ride road bikes while commuting or on the weekend. Go for it. I love doing both.

They're all just bicycles. Good road bicycles are a thrill. Traveling fast and light on a responsive machine is great. But it's still just cycling. Go for it!

Thats how I started out. Do it!

I am a road cyclist who commutes when I can.

You'll find yourself going a lot faster on a road bike without all the extra luggage :)

If I ride my bike from home to work, then from work to a 40 mile group ride, and then back home, am I a roadie or commuter?

I'm planning on making the transition sometime soon.. but my goal is to be up front with a dress shirt and jeans on.

I'm completely serious.

Commuting is awesome training.

Yeah, it's a problem when the guy behind you grabs your tie to pull through.

I think so too.

Maybe I'm just being naive, but it's interesting to me that I don't see more people training with a heavy bike/gear setup to make it harder on themselves- it seems like the current thinking is to make it as easy as possible (light bike, no gear, clothing, etc).

Can someone explain this?

CMY - training on a light road bike is more fun. If you're racing, you're also used to working hard on your road bike, which is important.

I started out as a commuter and utility cyclist. No interest in road riding or racing. Then, I got an old road bike in late 2006. Last year, I started doing more riding and getting dropped from group rides. I got some bike shorts, and by late fall wasn't getting dropped on the B rides. This spring, I started training early (actually, this winter), raced a collegiate season and have done some of the dropping on the group rides I've made it to so far this year. I'm apparently transitioning into a full-on bike weenie. I now identify as much as an athlete as a commuter, if not more.

I couldn't have gotten into road cycling very easily without commuting and utility riding to ease me into it. It's a great way to get into cycling for sport! Go have fun!

When I lived in Winnipeg, I commuted with a heavy mtn bike, and then rode my long distance events on a somewhat lighter road bicycle ("somewhat" because I also carried gear with me on those long rides).

Now I do my commutes with basically the same setup as I do my long distance rides with. My current commutes are long distance training in themselves. :D

If you think of it as riding for transportation not just commuting to work it can be a great way to transition into road biking as a sport or merely for pleasure.

Next time you've got an appointment 25+ miles away- I think family gatherings or parties with friends are ideal- ride the bike and maybe arrange for a ride home with a friend with a bike rack or a car or truck that can carry your bike. Sometimes you can even throw a bag with a change of clothes in their car to change into once you get there. You'll find yourself going further and further on these rides. It's still transportation but it feels like you're just doing it for fun. Granted you could probably have just gotten a ride with the same person that gives you a ride home but it's just an excuse to ride.

I guess in a way it makes sense that if you train on a heavier bike you will get faster on a lighter bike. But when I do that I find myself gearing up to make my pedaling easier on my knees when I'm on my heavier bike. When I use my lighter bike I tend to gear down to make the resistance harder. So unless you are using a fixed gear/single speed bike or doing a lot of climbing where gearing up on a heavier bike is still harder than a lighter bike, its a wash.

The assumption is that a heavier bike would make you work harder. That's only true if you're going to ride at the same speed as you would on a lighter bike.

For me speed is motivating. For most of the year even on my commute I'm often trying to go as fast as I can go. Speed is the reward for working hard. On a heavier bike I go slower, therefore it's less motivating, therefore I don't work as hard. It's not quite as simple as that, but it often works out that way for me. I don't have a cyclocomputer on the MTB I use for commuting in the winter. I actually have an extra one sitting around I could put on it. I don't because I know I'm not going to set any personal bests with that bike, so I don't bother.

I also think it's best to train with a bike that behaves in a similar manner to the one you race with.

Well, I was coming from the assumption that gearing wouldn't come into play since that is always going to be a variable during a race and we're only looking at establishing a strong baseline- so yes, this would be conducted on a weighed down fixed/single speed bike.

I guess the idea occurred to me when I realized that I was being passed regularly by guys in full kit with road bikes that were much lighter than my own- obviously nothing new in this forum. While I understand that it makes it 'more fun' it almost seemed counter-productive to decrease resistance if you are looking for a hearty workout or to build endurance because I was progressively getting faster while in full street clothes, a slower bike, a heavy backpack and improperly pressurized tires. My body adapted to the situation given to it (even though I probably got some sneers along the way).

Yes, it's backwards from the status-quo (sigh), but I don't think it's far from the old hot-rod idea of taking a large engine and sticking it into a smaller car. A larger displacement engine will strain less and move faster when it's in a lighter chassis- why can't we be the same?

I am going from a raod bike to a hybrid..
i keep dropping my family on our family outings

YEAH i dropped a 6yo boy and a mom with a TAB I am a bad man

I'm in a similar phase as the OP and my conclusion (along with everyone else on this thread) is: go for it.

At the moment I only own a hybrid which I've basically ridden into the ground over the past year and a bit. Now that it's getting nice around here I have the strong urge to own a nice light road bike which will compensate for my weenie legs and allow me to keep pace with cars. Today I just found out that my next door neighbor wants to sell his old triathlon bike, which means I don't have to dig deep for a new road bike, gamble on a used bike from ebay, or settle for component upgrades on my current bike (which I would like to use as a commuter/beater bike anyways). Hooray cycling!

I commute on a "racing", road bike, i.e. the non-practical kind :).

If you use 700x23 tires, you'll have to keep your eyes peeled for potholes, pavement lips and the like. This can be difficult at night unless you have an obscenely bright light and even then, you can't see them that well. It would be better if you can fit at least 700x25 or 700x28 tires which you can run at a lower pressure while still protecting your rim.

If you get a road bike for commuting, you'll first have to ask yourself if you want to add half fenders or full fenders. If full, you will have to shop carefully. Also, if you want to add a rack and put 10-15lbs on it, you may want a wider, lower-pressure tire and a durable wheel.

What I want is a bike that combines the best features of your hybrid and my road bike. This would've been perfect. Bianchi seems to offer the exact same bike (frame & drivetrain) but with flat handlebars and shifters and as far as I can tell, it would be easy to set up the bike with drop bar shifters.

I am seeing some of the logic here. I had to bike a few miles with a low pressure rear tire the other day and found myself amazed at how much more force I had to exert to get up a hill. I think if you are desiring bigger muscles what you are saying makes a lot of sense. Your muscles will grow faster with more resistance.

I just remembered something else from my college weight lifting class. Fast twitch muscle fibers. Here is a website that talks about them a little:
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/a...eFiberType.htm

I would say look at the similarities between sprinting and cycling. You are essentially training the muscle to release a lot of power in a short explosive burst because speed is desired.

Going back to what you said
"looking to build endurance.. get faster" If you are going to do a long marathon cycling competition (days) , the training you are talking about may be useful because you are building endurance. That is as long as the weight being added from muscle growth does not have too adverse an effect on the overall speed. In the article I sited on fast twitch muscles, she says this which supports your theory:

"Our muscle fiber type may influence what sports we are naturally good at or whether we are fast or strong. Olympic athletes tend to fall into sports that match their genetic makeup. Olympic sprinters have been shown to possess about 80 percent fast twitch fibers, while those who excel in marathons tend to have 80 percent slow twitch fibers."

There is more emphasis on training slow twitch muscle fibers doing the training you are talking about, assuming I understand the science correctly based on what I have read. On another website it says this about slow twitch muscle fiber (http://www.brianmac.co.uk/muscle.htm):

"..have a slow contraction velocity, very resistant to fatigue and have a high capacity to generate ATP by oxidative metabolic processes."

I usually average about 18 mph on my commute, but the other day I traded pulls for about 10 miles with some hardcore roadies out for a morning ride, averaging 24mph!

It was intense, and when we got to the light at the end they both gave me kudos.

They don't realize I commute to train ;) even though I look like the Fredliest guy on earth.

I got into riding bikes from MTB and track racing. Commuting was a natural extension. I think that's pretty common.

Unless you're commuting through meadows and pastures, or through the forest, it's all road riding. While I have nothing against hybrids, mtn bikes or comfort bikes, going to a modern, conservatively-fitted "road bike" is going to feel like a revelation. Commuting or no commuting, why wouldn't anyone want to do it on the bike that takes you faster and goes furthest with the same amount of overall effort, and that has the added bonus of being a thrill to ride because it's so responsive.

I do both, I'm not a very good road cyclist though. It takes sooo much time.

There was a bike shop in the last town I lived in in the UK; the owner supposedly sawed through the frame of a bike and filled it with lead and rewelded it to make it heavier to train with. There is also a story that he tied one leg up so was only able to peddle with one foot and challenged 3 of the top local club riders and dropped them all with ease. He was always a loner and could have been a world champion but was never interested in winning or glory.:rolleyes:

I never gave much credence to the stories and I never went in more than once or twice due to his overbearing arrogance when dealing with mountain bike users.

I can see the attraction though of serious road biking. I was coming back from the LBS on Friday on my new Salsa, behind a guy all Fredded out, spitting and emptying his nose as he was going up these small hills like he was riding for King of the Mountains. He was on a quality looking road bike but had replaced the drop bars. Anyhow I stayed behind him until we came to the step hill and I passed him and greeted him with a hearty "halloooo", whilst he was puffing and going "Whoaahah" and I dropped him with ease. I never had my pack on and I realised how great and free I felt without it on. It was the first time I had ridden the bike outside of commuting.