Making the transition - from MTB to roadbike

homercles

Hi All

Inspired by the Tour's visit I've recently taken to cycling into work, the first time I've done any regular riding in the best part of 12 years. Now not only am I starting to annoy my colleagues by speaking about cycling like some sort of born again convert, but with the imminent introduction of a ride2work scheme here I'm eyeing a shiny new steed.

I currently commute on a front suspension MTB with 26"x1.0 tyres (Spec AC Pro) and am wondering about the possibility of getting a road bike for the first time ever. What I'm particularly keen to know about is how much this is likely to impact on my current travel speeds. Given that my commute is fairly traffic heavy (from Colliers Wood to C London), I tend to average about 16mph for the 9 mile trip.

In your wide experience, how much does the switch from MTB to road bike improve avg speed? For the sake of clarity let's assume traffic doesn't exist (sadly it does :x ) and speculate purely on how quick you go roadbike vs MTB for the same effort?

Ta

mea00csf

It makes a HUGE difference. Not sure i could quantify it but here are my experiences:

When i went from a mountain bike to a hybrid for commuting i couldn't believe how much easier it was.

Bought my road bike a few weeks ago, after a 55km ride on the road bike i felt fine, after 45km on the hybrid i thought i was going to die.

When trying out road bikes i tried my boyfriends road bike and he was on his mountain bike. He competes in triathlons, uses turbo trainers and is generally a much better cyclist than me. Over 20km i felt like i flew round on the road bike, he said when we got back it was the toughest 20k he'd ever ridden trying to keep up with me.

With no traffic on the flat i can easily cruise at about 35km/hr and i'm really not that great a cyclist. You will notice a massive difference, even if all you end up doing is putting thinner slick tyres on your mountain bike.

robbie the roadie

My two pence worth. Due to the constraints of heavy traffic and particualy trafic lights your average speed and journey time to work might not be much faster if at all but it will however require far less effort compared to riding your mtb even with slicks on. A road bike will also feel a bit zippier about the town then an mtb and will have you grinning more 8)

Join the fold and get a single speed/fixie style road bike

homercles

robbie the roadie wrote:

Join the fold and get a single speed/fixie style road bike

Cheers Robbie - had thought about that for a split second but I'm too scared of hills! I'm also quite intrigued by the prospect of doing some weekend road runs etc and think a road bike will encourage me to get out there more.

robbie the roadie

Yeah I have one and although they are great fun I wouldn't want it as my only bike

Smeggers

* Much less "stop - start" than an MTB (ie momentum)

* Hills you thought were nothing on a MTB are mountains on a roadie (harder gearing)

* Wind suddenly becomes noticable (due to higher speeds / aerodynamics)

* You'll' be surprised at the mad distances you cover.

* Acceleration much sharper on a roadie (lighter weights and less resistance).

Get one - you'll never look back!!

daniel_b

I am a newbie to the roadie scene also, and my own impressions is that it is ridiculously easy to push them along at a fast rate of knotts, and seems to require verly little effort :-)
Even up hills I am accelerating when I wasn't on the MTB :?

However your MTB has 1" tyres on you say, which equates to about a 25mm tyre, which is what most roadies will have on, mine has 23mm, and I think you an get 20's.
What pressure can you run your tyres at?

I reckon you manage your comute in around 34 minutes?
16MPH seems pretty impressive, so you must be pretty fit, so I would have thought you would look to get that average up to around 20mph, which would equate to a 27 minute commute - just my beginner calculations :oops:

I have a small commute, and as it is along cyclepaths and bridleways, and through parks, I have a trusty/cheap commuter flat bar bike, with mudguards, a rack and puncture resistant tyres (I hope)

If I had a commute of your distance, and it was 90% or more road, I would get a roadbike too, but it depends on whether you want/ned to ft mudguards also, some won't have mounting points.

Cheers

Dan

ddraver

my average cruising speed on MTB with summer XC tyres on = 28kph, on a crap (and i mean crap) roadie =35kph without really trying much harder at all.....

homercles

Daniel B wrote:

However your MTB has 1" tyres on you say, which equates to about a 25mm tyre, which is what most roadies will have on, mine has 23mm, and I think you an get 20's.
What pressure can you run your tyres at?

I reckon you manage your comute in around 34 minutes?
16MPH seems pretty impressive, so you must be pretty fit, so I would have thought you would look to get that average up to around 20mph, which would equate to a 27 minute commute - just my beginner calculations :oops:

Dan

Tyres probably at about 60psi, maybe a bit less/ more depending on accuracy of gauge on my pump at home.

You're right on commute time - usually around there somewhere. Best has been 31m so keen to get under the 30m barrier. Looks like a roadbike is guaranteed to do that. The biggest benefit sounds like it's probably the effort saving to be made - that 16mph avg is damn hard work every day!!

Dorian Gray

16 mph on a mountain bike is pretty decent for a commute. I suspect you could beat the half-hour time for your commute with a road bike. Road bikes are quicker because they're more aerodynamic and they put you in a more aerodynamic position too. They also weigh less so you can accelerate a bit quicker, and they're much more twitchy than a mountain bike, so the handling is a lot sharper. The skinny tyres help with aerodynamics, but they don't actually lower rolling resistance anywhere near as much as people commonly imagine. Knobbly tyres on a mountain bike will of course slow you down, but slicks are fast.

Jacking the tyre pressure up to 120 psi on a road bike actually increases rolling resistance, although the bike might feel faster because it's more lively. In reality though, that bouncing over every little road imperfection saps power. By having slightly fatter tyres you can run at slightly lower pressure, therefore reducing the bouncing and reducing rolling resistance. But at around 20 mph the aerodynamic advantage of thinner tyres more than offsets their slightly higher rolling resistance.

The short of it is that a road bike will increase your speed, but because of better aerodynamics, not less rolling resistance. How much it increases your speed will depend heavily on how aerodynamic your current position is on the mountain bike. If you ride with your arse in the air and chin on the stem you'll get much less benefit by switching to a road bike than if you ride around like the mainsail of the Alinghi.

Edit: can't believe the forum doesn't like my tame spelling of posterior!

formerlyknownasbonj

I find I can definitely ride my road bike faster on road than my mountain bike, but then again my mountain bike has got distinctly unslick tyres, my back one especially

if you've got already got slick(ish) tyres on your mountain bike, you may not notice that much difference, possibly a bit though.

One thing I would say is make sure you like drop handlebars before you get a road bike with drop handlebars. If you like them, fine. But don't feel that you need to be forced into having drop handlebars if you can't get on with them, because there are road bikes with flat handlebars (such as i've got). It might just be because it's mainly in town, but all the roadies I see with drop handlebars aren't using them anyway, they're almost invariably always using the hoods.

homercles

formerlyknownasbonj wrote:

One thing I would say is make sure you like drop handlebars before you get a road bike with drop handlebars. If you like them, fine. But don't feel that you need to be forced into having drop handlebars if you can't get on with them, because there are road bikes with flat handlebars (such as i've got). It might just be because it's mainly in town, but all the roadies I see with drop handlebars aren't using them anyway, they're almost invariably always using the hoods.

Cheers FKAbonj

Interesting point about drop bars - I was slightly drawn to the idea of Cyclocross option because a lot of them seem to have secondary brakes on the hoods as a bit of a bail-out, though I guess this would basically mean riding in an MTB-style position a lot of the time. Do you know if it's possible to add the secondary levers (ala Specialized add-ons) to a normal road bike?

Either way, I'll certainly be test riding a variety of options to make sure I like what I end up with.

formerlyknownasbonj

homercles wrote:

Interesting point about drop bars - I was slightly drawn to the idea of Cyclocross option because a lot of them seem to have secondary brakes on the hoods as a bit of a bail-out, though I guess this would basically mean riding in an MTB-style position a lot of the time. Do you know if it's possible to add the secondary levers (ala Specialized add-ons) to a normal road bike?

It might be, I think you'd need special handlebars aswell. i.e. with some sort of extra hole/opening in.
But I think the reason people use the hoods rather than the flat bit of the drop bars is not just so they can get to the brakes easier (you can brake fairly well from the hoods on most good road bikes apparently) but so their hands are further apart - because riding round town with your hands on the flat bit of the drop handlebars with brakes isn't like (as in isn't as good as) riding with flat bars, because your hands are fairly close together so you haven't got as much control over the bike.
I'd recommend very strongly that you TRY a bike with drop handlebars. And you should make your decision based on whether the actual drop handlebar position is anything you are likely to want to use much. Then if it is, make sure you can get used riding and braking on the hoods. If you can't, then you can think about getting cyclocross style levers, but I would say that you probably will be able to get used to the hoods - try a few different hand positions to find something that's comfortable and safe. But, like I say - there's no point considering that if you've tried drops and you don't like them. I personally don't. Some on the other hand love them. Perhaps you'll be one of these people. But I'd just like to, if I can, avoid you making the pointless mistake of getting a road bike with drops 'because it's what road bikes have' and never bothering using them because you don't like them even though you like the rest of the bike, and possibly end up never really figuring out why it's not quite perfect....

Post back as to how you get on... you should find some LBSs amenable to letting you try out some bikes. If not, they're not worthy of your business, so hunt around till you find one that is.

formerlyknownasbonj

homercles wrote:

I was slightly drawn to the idea of Cyclocross option because a lot of them seem to have secondary brakes on the hoods

they don't have secondary brakes on the hoods, they have the secondary brakes on the flat bit of the handlebars.
see here, these are the hoods. If you're holding on to those, which they are designed for you to be able to do, you can still maintain an upright position whilst also being able to brake.

Eat My Dust

I don't know about everybody else, but I use my drops every day. I've got a couple of big(ish) hills on my commute, and I think if I had flat handlebars, then the climb would be very uncomfortable due to being in the same position for the whole climb. Drops do take a bit of getting used to, but can add comfort on longer/harder trips.

herbie12

Personally I ride on the hoods about 90% of the time I reckon... on the bars for long climbs and on the drops when I realise I haven't used them for ages.

Braking and changing gear (with Ergos/STIs etc anyway) is practically designed for the hoods so that's really no issue. I remember thinking about getting a bike with drops and touring brakes but after one ride I realised there was no point. The hoods were the most comfortable position and the only times I didn't use them was when going uphill where brakes didn't really enter the equation.

It's more important to ensure that the bars are wide enough to be comfortable and keep your chest open. In fact, getting a road bike that fits overall is paramount - far, far more important than with an MTB...

Given the amount of traffic on your commute (I'm down in Raynes Park so often go through Colliers Wood, particularly to visit Moose Cycles!) I'd be surprised if you wipe much time off, but it'll certainly seem faster and easier between the traffic lights etc!

Smeggers

Eat My Dust wrote:

I don't know about everybody else, but I use my drops every day. I've got a couple of big(ish) hills on my commute, and I think if I had flat handlebars, then the climb would be very uncomfortable due to being in the same position for the whole climb. Drops do take a bit of getting used to, but can add comfort on longer/harder trips.

Conversley, I rarely gop on the drops (lack of core strength I suppose), but find the various postions on the tops (ie on the hoods, straight bits etc etc) very comfortable. Don't think I would like to restrict myself to flats personally.

formerlyknownasbonj

Herbie12 wrote:

Personally I ride on the hoods about 90% of the time I reckon... on the bars for long climbs and on the drops when I realise I haven't used them for ages.

Ah! found one - the guilty step forward! so you're one of those cyclists who has drops pointlessly!
You should use your drops (and thus have drops in the first place) becuase you like them - not because you haven't used them for a bit! I've never heard of a more comically bad reason for using drops.
It'd be quite sad if it wasn't funny due to the ease with which you're prepared to admit it...

You could just have a valid reason (and I do mean only just) to have drops by insisting that the hoods are absolutely worlds better than flats with bar-ends, but you should still chop the bit below the hoods off if you never want to use it! (with a h4x0r...)

formerlyknownasbonj

Smeggers wrote:

Conversley, I rarely gop on the drops (lack of core strength I suppose), but find the various postions on the tops (ie on the hoods, straight bits etc etc) very comfortable. Don't think I would like to restrict myself to flats personally.

I personally have bar-ends, they're very comfortable and find there's loads of variation in hand positions, but the most comfortable one that I use most often is half on the bar ends, half on the bars - with the heel of my hand sort of at the intersection. Can brake and change gear fine from there. Don't like these contoured ones you can get*, much prefer the cheapo straight ones from decathlon.

*in fact i've got a pair of these if anybody wants them

DavidBelcher

homercles wrote:

Do you know if it's possible to add the secondary levers (ala Specialized add-ons) to a normal road bike?

I don't see why not - I've seen models from the Trek Pilot range in bike shops with these levers fitted as standard.

David

sonicred007

Herbie12 wrote:

Personally I ride on the hoods about 90% of the time I reckon... on the bars for long climbs and on the drops when I realise I haven't used them for ages.

You've nailed my technique with that description... I laughed when I read the last bit about using the drops because you realised you hadn't used them for a while

Dorian Gray

I'm the opposite: probably use the drops 75% of the time (basically unless I'm climbing). The increase in speed, or decrease in effort for the same speed, is just too hard to ignore.