Please recommend me a type of bike!

dvdcompare

I initially posted in the mountain bike forum here: http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopi ... 1#15274681 but people seemed to recommend a road bike so.....

Through work, I have just joined the Cycle 2 Work scheme. I have asked for £650 and am expecting my letter of collection from Halfords to be sent to me shortly. Don't be put off by my company choosing Halfords! I don't have to buy a bike from Halfords itself. Halfords have access to more or less any bike currently on sale in the UK market and they can order it into the store for me.

So, with my £650 I will probably spend around £500 on the bike and the rest on accessoeries. With this in mind, please can someone recommend me a type of bike, preferably a make and even better a specific model!

I will be using the bike at weekends for exercise mainly. I plan to go out most Saturdays and Sundays in the morning along roads and country lanes. I will also use it for the (very) short commute from my flat to the station (5 minutes each way).

With the above in mind, what type of bike would people recommend? Is a road bike the best option for me?

Many thanks.

pintoo

I replied in your original thread.

doyler78

For that a drop bar road bike will be best and I say that because of the low commute miles that you will do and the relatively large number of miles you will do on a relatively traffic free roads. Road bikes are built for the road and therefore not suprisingly they are the best option for most people in those circumstances.

Any of the major brands such Giant, Sepcialized, Trek, etc all do road bikes at that price point and all are very capable of allowing you to do what you want so the most important thing then is the fit of the bike.

Go to a LBS and get a bike fitting done and use that to get the bike that will fit you best. Some suggest test riding bikes and for those that know what they are looking for I would say that is worthwhile however if you were like I was 8 months ago when I bought mine then a test ride would have been useless because the riding style between and upright bike such a flat bar road bike or moutain bike is so different that it is hard to tell what is just down to the new riding style and what is atually a problem. It actually creates confusion rather than illuminate but then that's just my opinion.

You probably will not know how to interpret the bike fitting however if you ask on here you can ask about how good the fit is likely to be of specific bikes.

Just head round the bike shops and see what appeals and then come up with a shortlist.

As for Halfords getting you nearly any bike - well I think they overstate their ability to do this.

acorn_user

Dawes Audax Sport - groupset is adequate (no worse than other 500 pound bikes), you get a tough steel frame and it is set up for mudguards and racks. If you stripped those off, it would make a fine first race bike. You don't really lose much vis a vis a normal road race bike, yet you gain a lot in terms of commuting practicality. Otherwise, you might think about a Giant SCR, because I think those take mudguards too.