Road bikes are they worth it

sellisnba

Right i know i'm likely to be heckelled for this on an mtb forum but bear with me. I have been off work for a while now pending a hip operation and have started to put on weight in the wrong places.
I have been thinking of investing in a road bike for a while. Problem is i am used to riding mtb's that have slack head angles ( i can't stand the feeling you get of being pitched over the bars on a lot of xc bikes).
I ride an on one 456, will i benefit in any way by investing and riding a road bike. I mostly use it for night riding and generally trying to get fit as i'm going to be laid up for about 3 and a half months after my operation, bikes i'm interested in are along the lines of the £500 Allez.
Anyhelp will be greatly appreciated
Cheers

supersonic

If you can get on with the geo, yes! For the road they are lighter and more efficient than an MTB.

cat_with_no_tail

Slick tyres and locked-out / reduced travel fork? (assuming you can lock out or dial down the travel on your fork of course)

Obviously, the road bike would be lighter, faster etc, but long term, are you REALLY going to get £500 worth of use out of it?

You could even go so far as to get a whole new wheelset, complete with rotors, skewers, slicks and tubes, that way you just whip the nobblies off and stick the slicks on when you feel like it.
After all, it's not like the 456 is a big 40lb DH monster.

Nadder

Definitely I've ridden mtb for years and bought a £400 road bike for a bit of a change and I love it - both have their positives! Best thing about a road bike is the speed and distance that you can cover! It'll never beat MTB but it is good fun!

.blitz

sellisnba wrote:

will i benefit in any way by investing and riding a road bike.

You will only benefit if you join a roadie club and go for regular rideouts. Solo road biking is a very lonely pastime unless you can find some tractors to race around the local lanes.

A road bike is much easier to ride than an MTB on the road and you will quickly find yourself averaging 16-20mph but with a group to tow you along you will really rip it up and see some real gains in terms of fitness.

ride_whenever

i did a 64mile round trip commute precisely once on my 456 with slick and the forks wound down and locked out. Did single legs a fair few more times. Just ride it as is on the roads, possibly put some cheap slicks (I like the tioga FS100/skidrow) and keep at it. £500 could buy you some very nice bling to put on it, or a funky second mtb a singlespeed perhaps :twisted:

wordnumb

If your objective is to get fit then surely there isn't much point in investing in a bike which is efficient on the road. On tarmac a MTB will require more effort than a roadie, and this will show if you're riding with guys on road specific bikes - you'd work harder than you would on a road bike to keep up - but if you're riding for fitness, you'll use more energy in a shorter time.

Are you sure you don't just want to spend money something new and shiny?

supersonic

You just ride further!

pantsani

Nadder wrote:

Definitely I've ridden mtb for years and bought a £400 road bike for a bit of a change and I love it - both have their positives! Best thing about a road bike is the speed and distance that you can cover! It'll never beat MTB but it is good fun!

+1

I say do it , it's cracking for fitness and stamina, I've lost about 1 stone through road biking, different buzz to mtb though

Not sure where .blitz is coming from , you don't need to join a club to benefit or get a to a decent level, I go out on my todd or with others when I either just want to get the miles in or don't have enough time to get to some decent single track,

At the end of the day , you're out on a bike , it's all good eh

I tend to race kids on scooters btw, burning off a tractor is a rare treat though

Gotte

You might want one with clearances for bigger tyres, though. It might come as a bit of a shock if you're used to MTBs. Those skinnies can be brutal.

P-Jay

My mate's got a road bike, some US make that's not big over here but came with a good frame and bits for £800, would have been much more with a more well know name on it.

He loves it, even though we all take the mick "ladyshaves, Lycra, Doping etc" but he just loves riding. He's got two kids and a house full of DIY jobs to do, so if he gets half an hour can walk out the door and he's cycling. Me, my village is surounded by nice little XC tracks, so sod that. (ramble over)

Anyway, if your only goal is fittness, you're better off just road pluging on your on-one, because it'll less efficiant you can burn more calories in a shorter time / distance. I'm not scientist but I "think" and hour on a MTB is harder work than on a road bike because of this, I'll no doubt be proven wrong.

One thing else to consider is something I'm getting to grips with, the more bikes you have, the longer it takes to get "dialed in". I used to have just my Endruo and we were as one, I got on it and was imeadiately home. But now, with a DH Bike too and and Motorbike, when I swap from one to the other, even if it's days after it all feels alien. My 6" bike feels like a rigid if I've been on my Shocker and they both feel tiny and tinny if I've been doing the miles on my Honda.

ride_whenever

not at all, the hour energy usage depends how hard you work for each. You'll go a lot further on the roadie, but your effort is independent on what you're doing. Think about a 1hr TT!!!!!

I have two mtbs, a jump bike, a ss roadie and i'm building up another mtb as a rat bike and a geared road bike soonish.

You will get different workouts on you mtb and your roadie though. mtb will strengthen your upper body a lot more. I'd also point out that mtbing is more stop start than road riding. MTBing is basically interval training with random intervals! Road riding is much easier to maintain a constant power output.

Surf-Matt

Recently got an Allez Elite (2010) to go with a few MTBs.

I do enjoy it but I still prefer the MTB.

The road bike is clearly faster and very light but there are a few things that can make life difficult:

1) You can't use a Camelbak (for some reason) so have to cram everything into a small seatbag and the back pouches of your roadie top.
2) They are faster but have worse brakes.
3) The drop position can get a bit "neck achey" after a while.
4) Car drivers really are muppets - I now only go out when I know it'll be quietish. Had a few near misses.

However you can cover a lot of miles in no time and there is a big buzz from hammering down a hill at 40ish.

onlyonearrow

You might want to consider somehting like the Giant FCR or Rapid range. It's basically a Giant Defy road bike, but with flat handle bars - so the geometry is a bit more familar.

I bought an FCR2 about 5 months ago, after using my HT MTB with slicks on local roads. It's made a huge difference, not only in speed, but the distances I'm able to cover. More importantly it's made me want to keep pushing the distances further each time I go out.

Don't get me wrong, the MTB is great fun and it feels refreshing to get back on it for off-road cycling, but having the bike designed for the terrain is a great motivator.

Also the longer distances I now road cycle have increased my stamina/fitness which pays dividends on the MTB for XC routes.

P-Jay

P-Jay wrote:

not scientist but I "think" and hour on a MTB is harder work than on a road bike because of this, I'll no doubt be proven wrong

ride_whenever wrote:

not at all, the hour energy usage depends how hard you work for each. You'll go a lot further on the roadie, but your effort is independent on what you're doing. Think about a 1hr TT!!!!!

Yeah, knew it would happen

sellisnba

This is my ride


I know it looks like a heavy lump it's not to bad tho. I'm guessing the money would be better spent on front gears and maybe some recon forks.
Thing is i live in newquay without a car and can't get off roading very often thought a road bike would be better, i know that SOME car drivers can be a pain even when i'm on my motor bike they can be twats.

Went out on it this morn and found it a lot of hard work so i was just testing the waters to get an opinion. Cheers for the replys keep em coming.

wordnumb

You'd find it easier if you bought a proper left pedal instead of using that chunk of cinderblock. [/hilarious]

supersonic

Another thing to consider is that road salt eats parts quickly in winter. Why not get a 200 quid road bike and keep the MTB away from the salt?

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/EN/sport-1-54-57-69567468/

Not superlight, but under 24lbs with pedals aint heavy!

Monkeypump

Not sure where .blitz is coming from - as a couple of others have said, riding solo isn't perfect but perfectly doable, and the idea of rolling out of the house and being riding straight away is a big bonus. The downside is that if you ride with mates on mtbs (of similar fitness), you WILL be hanging around for them while they work hard to keep up.

Also, the sense of achievement is different. Being able to cover 20-odd miles in a hour-long blast, the sense of almost-constant motion rather than stop-start, the higher speeds, and a completely different type of work-out.

It's also nice to have dedicated bikes for on- and off-road. Riding an mtb on slicks seems fine until you try a proper road bike, at which point you'll realise it's a pointless compromise that's best avoided if circumstances/finances allow.

I'd certainly say go for it, and don't be put off by lousy drivers - the pay-off far outweighs the near-misses!

Of course, you then have more bikes to spend money on - not sure if that's a good or bad thing

Surf-Matt

Monkey - it's a good thing I reckon...!

Went for a "proper" road bike and don't regret it but would like to use it more often.

bomberesque

as far as training is concerned, it's really about how much time you spend on the bike with your effort at particular levels (but mostly the lungs bursting out of chest effort level ) rather than the bike you're on while doing it. If you're using these trips to achieve more than training (commute to work for example) then being quicker is perhaps an advantage and for sure a race bike will be quicker. If it's for training *only* then I'd consider a set of slicks for your MTB and perhaps a steel fork to replace your sus one with, just so you drop the weight, don't lose effort into the fork and don't get the fork all road-grimy over the winter (plus they're cheap)

my compromise, for example, was to get an alfine-d drop bar Cotic Roadrat with rack, panniers and full mudguards. It's good for commuting (OK, a carbon race frame would make me 5 mins faster per 1/2 hour but not much more) it carries load, is almost maintenance free (due to the Alfine), good in all conditions except when the road's frozen (so still better than a race bike) and can be toured on (in fact has been; Sweden in the summer and we're off to Cuba for Xmas!). Oh and the frame cost 200 notes so I don't fret about chucking it in the back of the car or leaving it locked outside the pub for an hour

That said, drop handlebars and steep angles certainly are not for everyone and if your op is a hip, I'd definitely seek medical advice whatever you're thinking of doing.

Gotte

One other thing I'm wondering, though, Sellisnba, is if one of your motivations is losing the weight you're starting to put on, then you might be better sticking with your MTB and putting slicks on it. Road bikes are great for zipping around the countryside, but being lighter, you'll have to work harder and longer to loose that weight than just hitting the road on a heavier MTB.

I grew up on non-road and road bikes, and have to say I much prefer MTBs or sit up and beg tourers, of which I have a few. I have a couple of road bikes, but tend not to ride them that much. I find them more uncomfortable (back and neck) and I get tired of having to concentrate on the road surface directly in front of me, for fear of hitting a pothole or grid or god knows what. They are major fun when the conditions are right and you are speeding along, but for keeping fit, I tend to find my old GT LTS 3000 with all its 36lb weight much more efficient, engaging and, yes, fun, even on tarmac.

Of course, if you really want to stay in shape, get a utility bike and load it up with two kids, their lunchboxes and bags, and ride to school and back twice a day. With the added weight, and a couple of hills, I feel like I've done close to fifteen miles a day, compared with the actual six.

Northwind

A little money goes a long way on the road, it's a much less demanding job- no suspension, no need for anything like as much strength- so you can get a lot for a little. The various carrera road bike and hybrids all have a good rep... You might get on better with a hybrid than a drop bars roadie for that matter, I love my brother's Revolution Courier Race but I've never been happy with drop bars, never put the hours in to get happy with them really.

rhyko7

jeez 'when did you come out'?


no point in road bike-you can only ride it on the road, you can put road tyres on mtb and switch back between on and off road!

supersonic

" Road bikes are great for zipping around the countryside, but being lighter, you'll have to work harder and longer to loose that weight than just hitting the road on a heavier MTB.
"

But the effort is the same if you ride the road bike harder! An hour outputting 300watts on a 20lb roadbike, or a 40lb MTB is the same energy overall.

Surf-Matt

Hang on - what's all this stuff about using a heavy bike to make you fitter?

Don't we all spend £100s on lightening our MTBs (well I do)?!

I've probably spent £600++ on my 2007 Stumpjumper HT - I've got it to under 23lbs now with countless upgrades and it feels light.

My 2010 Allez Elite is MUCH lighter (I'd say 18lbs or so at a total guess) and that's with MTB SPDs, a pump on the tube (albeit a damn light one) and a saddle bag. The acceleration is in a different league, it feels so alive and just glides along the road. My "racey" XC Stumpy is probably as fast as MTBs get but gets whipped on tarmac by a pretty average road bike.

As for average speed - for most hilly rides mixing on and off road I average 12-13mph. For extremely hilly road only rides I average 16-18mph. May not sound much faster but it makes a big difference. I also arrive less knackered for a set distance on the road bike.

The trouble is road bikes go faster but have worse brakes...

ride_whenever

a guy won a road race is south africa on a mtb... nuff said.

supersonic

Roads = dirt tracks!

drabfurs

I am pretty new to this forum but thought I would ad dmy tupence anyway.

I borrowed a road bike from a mate 3 months ago and havea round trip of 16 miles to work all on road. I really enjoyed it and it got me back into biking after 15 years of being a lazy sod. I was from a BMX background as kid.

As much as I enjoyed the road bike as soon as I got on my old mountain bike without suspension (returned by my brother) back I knew immediately which I preffered. The MTB is so much more fun. You can pop curbs to avoid traffic and the potholes and cracks in the roads which are aplenty dont seem half as bad.

I loved it so much I invested in a better MTB with front sus which I can lock out if necc. which I do on certain parts of my journey.

The time difference for the 8 miles I do is about 5 mins longer on the MTB. As for getting fitter Ididnt really notice the difference between the road bike and the MTB

I am a complete newbie but my advice would be borrow a road bike if you can and see what you enjoy most, as at the end of the day thats what it is all about.

However it does put a huge grin on your face when you overtake a roadbike!

Northwind

Surf-Matt wrote:

Hang on - what's all this stuff about using a heavy bike to make you fitter?

Don't we all spend £100s on lightening our MTBs (well I do)?!

Can't speak for anyone else but I ride my mtb because I like riding it, not to get fitter. But I ride my commuter to get fitter despite not liking it.

Gotte

Surf-Matt wrote:

Hang on - what's all this stuff about using a heavy bike to make you fitter?

Don't we all spend £100s on lightening our MTBs (well I do)?!

It's simple physics. The more weight you push, the more calories you burn, the fitter you become. Imagine, if you will, riding the same distance on a 30lb bike, working up a sweat, getting the heart going. Now imagine you do the same on a bike that weighs half that. You will have to go further and faster to achieve the same calorie burn.
If fitness is your goal, then the greater resistance from a heavier bike will achieve that in less miles.
Of course, if you want speed, distance and a certain elan, then a road bike may be what you are after. They are lighter, after all, to give you greater speed and endurance over a set distance - well, professionally, at any rate.

I've toured on a bike that with full panniers weighs something close to 40lbs. over a week, doing about 30 to 40 miles a day, I lost about 12lbs. I wouldn't have done that on a roadbike without panniers. I would have had to do maybe twice the distance or twice the speed (not scientific, but you get the point).

Oh and you should have seen my legs. tree trunks.