# First Road/Commute/Casual Ride bike!?



## Tankus (Jun 5, 2013)

Hey all,
New to cycling. I have had MTB all my life but rarely ever used them - 
a year ago I sold my car moved inner city (Worcester,UK) and starting riding.

I currently have a Claud Butler Scimitar DD 2011. It was fine for when i started as it was only for short commutes to work (4 miles).
I lost alot of weight aswell and started to ride for fitness aswell.
Still not cycling any sort of distance as my fitness was terrible.

*note went from 20 stone/127kg to 13 stone/82kg in a year. 

So now i find myself cycling to and back from work 4 times a day aswell as going on a hour and a half ride in my breaks some days.

This is all totalling up to about 50+ miles a week and i am starting to wish i had a diffrent type of bike. As I have been told knocking out 15 miles on my bike averaging 16 mph is quite a good effort but would be alot easier on a road bike.

I was looking at the 2013 Specalized/Trek/Claud Butler ranges as thats what my LBS stocks. Any suggestions?
I will be getting it through the ride to work sceme over here in UK so I have a budget of around £900.


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## JCavilia (Sep 12, 2005)

Do a lot of test riding at the shop, and buy whatever's in your budget that feels best.

Good going and congratulations. For the benefit of my fellow Yanks I'll do the conversion to our familiar units and note that you lost nearly 100 pounds in a year!

How does that ride-to-work scheme work? Does the government actually subsidize part of your bike purchase?


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## Tankus (Jun 5, 2013)

Basically your work place buys the bike tax free and then you pay your work for the bike over a period of time before tax. So you can save up to 40%.

I have done a few test rides on a few of my colleagues bikes one having the 2013 Allez sport and another the Secteur Sport. I am worried though about the Allez being a bit too much of a race inspired bike for me at the moment as im very new to cycling - never having ridden drop bars before in my life let alone having to use the brakes and gears off them.
First time test riding i was very twitchy about moving my hands to say the least.


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## Red90 (Apr 2, 2013)

I felt the same way the first time I tried a road bike. That twitchy feeling goes away real quick. It's just the bike being more reactive to your inputs. It feels great after your used to it. Now that I'm into road bikes, I hardly take my mountain bike out.

Try to ride several bikes with different make and models. Make sure the sizing is right for you when you try it. For more relaxed riding, look at the specialized secteur, roubaix, cannondale synapse


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## Zeet (Mar 24, 2013)

The addition of cross lever brakes across the hoods, will make riding a road bike much more comfortable to you.
View attachment 281992


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## Randy99CL (Mar 27, 2013)

Tankus said:


> Basically your work place buys the bike tax free and then you pay your work for the bike over a period of time before tax. So you can save up to 40%.


What a great idea! Wish they had a program like that over here.


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