HEY JAMES....HOW DID YOU PICK YOUR NEW BIKE?

So….I think we’ve had quick recaps of my how I came to decide to start riding again and to ride RAGBRAI this year, my history on a bike and some discussion about RAGBRAI itself so that leads us up to “How Did You Pick Your New Bike?”

You may remember (from an earlier posting) that I still own my original road bike that I had purchased in about 1979 and had ridden it off and on ever since. That was a double edged sword kind of situation… I still had a road bike BUT it was old. In biking terms ‘old’ means that it is heavy and it’s components are not as efficient and ‘nice’ as the new ones. I was enjoying riding it and I hated the thought of replacing it. But I knew that if I wanted to meet my goals I would have to purchase a new bike, so after I ‘rode the wheels off” of my old bike I began the search. I also used the fact that I had managed to keep my road bike healthy for all these years as justification for buying a new bike – “if I kept the last one this long, I’m sure I’ll keep the next one just as long” and spending ‘good money’ on a really nice bike. Before I began to shop I thought about what I wanted to do – what my goals were and tried to practice stating them as emphatically as possible:

1) I want to ride in multiple day rides like the “MS Bike to Somewhere” kind of rides. I’ve always thought these types of rides would be fun but I never could work my way up to being strong enough to commit to any. Plus they would help me build up to the ultimate goal of riding in RAGBRAI.

2) I want to be as comfortable as possible while doing so. I am an ‘old dude’ and as such I lack the ability (let’s also say ‘desire’) to withstand the harsher rides that really, really nice and fast road bikes have. The harsh ride that those kinds of bikes have is a matter of efficiency – in order to maximize the power you put to the road you have to minimize the flex in the bike and that leads to a harsh ride. I did not want to spend any money on a bike and then start thinking that another bike might have been more comfortable.

3) I do not want to ‘race’ or ride really fast. I’m not a competitive person and I realize that bike racing (even at the club level) is a young man’s game. I want to ride ‘long, not fast’.

4) I want to buy a bike that will last me for many years, one that isn’t just slightly better than my existing bike but several levels above it. I felt I was willing to spend a little more money in order to get a bike that is better than me right now and then grow into it. 

So, armed with those four goals I began to pester my friends that ride for their input (and you know who you are). I sent email after email asking for their input as to frame material, gearing, handlebars, etc. I tried to ride a few local bikes but the shops here mostly sell BMX, kids and racing bikes. As this process drug on I started to hear one term over and over: “Endurance bike” and began to narrow my focus towards bikes in the ‘Endurance’ groups. These are bikes that the bicycle manufacturers began to build several years ago and I’d like to think they saw the growing “old dude” market as the driver for them. Of course they’ll all argue over which company built the first one but the bottom line is that most of the major companies do now. The bike is designed so that the rider sits a little more upright than the normal racing bike and they’ve all got some design aspects built into them that will dampen out a good deal of the vibrations caused by rough road surfaces. Oh, they don’t ride like the proverbial ‘living room couch’ but they are smoother than the ultra light and super fast bikes. 

Most bicycles these days are built out of one or a combination of three different materials:

a)      Steel: the oldest still used and very reliable and durable. Good steel bikes last a long time and are quite smooth compared to the other materials.

b)      Aluminum: an attempt at making lighter bikes led to using aluminum tubes for the frames. Unfortunately the design characteristics of aluminum led to larger tubes that steel bikes have and stiffer frames. A stiff frame generally leads to a rough ride.

c)       Carbon Fiber: A super lightweight material that is somewhat similar to fiberglass in that it starts out as a fiber that is woven into a cloth. The cloth is cut into patterns that are used to create the major parts of a bike frame, coated with a resin and then dried so that the resulting material is a super light, super strong, very compliant bike frame. 

While there are very expensive steel and aluminum bikes on the market the carbon fiber ones are generally the most expensive of the three but there are some ‘entry level’ carbon bikes that are cost competitive with steel and aluminum bikes. Even the entry level carbon bikes are noticeably lighter than equally priced steel and aluminum and since lower mass leads towards easier pedaling so I decided that I wanted an entry level, carbon fiber endurance bike.

I believe that one of the original carbon fiber endurance bikes is the Specialized “Roubaix” that is named after a famous bike race in France – the “Paris – Roubaix” ride is noteworthy due to that fact that a good portion of the race is ridden over a cobblestone road. A rough ride indeed. The Specialized Roubaix won the Paris-Roubaix race several years in a row a few years ago.  Trek makes an endurance bike called the “Domane” (which is rumored to be just a mash up of the name of their famous racing bike the “Madone”), Giant makes their “Defy” and most of the other manufactures make carbon fiber endurance bikes also. So I set out to read as many websites and reviews about these bikes as possible all the while continuing to ride my old steel bike as much as I could for as far as I could. Then I started calling and visiting bike shops in order to see if they had any of these in stock. BUT…during my visits, just to confirm I was heading in the right direction, I would repeat my four goals from above as soon as I started talking to a salesperson. I would not say “I’m here to see a Trek Domane” or “I want an endurance bike” but I would lay out the goals and then give the salesperson an opportunity to make their case for whatever they thought was best. Of course the other constraint / goal that had to be discussed was that of the budget which I stuck to as closely as possible. 

I began to ride the ones available for short rides around the block and I also began to drive far distances to find a shop that had one in my size. I decided that I was going to purchase a particular bike from a particular shop one day and drove quite a distance to get there, test ride it and then get completely alienated by the sales guy who said that they couldn’t ‘fit’ me to the bike on a Saturday. (this was after I had spoken with him twice in the preceding weeks saying that I was coming in, from a far distance, to ride and probably purchase the bike.) I left his shop without that bike and went to another shop a few weeks later that had a Specialized Roubaix in my size and would be agreeable to ‘fit’ me on a Saturday. I rode the bike and liked it very much, paid them for it and then when through the process of having the bike fitted to my body size and riding profile. “Fitting” a bike is an important aspect that you should be sure you do when you buy your next bike – it makes sure you’re getting the most from your bike and that you are minimizing the possibility of an injury from extending your knees or back too much or too little. As an Endurance bike the Roubaix features little ‘dampers’ in the front fork and in the part of the frame that connects the seat to the rear wheel of the bike (seat stay) and these act to minimize road vibrations from reaching the hands and butt of the rider. This aspect sets the Roubaix apart from many of the other endurance bikes and the particular Roubaix that I purchased came with a Shimano model 105 drivetrain that I had learned would be the bare minimum that I should consider buying. 

My New Bike: "Lena", named after the Race Engineer for the AUDI Endurance Racing Team.

So that is the story of how I came to but my ‘new’ bike, hopefully you can learn a few pointers from my process and go out and get you one soon! ! ! All in all I have been extremely happy with this bike and rode it well over 1,000 miles before the Fall weather turned too cool to comfortably ride. I’m looking forward to riding more and more as the days lengthen and temperatures warm up.

NEXT WEEK

Next week I’m thinking that I’ll talk a little about trying to develop a spring riding schedule and how it will hopefully build up to RAGBRAI in July ! ! Be sure and leave comments and/or questions below… I’d really like to know what you’re thinking :)

Thanks and have a great week…. James