I ride my bike nearly everyday, although I don’t log very many miles. I live about 2 miles from my work, so my daily mileage is around 7-10 miles, depending on how many errands I run, or if I decide to take the ‘long way home’. Every once in a while I have to go to a meeting in a neighboring town, if that’s the case I may ride up to 25 miles round trip. I do this on my commuter bike. I don’t own a road bike, however, I may soon.
During the hubbub of the Tour de France and the STP my brother threw out an idea: “Why don’t we try and do the STP next year or the year after”. You see, he recently inherited our child bike seat and has been biking all over Renton with his almost two year old. He’s been bitten by the bike bug and I couldn’t be happier.
I thought about his challenge, the STP, huh? Well, the furthest I’ve ridden in one day is 30 miles, and that was to go to work meetings, so it was split up. Also, like I said above, I don’t own a road bike. As much as the idea of doing a LONG ride (60+ miles) on Fred, my Big Dummy Complete intrigues me, I’m pretty sure my body would be happier with an actual road bike. Not to mention the skinny tires, it’d be so much easier, well as easy as 60+ miles can be.
So now I’m in the conundrum of buying another bike. But I’m a commuter, not a roadie. I don’t know the first thing about road bikes. If you’ve read the book Bike Snob, you can laugh with me about the different types of bicyclists and how they may or may not get along. If you haven’t read it, you should, it’s hilarious!
A trip to my local bike shop was educational, I learned a lot about road bikes and the different components. I’m still not sold yet, I’ll admit. While I can justify spending a lot of money on my commuter bike, we only own one car, I’m getting exercise, it’s awesome, I use it every day, etc. It’s harder for me to justify spending a lot on a road bike that I will ride a couple times a week. So to answer the question, can a commuter morph into a roadie? I honestly don’t know. I like the idea of doing a century, I’m just not so sure about the the spandex and $800+ price tag of a new bike.
What do you think? Can you convince me to do it? Do you have a similar story to share? Do you have tips on buying a road bike?
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