| Re: Mountain vs Road Biking
Starting over from scratch a few months ago, I picked up a used mountain
bike, thinking that this would be all I wanted. A mountain bike still
makes a lot of sense in my neighborhood because the streets are
sometimes rough (pot holes, etc). When I rode years before, I had one
and used to go back and forth between paved roads and sidewalks so I
could avoid vehicular traffic and mostly keep moving always and the
mountain bike was a plus there.
Several of my friends had road bikes, or both types, so I was naturally
curious about the road side of riding. Eventually I sprang for an el
cheapo 25 yr old Fuji RB to see if I'd like it and I did. So recently I
bought another nice used road bike with better components than the Fuji.
Now I find myself riding the road bike most of the time.
I needed to get adjusted to the harder ride of a road bike, but it gets
up to speed faster and easier and goes faster than the MB. It took a
little getting used to riding down on the road bars, but that has a nice
tradeoff too, as my hands and palms don't get so tired as they did on
the mountain bike. I like having several hand positions on the road
bike vs. basically one on the mountain bike. I plan to keep the MB to
ride with family and when the weather is nasty, but the road bike is
going to be my preference.
My total investment between the two bikes is not 1,000 and I have about
twice as much in the road bike as the mountain bike. I am really glad I
figured out what I wanted before I got something good.
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