Best Road Bike - Need to buy

Your question is the source of endless debate.  The basic answer is that the bike you select has to 1) be a good fit, 2) be within your budget (some debate this),  and 3) suit your mix of riding conditions.   I like straight road bikes for all around riding and don't even own a tri bike.  I find a medium sized frame with somewhat shorter than average top tube is the most comfortable fit (I always need to swap out the stock stem for a short one to get comfortable.)  I ride a lot of hills and I'm pretty old and slow so I want a triple front derailleur.   I also have an excessive amount of money to spend on bikes so I bought a Litespeed (actually two). I am extremely happy.  I am sitting in my lab right now with the bike within sight.  So cool.  My bike purchase make me very happy.  Hope you can figure out what works for you.  It may be that it is the prefect color.  Whatever the choice, the bike should be fun and functional.

Enjoy.

 TW

The best bike around is the one that fits you best within your budget. That may be a WSD model, may not be. Do some reading in this forum, research the websites for Trek, Specialized, Giant, and Felt, just to name a few, get familiar with the terminology, educate yourself, THEN start hitting the bike shops.

I'm sure local bike shops (LBS) have different margins and incentives for selling different brands, but in the long run they are going to more profitable by giving the customer what he/she needs, not what they need to sell. A good LBS realizes this, if you suspect otherwise then take a walk to the next LBS.

Good luck! Let us know when you have formulated specific questions.

Melissa , while I may not have the depth of bike expertise as most others on this site , I know what it is to buy a first road bike

Am a newbie too ... did my first and only triathlon last year on a borrowed bike . While there is a lot of good info. on various threads , the way I went about it was really decided about the pricepoint (range) and thats half the tough decision rt there . Then I tried out a few bike fits in that range but for me , coming from a Walmart MTB, all the bike fits felt good ! Ultimately , it came down to components , reviews and a good road biking pedigree (if there exists one) or at least the brand equity as such .

For me , I decided that I had to keep the base price around 1000 bux and can go to 1500 if it really was worth it . No tri bikes for me since I need some road bike experience and was planning on doing some group rides , if possible . Ended up trying Giant OCR1 and TREK 1500 ... while I could have definitely tried a few more , guess had got sold on the TREK brand and was very happy with the reviews on the TREK 1500 .

Do check out http://www.roadbikereview.com, if you haven't already .

Good Luck with the hunt