So anyway, my first ever road bike has arrived today, and I’ve just finished unpacking it.
It’s a Scott Speedster 40 from Tweeks Cycles. Bought it to increase my fitness for mtbing and hopefully lose some more weight! Got to say how impressed I was with tweeks, within two hours of ordering the bike was being built, and was shipped out that day. Can’t wait for my first ride out.

Nice bike….I recently bought a Triban 3 from Decathlon (red one) for the same reason and love it!

Have you found that your fitness has improved on the mountain bike?

Just a casual word of warning re fitness expectations. In buying a road bike, you’ve done your chances of getting fitter/faster good, but… A huge number of people buy road bikes to complement a mountain bike, and then nimble about everywhere at a 14mph average for maybe a couple of hours tops, and don’t really notice any gains.

To get fitter/faster, go out with some roadie groups and learn about how to ride it properly, when and where to put the effort in and how/why it pays off, and learn to shut the pain out!

I bought a road bike for the same reason, and to be honest to start with didn’t really ride it all that far or fast. I’m on my 2nd now (and thinking about building a proper winter bike to keep the mileage up through winter) and have gone from those 14-15mph rides to comfortably faster. Completed a 75 mile sportive with 1500m of climbing at the weekend in 4 1/4 hours, average of over 18mph. Plenty of people are still quite a bit faster than me, but the point is its where I was compared to where I am now. A lot of it is learning just to block out the pain and pedal harder though!

And yes, I am definitely faster on an MTB as a result too…

What, in 3 hours… 😀

then nimble about everywhere at a 14mph average for maybe a couple of hours tops

I’d love to be able to do 14mph

Kato – I’d love to be able to do 14mph

You can borrow my Vauxhall Corsa, it’ll do well over 14mph quite comfortably.

Cadence. Get a bartop speedometer?

Have you found that your fitness has improved on the mountain bike?

In answer to your question, yes I have, even at a ‘nimble’ 15 mph average I have seen improvement in my fitness which has helped me keep up better with the local MTB club.

PS. I got some SPD’s for the bike too which helped to improve my speed and efficiency.

If your not already, sighn up with Strava. Riding with a club or a group isn’t for everyone. I found Strava a brilliant motivational tool. And as said above you’ll only get back what you put in, you’ve got to push yourself hard for at least part of every ride.

The local MTB club is also the road bike club, so I get pasted twice, not just once!

I found road biking vastly improved my mtb’ing stamina. The only real direct comparison I have is on the FOD uplift. Before I started road biking I would be nackered by lunch/mid afternoon, and since regular road riding I felt fresh the whole day til the end of uplift, so I carried on riding and pushing up instead for another couple of hours. Of course this might just be the weight loss that came with roadie’ing, either way its helped!

Bol – with your road bike purchase.
I like the Scott geometries. Nearly bought one one myself to complement my CR1 as a winter / everyday training bike.

Heading into winter with a road bike – might I recommend turbo training?
Get a decent turbo with decent resistance and spare wheel + cassette. Add on a decent computer with HRM. And you will have a very powerful training tool.
Plenty of resources and literature online.