A friend of mine is looking at doing her second Triathlon, she’s asked what my thoughts are as to this “starter kit”

TryandRun

now she’s quite a determined thing and she is looking at doing more than the one event (and all for charity!).

She’s asked me to look over this deal before she buys it, I’m not too sure to be honest as I’m kinda lost if its not got upwards of 150mm of travel!

I guess what I’m asking is “what ladies bike for a triathlon”, budget circa £1000.00??

help!

I’ve seen a few of these Tri and Run bikes but I’m not sure how good they are. Just looking at the website, theres nothing relating to what gears are on the bike, which is pretty important! I’d be pretty cautious about buying one of these packs. The most important thing your friend needs to look for is a decent entry level bike. Specialized Dolce always get good write ups. She can alsways update a bike like that with better wheels and aero bars as she gets into triathlon. At least with a bike like this, you know its a pretty good set up.
Is your freind doing open water triathlons? If not, she doesn’t need a wetsuit. If she is, you can always get an end of season ex-hire suit which normally work out really good value. Also, lots of companies offer hiring a wetsuit for £25 for the whole season, with the option to buy at the end of the season-something to consider.
Your friend will probably want to get a tri suit, lock laces, number belt, swimming goggles as well, but if she has the time to search the internet, she will be able to get all these fairly cheap anyway.
I hope this helps!

Don’t let her buy a triathlon-specific bike (aero bars, funny angles and all that jazz) – unless you’re riding in an aero tuck 80-90% of the time then a normal road bike will probably be faster, and a hell of a lot easier to handle too.

Oh, and you could do worse than direct her to tritalk.co.uk – an extremely friendly bunch and very patient with noob questions.

finbar – if she is doing triathlons then surely she will be in an aero tuck most of the time, so that’s exactly what she wants. Why should she buy a bike which is better for some other theoretical thing which she won’t actually be doing?

finbar – if she is doing triathlons then surely she will be in an aero tuck most of the time, so that’s exactly what she wants. Why should she buy a bike which is better for some other theoretical thing which she won’t actually be doing?

Because riding in an aero tuck – properly – is bloody hard work. It requires a lot of flexibility, different muscle strengths to regular cycling position (the neck and back can get particularly sore), and unless you’re only ever riding on pancake flat roads it will probably be less efficient than a regular road position anyway. Tri bikes just aren’t that suitable for beginners.

Also if someone only has one bike, a road one (perhaps with clip on aerobars) would be much more versatile – most triathletes will keep their tri bikes for races and key workouts only, and ride a regular road bike the rest of the time.

My work mate got her starter kit from TryandRun, bike seems pretty good – all reasonable spec kit 10 speed double etc no bling bits but no real crap either bike weight is pretty much the same as my 2004 trek 1200.
The bike isn’t tri specific no aero bars or any of that twaddle.

TriUK and Sigma Sports also do kits with branded bikes, both do Women’s specific one but at a greater cost. Having said that the Sigma one includes the specialized dolce suggested above. Whether branded bikes are better is moot at this price point as the frames are probably all made in the same factory.

You are getting normal racing/sport bikes in all of these packages which is what you want at this stage. I wish these kits had been around when I first did a triathlon 11 years ago

She won’t be in an aero tuck for much of the ride unless it’s a vastly flat course with limited turns. In my opinion she’s better off on a normal bike and getting used to riding the drops consistently.

Sigma sport would be my recommendation for where to buy from – they know their beans and are a really good bunch

cheers folks, I’ll have a look over these tonight and try and find something to recommend!