my significant other has expressed a desire to go take up road riding. Mostly around aiming to join me on a two week tour next summer. We are just trying to work out what its going to cost us and think of what bike to get her. (i ride a cannondale six carbon 105)
I 'm thinking of the £800ish trek WSD
Any other recommendations, (well) under a grand? no C2W
What else does she need that I will have forgotten about. Couple of pairs of shorts, couple of tops, gloves. Shoes and pedals once she's stable!
Does she ride? If she doesn't ride much at all, riding on the road really feels like being thrown in at the deep end. You're learning bike handling in traffic 😯
Decathlon are great for clothing. Not up on Women's road bikes to be honest, although again, Decathlon do 650 wheeled bikes if she's small.
What else does she need that I will have forgotten about. Couple of pairs of shorts, couple of tops, gloves
Oh, I dunno
Other than specialist bedroom attire, I always found it wise to let them choose their own clothes
just a thought 🙂
under a grand, trek as mentioned, specialized dolce, giant Avail 2 all around 800ish.
Get her on a bike, the geometries of the various bikes vary mostly in top tube length significantly e.g the dolces are much shorter size for size compared to a giant.
Don't forget, she'll need a helmet!
As tron says but if she does ride already give the womens specific boadman bikes a look. If she hasnt ridden a bike since she was 8 maybe try some sort of hybrid road bike with flat bars as a start point.
One pointer on choice of bike - she is perhaps just as likely to fit a man's bike than a wsd - it will depend on stature, so try both.
helmet is sorted
Her current level of riding is some casual railway path and country lane riding with me on her Mtb. maybe we should ramp that up first.
I'm just trying to get an idea of what its all gonna cost us. Choosing her clothes would be a v bad idea!
I've just built my GF a Planet X SL Pro, used frame & forks & mostly new componets from PX for about £800.
Two weeks later I bought myself a 500mile old Planet X SL Pro off here for £675 - Planet X spec with Dura-Ace shifters & mech's.
Keep an eye on ebay & here!
Tell her my wife wants to get out on her bike but after 3 years of hip operations she still can't. If you got it , use it 🙂
Anyway, irrelevent , planet X or ribble sportive carbon if CF is your choice for bargin or maybe the new Speccy secteur or Dolce female version 🙂
Bought my other half a Trek WSD a couple of months ago, she loves it.
Take her into a shop and get her to try a few different makes for fit.
If she's planning on using the same bike for the tour next year remember to think about pannier attachments. The Giant SCR range have these (at least the lower-end models). I've got the one that's about 500 pounds - maybe the SCR2 - and have used it for everything between one day multiple alpine-pass tours (with "proper" roadies) to fortnight camping touring with some offroad using 700*28 tyres. I've got the men's frame but with a shorter stem.
Otherwise, check her sunglasses are fine for biking and I prefer to use my mountain bike shoes with time pedals rather than full on road shoes.
I'd go and look round a few bike shops and see what catches her eye. How a bike looks is pretty important, especially for newer riders, so you could narrow it down that way and on price then choose on fit and kit after that? She may well hate all the pink/purple womens bike thing and be too tall for them anyway?
Flat barred road bikes are not a bad idea if she's not keen on really getting into the whole thing and hasn't ridden for ages. The Giant ones are good value. You could always stick some road bars/sti's on later if she wants.
The Bianchi dame range have a couple under a grand as well.
Get lots of miles in before hand once you have the new bike to build up the core.
As already mentioned, don't limit yourself to just looking at WSD bikes. My wife rides a Specialized Allez and loves it. All the WSD's were too short for her.
It's all about the fit. Make sure it's comfortable. If she's a frilly girl, then there's loads of nice bike clothing available for ladies these days.
Firstly great plan. I haven't been touring with my wife for 14 years (since the kids came along). Some of the best times of both our lives. We will do more in the future
Do you both agree on what road riding is. If your on a carbon road bike it might mean to you sprinting for signs, chain gains etc. Is that what she wants?
To get ready for a tour you just need to get out on the bike. My wife and I did all our road work and touring rigid mountain bikes with thinner tyres (err actually all our mountain biking was on the same bikes). Assuming the MTB is a hard tail I'd start with putting on road tyres that can also do some tow paths etc. Look on the Thorn website for tyre advice.
If the MTB isn't suitable for touring then buy a bike that is. Could be an MTB with rack mounts, hybrid or touring bike. I see no point in buying a 23c road race style bike if touring is the objective, unless you plan to buy 2 bikes.
Finally its got to have a triple chain set if your going any where near hills
Those were the days
[img] 
[/img]
the verenti bikes are better value than the mainstream brands and have a female friendly position. For something racier, Boardman bikes have their "Fe" range which look ok - not available in large sizes though.
My wife had a Felt FW40 which was brilliant for the money - £600ish IIRC but on C2W so effectively £300. It's no longer a current model but it's well worth a look at Felt as a brand.
Was in this position a year and a half ago, and limited to what we had in the shop (Trek or Giant). Ended up with a Giant Avail.
Compared to the Trek we got a lot more for your money, and now the Trek frame has been downgraded from the previous model year (anyone ever heard of that before?) to a very simple tubeset with no hydroforming, no internal headset, anything.
The Giant gets a really nice, responsive hydroformed frame that's comfy, looks good and is light and a decent basis to upgrade from. You get a HT2 Shimano crankset (the trek is square taper and, we found, usually has a buckled spider), proper Mavic rims (the trek has rebadged Alexes) and is otherwise fairly comparable kit wise.
The Giant doens't also scream "girl's bike", which is nice.
We toured across Austria last year and I don't think I've seen anyone as happy with a bike. We did it with backpacks but you can fit racks. Also, the route we were on flooded and the bike just took it in its stride- I was impressed by just how good it was.
Thanks for all the advice here, just to post a conclusion we have ended up ordering a giant defy 2 mens small as the womens were too short for her. We wanted to take the advice of getting the miles in first but it was too much of a bargin to let slip.
We are now riding twice a week on the mtbs on cycletrracks and road and will probly leave the switch to riding road bikes for a few weeks.
Thx to all esp spokecycles