[Closed] Buying a bike for the Girlfriend - Worth it or not?

I am in a not-dissimilar position. MrsDummy is not a great enthusiast for sport generally, and while she likes the idea of riding a bike she finds the effort and concentration a bit much. Buying anything new and nice is likely to be a waste, and buying anything rubbish is always a waste.

In all seriousness, get a modestly priced tandem. It takes the pressure of steering, braking, road sense away, allows her to put in as much or as little real effort as she likes, and means you can bring her back from 30 miles out if her legs stop working.

🙂

Can you afford a halfway decent bike? Have you got several bikes? Buy a small frame and build it up with bits off your spare bikes?

A decent bike with a decent saddle ( her choice not yours) will make a big difference to how much she will use it

I'm thinking the same..

If I buy a cheap bike then it won't be a pleasent experience, but then If I buy something expensive and it doesn't get used...

I'm thinking I may just get her this: http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/?fn=product&productId=1718&categoryId=129 and see how she gets on with it..

Why not try a couple of demo bikes out and see if biking is for her, You could use a couple of bike shops and see what happens from there?

Maybe the Singletrack world collective should organise a couple of "partner" bikes ?

Basically we all chip in and buy say one 15" and one 19" bike. We then swap them between us and when are partners think they might get into cycling and then proceed to get bored of it. 🙂

Alternatively I dont know where you live but could you not hire one ?

Swinnertons at chase trails hire them £20 for 3 hours and you dont have to ride follow the dog you go just do the family bike routes. Im sure other trail/forest centres must do similar ie sherwood pines/look out braknell/bedgebury.

You'd be able to go 4-5 time before it came close to the price of even a cheap bike.

Not sure what a tandem would look like with a 6'7" bloke on the front and a 5'5" woman on the back! I think custom would be the only way to do it and boy would it be ugly and expensive!

Money isn't an issue with the purchase (within reason) but i don't want to simply waste money on something that won't be used. The decathlon bikes are not too bad for the money. But then £360 for the spesh is hardly the end of the world is it.

In an ideal world i'd like to be able to go over to the park for a couple of little tester rides on her existing bike but it's just toooo horrible.

Just buy her a rabbit instead, then you both will be free to ride as far as you like for as long as you like. Without her getting a sore knee/bum/hand/neck/foot and you getting a sore ear!

I've just been through this with Mrs V8_shin_print, I have upgraded her Raleigh Lizard to a GT Avalanche 1.0 (15.5") which i got from a mate of a mate for £250. It took me an hour of fiddling to get the brakes and gears right, but as far as she is concerned it is a 'new' bike with disc brakes and suspension. To me it is heavy but compared to the raleigh it's a feather! It's all relative, if she takes to it then we will look at upgrading parts or maybe the whole bike, but it is easily good enough for her to work out if she will get in to biking and will do for a year as she builds skills.
Keep watching the classifieds and something will come up, even if it takes a week or two. You will know yourself if she is the type of girl who is going to want to follow you down drops or if she only wants to pottle around the park...

Damned if you do damned if you dont

Buy the best you can afford.

The rewards could be great or end in 😥

Make time and be sympathetic. Encourage some of her mates :Dto join in.

Dont be daft and try taking her on silly trails/routes. Getting out for a 1/2hr easy ride to start with(as per a jogging prog)and ease up the miles/time as and when. Just don`t force the issue. Until she is confident, built up the sore/sit points and competent on the easy stuff then venture onto more exciting terrain.

That Commencal seems to be sold out. Why not get Merlins own bike brand? Or try Edinburgh bike shop for their own brand, they get good reviews

my mum got a carrera soemthing or other, £300 and something quid, everything works as well as it needs to and weighs in sub 30lb. Handling is spot on as well.

I got my gf a 14" Schwinn Mesa GS off ebay for about £180. It's got Deore gears and a slightly crap Rockshox J1 fork - I've now put a BB7 on the front. She is very happy with it - rides it to work on slicks and comes on easy mtb trails like the North Face in Grizedale with me sometimes.

You can get off the peg tandems to fit your sizes - trouble is ones that are really offroad worth are not cheap. Try hiring a tandem first? tho I dunno if the hire ones will fit- you need a large / small frame and a long seatpost

Took my GF to halfords and got a Carrera for £200. all reasonable kit with cable disc and (heavy) sus fork. She loves it. Primarily for commuting but does do the odd bit of off road with me. Anyway, good bike at good price and half way house for you between the spesh and decathlon.

Oh yeah, a mate has just bought his gf a Carrera from Halfords for similar money, she is really pleased with it. It seemed pretty good quality to me for the price.

How many blokes on here have tried to get a bird biking? In theory it all sounds good. But reality is that if someone is not that way inclined, they wont be bothered if they have an 09 carbon Trek to ride!

I hate playing squash and find it a pointless and boring thing to do. If my GF bought me the best squash racquet money could buy then it would not make me want to hit a ball against a wall for an hour. Even if she totally loved playing it. So in theory a racquet at a tenner would be just as good!

If you must then I would but that bike from Merlin, as it looks ok for the money. It will be less money to lose when it ends up in the local papers classifieds!

Don't be Cynical Seth! Have you never heard that true love overcomes all?

i'd recommend the tryout from shops. We did that (ok its not mtb, but road as i can no longer mtb due to knees) and she got a good idea of what it was like. Then i bought her a good trek and she loves it, even looking to spec things and change components!

dont do the typical buying a cheapo - she wont like it and wont do it. The number of guys i see with a 6k road bike and their gf with a 2 dollar 'skip find' suprises me..

I hired the sort of tandem I was thinking of a couple of years ago. It was a Trek, built around an 18inch front and 14inch rear end I think. It was specced with the sort of stuff you'd get on a £300-£400 bike and was of course very heavy, but perfectly solid feeling. For local parks and country lanes sort of thing it was absolutely spot-on. 🙂

Buy something you could happily take over and use if it gets left gathering dust.

😀

I'm swaying towards the Spesh but i'm off to Halfords at lunchtime so will look at their offerings as well as popping into Two Wheels to see what they have on the way back.

I'm midlands based so could go to the Chase and hire a bike but are there any female specific bikes available? Plus as she hasn't ridden for years and it was an effort turning around on the driveway yesterday so i wouldn't take her anywhere remotely offroad until she finds her cycling legs again.

Deja vu! mrs kpt is pushing for a new full susser now.I got her a mongoose rockadile just to try her hand and shes got the bug now.It didnt help her having a spin on a relatives giant vt1 as nant yr arian on sunday,she came back claiming she could be twice as quick with a bike like that so she hasnt stopped scouring the classifieds since for a vt1

Rich, she's 5'5", i'm 6'7". Not sure my knees could cope with a 15" frame 😉

at 5ft 5 womens specific trek or specialized would make sense - it really does seem to make a big difference to comfort and actually using it before mrs antigee got a womens specific trek all i got was moans about back ache - now rides most weekends and commutes some days

Stick a WTD ad in the classifieds, see if anyone else's wife/GF has got bored of it already.

Rich, she's 5'5", i'm 6'7". Not sure my knees could cope with a 15" frame [;-)]

Haha, OK maybe not!

I just lend my wife my 456 when she occasionally wants to come for a ride, which is handy with her only being a few inches shorter than me.

How many blokes on here have tried to get a bird biking?

I did it. It worked. Mrs PP now has the most expensive and best specced bike in the garage.
(Which was a present from me)
😀

MrTall - Member

Rich, she's 5'5", i'm 6'7". Not sure my knees could cope with a 15" frame [;-)]

Na - you'll be fine - small bikes are more manoeuvrable remember
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Well I once bought a £200 Giant for a GF, she liked/loved it, I got her £2k (rrp) titanium hardtail as a suprise she never bonded with it and it got sold for a painfully small sum, the lesson - let them choose it but "help" them make the right choice! my recomendation is a niceish cannondale hardtail with soft cushioned grips & a comfy saddle for their extra tender you know whats

I built up a jump bike with a merlin frame, its a play bike for me and when my wife wants to come out she has a decent(ish) spec'd bike to use, win/win surely :o)

[IMG] [/IMG]

Brought her a women's specific saddle to swap over as she found the DMR jumpy saddle to hard...

Original question "Buying a bike for the girlfriend - worth it or not?".

Based on your description - No, its not worth it.

Too right about her current Apollo bike. She's likely to get out of her depth on even a modest downhill (and its SO easy to get carried away with biking 🙂 )

Hire a bike and see if she likes it. She won't feel committed and neither will you. Buying something does funny stuff to our expectations. You want to prove you spent wisely, right? That can easily get in the way of enjoying the ride, for her and for you.
Think of it as hiring a pedalo for the day. It's having fun together outdoors (stop s****ing at the back). Forget the male I'm-only-having-fun-if-I-go-fast mentality and relax...

The Chase has fireroads right? Forget that FtD is there and have a pootle. You can always do more, but once you've scared her off that's it.

Good luck and enjoy 🙂

Oh and one more question - Do you actually want her to come biking regularly with you? For many of us MTB time is self-indulgent c*cking about time with our male mates. I'd recommend being honest with yourself, and her as it'll save a lot of trouble if she does *gasp* actually like biking...

TM

p.s. all IMHO - you may think quite differently and that's fine :).
p.p.s If I come across at all patronising I don't mean to - honest advice intended only 🙂

If she wants a nicer bike, she can buy it. Problem solved 🙂

To start my (then) girlfriend (now wife) off with biking I bought her a 299 merlin special - it was light and had a ladies saddle. It took her a couple of rides but she quickly got into it. That bike was then nicked - replaced with a rock lobster 853 and then a fs Azonic. By this time she was well hooked and lusted after a SantaCruz SL - which I bought for her when a decent 2nd hand one came up. So it is possible! I know though that she is quite tough and doesn't mind the odd bruise / crash - other friends have tried to get their better half's into riding and found quite the opposite (1st scratch and the bike goes on ebay)

IMO don't try the "it's my jump bike and your xc bike" game - it'll be too heavy and will handle like a pig on the flat stuff

As a female rider, yes please, do buy or rent her a bike BUT:

Do NOT take her out on a route that YOU think is easy just because you don't suffer on it.

Take her somewhere pan flat and only for an hour, then gradually build up from there. The chances are good that she's going to need support, encouragement and patience.

I read on another forum how a guy took his g/f to Coed-y-Brenin for her first ride out, then was annoyed that she couldn't climb the hills.

If you're not prepared to take it slowly, easily and carefully for the first few months OR not prepared to help her find a bunch like minded women to ride with, then don't bother. You'll ruin cycling for her forever.

Mrs momo has a cheapo supermarket special bike from before we met, a few eeks ago she decided that she wanted to try riding together, so we went out for a shortish local ride, fairly flat (we do live in lincoln after all) and mainly based around cycle paths and quiet roads. She didn't get on very well because she found the saddle to be VERY uncomfortable, so during the week we went out and bought a new saddle, tried again at the weekend and she really enjoyed it this time. Going to take her over to sherwood pines shortly and see how she gets on there.

If she still enjoys it when there are a few hills to contend with then I'll be buying her something like the specialised for her birthday in July.

Knowing my girlfriend as i do, i reckon she'll only ever do local park and country road lanes at best (maybe the occasional towpath) and would have no interest in what we would generally call 'proper' mountainbiking so i realise rides with her will just be a bit of time spent together in the sunshine at a more than relaxed pace and no doubt stopping for tea every 500 yards. I have no intention of pushing her too far at all.
If i'm brutally honest i quite like the time alone (or with riding buddies) away from her so i don't know how i'd feel if she actually got really into it (although it would be pretty cool i guess).
I've just got back from Decathlon and Halfords and there was nothing inspiring in either. LBS had a nice GT but at £460 the budget is starting to creep up from the Spesh at £360 (which seems the best value out there at the moment).

If i buy the spesh then i reckon i could get back a good chunk of the original cost if i sold it again in the classifieds/ebay within the first year?

IMO don't try the "it's my jump bike and your xc bike" game - it'll be too heavy and will handle like a pig on the flat stuff

Not wanting an argument or anything, but out of interest why?

I've ridden a few xc miles on the Merlin dual and found it fine, although a little small for an all dayer as I'm 6ft and its a 15" frame. Lighter than my PA and Lava Dome I used to have. This maybe as its built more as a small xc bike than a dj bike though?

I don't wish to sound patronising but is it surprising that girls don't want to ride bikes when they're presented with something that weighs a ton? Girls generally do weigh less than men, some don't have the strength that men do. Would you want to ride around on some downhill beast on towpaths cos that's how it could feel to a girl?

At 5'5" (same as me) you don't have to keep to women-specific. Have a look on the Classifieds for a used frame. I have found that a 15" Rock Lobster and a 14" Inbred fit me perfectly. As suggested, post a 'Wanted' ad. When I sold my Lobster last year, there was an awful lot of interest on here.

Also don't forget that forks and wheelset can make a huge difference, again go the second-hand route.

If it doesn't work (almost sounds as though you don't want it to :wink:) you will be able to sell on again. May be she would feel more comfortable riding with other girls?

bought one for the wife, one trip 2 miles up the canal and back, its been in the attic since

My other half buys her own bikes, usually with some discussion beforehand over frame/ forks/ components.
On the whole she ends up buying what she wants to buy and is usually pretty happy with it, there were tears when she noticed that she only had a Centaur and not a Record front derraileur on her no.1 road bike.

I recently replaced Mrs Tyred's insanely heavy women-specific Spesh Hardrock with a Kona Caldera built over a period of time from spares and bits bought off the classifieds. Came about because she took my BFe out for a spin and demanded to know why it weighed about half as much as her bike.

Fun project for me - trying to save weight on a micro-budget - and she's delighted with her nice lightweight bike and wants to ride it all the time. Reckon I spent no more than 250 quid. Totally worth it.

I cannot understand why bikes designed for women weigh so much.

SilentSparky; mainly as Jump bikes tend toward the heavy side with burly components, often have limited gearing and the geometry isn't great for nippy xc handling. I know that my 9 gear play bike weighs 32lbs ish where as my wife's 1st xc bike (rigid, steel, v-brakes, 27 speed) was about 26lbs, the play bike has a stupidly laid back seattube angle which makes climbing a complete b1tch and has heavy DH tyres that drag like beasts. It's just not that much fun for anything other than what it's designed for - playing in the woods on jumps and steep stuff

I de-risked the issue of Mrs F not riding the bike so I built one that if she didn't like it I would have some fun on, unfortunatley she did like it and I had to buy myself one as I didn't get a look in.

It is a good spec though Dialled Bike Prince Albert, RS Revs, XT gears, Hope Hubs, etc......

Her first foray in to biking was on a much cheaper heavier bike and she didn't enjoy it, but by building something better Mrs F got much more out of riding. A heavy poor quality bike will do nothing to get her interested in riding.

If you are going to do it, go second hand.

You get a lighter (important), better functioning and possibly better fitting bike (really important). The difference mrs_oab noticed moving from her old Saracen to the Orange Clockwork was weight. MOving up to the Cannondale, the fit is fantastic, and the light weight amazing for her at 7st.

I bought mrs_oab a Cannondale with XT/Minis etc for £250
I bought mrs_oab's sister a minted Scott Contessa with full LX, half decent forks etc for £175.
I helped brother in law buy a Carrera road bike for £140
I bought my father in law and old cro-mo Scott with full (old skool) XTR on it for £110, new semi slicks and saddle for another £40.
Helped my brother buy a wonderful cro-mo KHS for £60, then a newer Univega for £120 that did him 8 years commuting....

teh missus loves the merlin malt 1 she has.

its much much lighter than all my bikes and she is going out on it a fair bit. we did a few trails locally together which i let her plan and took extra food to force down her so she didnt collapse. first ride she refused to eat much and suffered so i explained why and second ride she was much better.

got her to get a proper womans saddle, shorts and pestered her to tell me if things felt wrong or tried different things (stems and set position) to help her set it up so she liked it.

just need a babysitter so we can go out together now.