Biking fun! My new road bike and accessories

One of the luxuries you can't miss to afford living in the Bay Area is comfortable Cycling workouts. The weather is usually perfect and roads are pretty flat and smooth and quite a few have biking lanes. (Not forgetting to mention Google has recently released biking directions which adds favourably to this experience).

Bike purchase decision
So after discussing with few experienced bikers I decided to buy a good road bike, visited the performance biking shop nearby to realize they didn't sell Trek and then visited the Chain Reactions bicycle store in Redwood city on recommendation that they actually allow you to test ride your bike for 4 miles trail before buying it which is pretty important to decide buying a bike.

In chain reaction shop I tried a couple of bikes as usual as the price went up the feeling seemed to improve :) I also had a strong preference for color of the bike (and therefore looks of it), both these factors concluded on me buying a Trek 2.1 Alpha bike which is a Aluminum frame bike as that seems to be slightly more sturdier than Carbon frames and a good one to start biking. I must say after riding this for about 300 KMs or so I fell in love with this bike and kinda addicted to biking whenever possible.

From Biking

Road Biking shoes and Clip-on Pedals
After I put about 400 KMs or so and figured I am going to take it seriously and bought Road Biking shoes which made me switch the pedal to the Clip-on pedals. After getting them on and trying it I immediately felt I have definitely not thought well enough before deciding, as it was a major change and had a bit of learning curve during which biking became uncomfortable. Including a few falls as you are not accustomed to take off shoes from the pedal while stopping or just can't manage it in time.

This is how the pedal and shoes (with cleats) look like:

Anyways after trying it in the shop for a while and then adjusting the shoes a bit I came out and very soon had a fall :) and then few more later. I then turned to youtube for help and found these two good videos:




Weather has not been that great this winters so biking didn't work very well but its getting better now and last 2-3 weekends I have been pulling good distances. I was able to complete 40 miles in last attempt, which feels pretty good to sustain for a while and then improve upon. More on biking in next post.