Road Bikes

Road bikes are mainly being bought today by the enthusiast

What we call Road bikes today, you may think of as racers or ten speeds. Very narrow, high pressure tyres are very fast, but also more likely to be damaged off paved surfaces (thus being called "road bikes". Road bikes are mainly being bought today by the enthusiast or triathlete for fast, long distance riding. Because the most common buyer of road bikes today is a more serious rider.

Touring Road Bikes

Road bicycles can be recognized by the longer tube holding the fork and the steering together You can easily see it on the picture above. Also notice the overall steering height position. The goal with a road bicycle is to have the cyclist sitting in a more upward position than on a race bicycle. Thus, a road bicycle will be much more comfortable than a race bicycle over long period of times or distance.

Racing Road Bikes

Race bicycles are by far the fastest and lightest of all types. They have one purpose in mind, offering the most performance they can be. That is, to use the cyclist energy to its maximum and minimize energy loss. For such bicycles, the frame is usually made of allows like aluminum or carbon. Like we saw in previous sections, the frame must be the lightest it can be, while being the stiffest possible. By stiffest, we mean a frame that does not bend too much when submitted to external forces. These forces can come from various sources.

The cyclist is one big source of stress on any bicycle. Every time he pushes on the pedals, the whole frame will inevitably bend to some extent. The road disparities and imperfections will also induce high energy stress to the frame. The more the frame bends over these forces, the more energy is dissipated by it. If the frame dissipates energy, this is fundamentally bad because that energy is lost instead of ending up pushing the bicycle forward.