Buying a Road Bike - £500 Budget - Choices and Decisions

Preparations are afoot to progress along the training path to complete a Triathlon in my fiftieth year. As mentioned in my previous ramblings on this decision, I already run and have appropriate kit to use on and off road. However the battered mountain bike, while still good fun, is not going to be suitable for the task ahead.

Therefore a road bike is required, the choice of which is quite frankly a minefield. When I was young any bike with drop handlebars was a racer, read road bike, and professionals had frames made out of Reynolds 531 tubing, apparently the options are now somewhat more complicated. Then there is the price, it seems that you can spend more on a bicycle now than a small car costs. Now I am sure that the technology is fantastic on the expensive bikes and that they are extremely light, but they are also way outside the budget of £500 that I have in place. Also my suspicion is that while the latest components might make a difference to a professional cyclist, actually being fit and completing the required training is more likely to be the best solution to covering the required distance in a reasonable time.

So what can you get for five hundred quid, well quite a lot it would seem, alloy frame, carbon forks, Shimano gear sets and a weight under 10kgs. Interestingly though these are not all bikes from budget manufacturers, Dawes and Raleigh have plenty of machines in this bracket and some companies associated with the more expensive end of the spectrum, such as Specialized and Trek, also have entry level bikes around this price.

To be fair you are quite likely to get what you pay for at this price, so my feeling is to go close to the budget level and choose something from a manufacturer that I am familiar with. Personally I know very little about Norco, Pinnacle and Fuji, actually I was not even aware that Fuji even made bikes as my association with them is more on the electronic side of things. I am naturally drawn to Dawes, although I suspect this is because a Galaxy Tourer to ride around Europe on was high on my list for some years, Specialized bikes have always appealed and discovering that Trek make something within my budget has just made the choice even more complicated.

Obviously I have to make a choice over the next few weeks, currently my shortlist contains the Secialized Allez, Dawes Giro 500 and the Cannondale Synapse Alloy Claris, although there is a temptation to spend a little bit more for the Trek 1.1 or 1.2. The odds are with one of these, but there is certainly a chance of going with something else entirely, the problem being that specifications are very similar on all bikes of this price, maybe I should just pick a nice colour.

Andy