Effect of going from hybrid to road bike

This post is designed as a detailed answer to a very common beginner question on this site, “What effect will moving from a hybrid to a road bike have on my biking speed?”

Now I know that this question is almost impossible to answer, as there are so many variables that come into play here.  That said, I’m simply going to give the details of my progression over the past year from:

BIKE A:  Hybrid bike with knobby tires and S-type, upright handlebars

BIKE B:  Hybrid bike with road tires, S-type, upright handlebars

BIKE C:  Hybrid bike with road tires, flat handlebar, and clip-on aerobars

BIKE D:  Entry-level racing road bike, with basic wheelset and clip-on aerobars

Some quick background…I started triathlon training, i.e. learning how to swim more than 50 yards at a time and learning to bike for speed, basically March 1^st of 2010.  Before that biking was a fun alternative to long runs and I used it mostly as a cross-training tool, and swimming was what you did on vacation to get to the swim-up bar at the resort. 

Early season biking around here is usually indoors so the first month was mostly spin classes 2x/week with maybe an outdoor bike ride if we got some really warm weather.  So, I had at least a minimal amount of bike fitness before the first data point I’m going to use, and I rode about 100-120 miles per month May – August while training for my mid-August triathlon.

First data point is on BIKE A, on 4/2/2010, on a roughly 26-30 mile course I do pretty regularly (variance is how far I go down one road and back):

Distance:  26.83 mi  TotalTime:  02:06:37   Average Speed:   12.71 mph    (from SportyPal app on Windows phone)

Next data point is two months later, on BIKE B, with some additional bike fitness and more of an emphasis on riding faster:

Distance:  26.73 mi  TotalTime:  01:46:49   Average Speed:   15.0 mph    (from SportTracks via  Garmin 305)

I then changed out the handlebars and added the clip-ons…so now we’re on BIKE C about mid-July:

Distance:  28.69 mi  TotalTime:  01:45:32   Average Speed:   16.3 mph    (from SportTracks via  Garmin 305)

I then raced a sprint triathlon with this bike configuration, at about 19 mph over a 19.5 mile flat course with no wind.

Fast forward to this year, with the upgrade to the BIKE D.  First, if you’ve never had a road bike (I hadn’t ridden one in 20 years almost), the position when going from a hybrid/mountain bike takes some getting used to for sure, which accounts for my less than overwhelming first longer ride:

Distance:  21.94 mi  TotalTime:  01:19:07   Average Speed:   16.6 mph    (from SportTracks via  Garmin 305, on a different, flatter course than our reference course)

But, with a few rides under my belt, the final data point here:

Distance:  30.64 mi  TotalTime:  01:45:15   Average Speed:   17.5 mph    (from SportTracks via  Garmin 305)

So with that data in mind, here are my observations/answers to the question:  “How will changing from a hybrid to this/that bike affect my speed?”:

• The main limiter of a hybrid bike is the knobby, fat tires.  Get rid of them.  Small cost of upgrade with a pretty big bang for the buck.
• Adding a flat bar and clip on aerobar setup gives you some additional speed by getting your head down, plus your arms in.  That is, if you don’t mind how utterly ridiculous you look on it.  I don’t really know how it affects your run afterwards (I had a good run in my tri, but a sample of n=1 doesn’t cut it for data)
• Changing bike types (hybrid to road, and even road to tri) takes an adjustment period where you might be slower than before, or at least you don’t get the benefit of the technology right away
• If you spend enough time on ANY bike, you will achieve consistent improvements “it’s all about the engine” ;I was pretty dialed in on using my hybrid down on the aerobars, and put up a solid MOP bike split at my tri last year

So, to conclude…from my personal experience, going from a fat-tired hybrid to a decent road bike, plus a year’s worth of bike training equals about 5 mph on a 30 mile course. 

As always, YMMV.