Subject: RE: Best Road Bike - Need to buy Melissa , while I may not have the depth of bike expertise as most others on this site , I know what it is to buy a first road bike Am a newbie too ... did my first and only triathlon last year on a borrowed bike . While there is a lot of good info. on various threads , the way I went about it was really decided about the pricepoint (range) and thats half the tough decision rt there . Then I tried out a few bike fits in that range but for me , coming from a Walmart MTB, all the bike fits felt good ! Ultimately , it came down to components , reviews and a good road biking pedigree (if there exists one) or at least the brand equity as such . For me , I decided that I had to keep the base price around 1000 bux and can go to 1500 if it really was worth it . No tri bikes for me since I need some road bike experience and was planning on doing some group rides , if possible . Ended up trying Giant OCR1 and TREK 1500 ... while I could have definitely tried a few more , guess had got sold on the TREK brand and was very happy with the reviews on the TREK 1500 . Do check out http://www.roadbikereview.com, if you haven't already . Good Luck with the hunt |