Bosnia Bike Marathon - advice on bikes

adaminbudapest, April 10, 2011

Have agreed to joina mate's lunatic 450 km in 3 days trek across Bosnia this summer and so am looking for a new bike to help me manage it

Route is all on good roads and involves 6 category A climbs across the 3 days and so am looking for some advice on a bike to choose

have found a list of potential candidates but dont know a huge amount about them and cant find much online and as it is a lot of cash dont want to make a stupid decision

Trek 1.1 or 1.2
Specialised Allez Sport or Secteur sport

Can some one give me some advice on which of these is the best buy - have about 750 - 800 GBP to spend - also can anyone explain the difference between a Compact and a Triple as it is a new language to me

Thanks in advance, Adam

Tags

Road.cc bike forum

A recumbent trike, lol, fine n comfy

posted by Gkam84 [6480 posts] 10th April 2011 - 18:15

you done much road biking before? if not, and if those are your choices, i'd go for the secteur sport. it's a bit more upright position-wise and designed for comfort, and the triple chainset will give a bigger range of gears.

triple/compact: a triple chainset is three rings (natch) at the front, a compact is two but they're smaller than a standard double road chainset, 50/34 instead of 53/39. either will give you lower gears than a standard road setup, a triple gives a wider range than a compact (unless you're running a super-wide range cassette at the rear like SRAM Apex does)