First impressions

Well as some of you may have read I picked up my first road bike, a Spesh Allez 16, yesterday.

Being my first road bike I had nothing to compare it to really, other than a few quick ‘spins round the block’ on road bikes over the years.

Compared to mtb’s (which I have been riding on and off since the mid 80’s) the steering seemed mega quick, so much so that I wobbled around while trying to spin and clip into the toe clip when I first pulled away which was a tad shameful! (on that note the plastic pedals and toe clip and strap combo really is as cheap and cheerful as it gets and will be upgrade number 1)

I thought I would find the riding on the hoods a bit stretched to begin with and would sit more upright with my hands on the centre of the bars but actually, after a couple of minutes, I was soon using the hoods mainly.
The drops are still to get used too though!

The gears changed smoothly, as you would expect, plus I remained in the big ring the whole way home which was a surprise given my level of unfitness currently!

The ‘freebie’ wireless computer (Cateye Vectra) was of good encouragement meaning I kept an avg speed of 25khp (iirc approx 15mph) for the mostly flat 6 mile ride home. Not stunning performance I know but as mentioned above my fitness is virtually zero at the moment.

The only negative point were the brakes. I am not sure if it is because I am used to tightly set up V Brakes on my mtb or if they need to bed-in, etc but braking was power was less than I expected. Do they need a few miles to get ‘sharp’ anyone?

All in all I am pleased and despite a few hiccups in the process with the shop and poor communication, they came good in the end and even supplied me with my bike fit printout and along with my freebies will still do a free service after 200 miles.