Need advice for a womens entry level road bike

Hi, I need some advice. My girlfriend is training for her first mini-triathalon in june but does not have a bike yet. Neither of us has the money to spend on something high end right now. I was wondering if anybody has any info on a good entry level bike for women and where I can find one? I live in new york city.

Any info will help, thanks

My girlfriend is looking too. These ones for $800 OR less: Trek 1.2(womens), Specialized Dolce(womens), and Jamis Ventura Sport(womens), mostly fitted with Shimano Sora shifters. Hope it helps.

Hey There,

Newbie in NM...Just bought a Raleigh Grand Prix for $850. Workin' out very well, but then again I don't know much yet
Good luck!

Your local Tri organisations will have Bulliten Boards where these things are bought and sold cheap.

For example, Perth population 500,000 :
http://www.triwa.org.au/bb

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Cheers,
George.

my gf bought a specialized dolce for like $600.00 brand new. She loved it and it worked for her. she put a couple thousand miles on it and just recently upgraded to the ruby carbon bike. Her only complaint about the dolce is that it is relatively heavy. otherwise it was well worth the money

I am new to cycling too, and just got myself a Specialized Allez. Went for my first ride yesterday. Don't know enough yet to say whether it's an awesome bike or not, but it seems pretty good and it feels ridiculously light compared to my mountain/commuter bike.

I'm wondering why there are all these boyfriends writing in on behalf of their girlfriends' bike quests. Ladies, where are you? Tell me what you've learned so far.

Hey there! I'm new to cycling as well! My boyfriend got me into it and now I'm hooked! I just got the Trek 1.2 five days ago and so far, I am loving it. It's super light compared to my old mountain bike and it flies!! It's a great entry level bike and for the money, you can't go wrong. Of course, I am still having trouble finding my seat position, but I'm sure I will find it soon!

Yay! Did you get a bike fit? That can help you find your seat position correctly for where your legs are. Or you might need a different saddle. I'm actually dealing with this issue myself at the moment. I got my saddle in a good spot pretty quickly with the help of a bike shop and it has been relatively comfortable for the past 1.5 years. I've been training for an iron-distance swim-bike race (Aug 1!!!) so have been going for long rides. The discomfort I got was in my left hand/fingers numbness etc. It pushed me into finally getting clip on aero bars to give myself another position for my hands. Got those feeling alright but of course now my position in the saddle is totally different and SO not comfortable. I'm pretty nervous about how that will play out in my race on Saturday. yikes!

That's awesome! Good luck to you!! I'm not quite at that level yet! lol but I would love to get to racing status someday! Well, I got fitted for the bike, my boyfriend and I took all the measurements and then we went to the bike shop. I was a 49 but purchased a 50 since it was pretty close. I tried using the saddle that came with the bike, but it was smaller and harder than the gel one that I had been using on my mountain bike. I went back to my MTB saddle (which was previously pretty comfortable for me) and now I'm having a hard time finding the right angle/ saddle position for me. It's only been a few days, but yesterday's ride was killer! lol I plan to get on the trainer today before my ride and my boyfriend will check it out and see what adjustments need to be made. Hopefully this helps! Oh and I too started feeling the discomfort on the left hand ring finger!!! I realized that I keep my hands on the hoods and I haven't been changing my position as often as I should. Also, I don't have any gloves yet so that might also be it. I'm looking to get some Specialized gel gloves I saw at my local bike shop soon.

Thanks for your reply! I wish you the best of luck in your race!!! Let us know how you do!!!

Thanks! I don't know a thing about bicycle racing, but I think it's pretty different in triathlons. For one thing, no drafting! Since tris aren't a team sport so much, you can enter at any level just to try out competing and learn by doing. There are cut-off times for each leg, but since I got into tris from open water swim racing, I get a nice time buffer so I've never had to worry about the cutoffs. The hardest part about triathlons is figuring out the time to train properly for THREE sports in your weekly schedule. Anyway, after a few months of training, I was ready to do an olympic distance tri. I would bet that after you've been riding for a few months, you'd be ready to try a race too, if you are into that. I've learned so much from each race, and I don't worry about having all my skills 100% to enter a race. I'm still having a stumbling block with v. tight left-hand turns for some reason I think there are only a couple in my race this weekend. 2.4mile swim + 112 mile bike. Hoping to finish in 8 hours. Will let you know how it goes!

Reporting back from Vineman Aquabike. It was almost 2 weeks ago, but I've been pretty busy. It sure was fun, what a gorgeous area and nice weather for it! Swim went by fast, some of the men were walking in the shallow water which I thought was lame. But at least I was swimming past them, rather than the other way around. Bike ride was nice but also I was really really ready to get off my bike by the time there were 10 miles left! I wanted to finish in 8 hours, and I just barely beat that, so it was a big success. What I didn't realize is that would let me place in my age group, so I won a bottle of wine to boot! Then I really enjoyed sleeping in the following day. Thumbs up!

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

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