Advice on Triathlon Bikes

appeaseme

Hi All,
I am thinking of buying a new bike for around £1000 but I'm a bit lost.

I currently have a GT Vengeance which I have used for my first tri season (3 sprint distance events) but I am hoping to do some Olympic distances next year, perhaps my first 70.3 the following year building up to full Ironmans in the future. I am hooked!

The Vengeance is good (though a bit of an antique now and pretty heavy) and it could be updated with some fast wheels (it uses 650's) and has tribars now. It is increasingly difficult to find parts for it however (I liken it to a classic car, brilliant, but expensive to run).

Should I buy a new Triathlon bike and use the Vengeance for training or should I invest in the Vengeance and make it suitable for training and racing?

Any advice welcome!

Andy

Tesseract

So it depends how much you love the Vengence? If you're putting in loads of training miles (which you'll need to for IM) it's going to get damaged/ worn out, and you'll need more replacements.

It also depends if you are racing for the best time possible, or just to do it?

In terms of what's best to race on, hands down it's a tri-bike. There are a few decent entry level tri-bikes for £1000 I think, but it will be a compromise on frame, kit, or wheels (or all of them).

....But...my first few years of tri I raced on a roadie with aero bars and good wheels, I've only switched to a tri-bike this year, and so far I haven't seen a huge improvement in time tbh.

Zacnici

Well you have a road bike you like so great for training, another lighter more modern well specced road bike would be great for training but as has been said a tri bike can be had for about a grand. That is what I did - Focus Izalco - well specced and last year swapped the components over to a Caervelo P2C frame

PX do the Stealth, carbon frame, SRAM rival mechs and you can buy under Cycle to Work scheme an same oodles