Well a bit of an update, after having borrowed a road bike for most of a week now. I've taken it out for two rides, one solo on the bike paths to familiarize myself and once with a group on the roads
- At this stage I am too slow for the beginners group, so I would have to work on that before going again.
This is to be expected. You just need to put in some regular miles for a month or so, and will make some pretty incredible increases in your strength and stamina. Little things (like learning to draft properly, always being in the right gear, figuring out when to brake, figuring out when to go all out) will make this an awful lot easier as well.
- My backside is sore. I feel every time I change gear, go over almost invisible bumps, or even go over regular road over about 30km/hr (19mi/hr). They did make sure it was at the right height
The stronger you get on a road bike the more weight your legs take (because you're constantly pushing down on the pedals). This means that you're sitting less weight on the saddle, which makes things much more comfortable. Finding the right bike saddle is a tricky thing, and near as I can figure everyone has slightly different preferences based on body shape, fitness, style of riding, terrain, etc.
Generally speaking the further forward you lean while riding, the narrower a saddle you want. As you lean forward the width of the bones in your pelvis will change, so measuring your 'sit bones' to get a good idea of saddle width is only so helpful. If the saddle is too narrow it'll feel like it's riding up your butt and be very painful. If the saddle is too wide it'll feel OK for a little while, but will cause chafing on your inner thighs. Thick padding can be bad because you sink too far down and your 'nads bear too much weight . . . which makes your block and tackle go numb and isn't good news. Saddles with cutouts can help prevent numbness, but some people are less comfortable on them.
Personally, I'm good on any saddle I've ridden for about 50 km. I start to notice problems with a saddle after about 90km, and if the saddle doesn't fit very well I'm in pain after about 120km. This makes figuring out if a saddle will work very difficult unfortunately. :P
as such I'm hitting the brake. Which would be fine, but the brakes don't feel like they work very well. It is like braking in a huge truck and I'm almost surprised (and pretty grateful) when I finally stop. I don't remember my old mountain bike doing that! One of the other cyclists said disc brakes were better? If the others are that bad why would people use them? I don't feel like I can get any speed as I'm too worried about slowing down.
Properly set up (and with good pads - I like the kool stop black and salmon dual compound ones), road brakes will let you lock up the front wheel. That's the fastest way that you can slow down on a bike. Disk brakes can't slow you down faster than locking the front wheel, V-brakes can't slow you down faster than locking the front wheel.
Rim brakes on a road bike are very powerful brakes. On thing that often trips people up coming to a road bike is the body position change. Because you sit farther up, and farther forward on a road bike there will be more weight on the front wheel. When you brake on any bike it throws your weight forward. If you use a low saddle position and high bar position you can get away with using the rear brake to stop, because even when your weight gets thrown forward you're still keeping a lot of weight on the rear wheel. You have to brake properly on a road bike . . . which means that 90% of your slowing power comes from the front brake alone. The rear brake is rarely very useful.
In the wet you need to brake differently because the brake has to make a couple passes to clear water from the rim before it'll start to slow you down. There's a clear advantage to disc brakes in that sort of situation.
- traffic is scary!! Even with dedicated bike lanes. I don't have a problem with back streets, or roads out of town though. It is harder to actually do useful stuff out there though. I am not sure whether confidence will improve with further riding and whether central areas will be a future possibility
Traffic is scary. Over time you figure out better ways of cycling (when to take the lane, how to handle different traffic situations) which makes it more tolerable, but I'd say the vast majority of cyclists try to avoid busy traffic areas - and with good reason. I've been cycling to work through busy city streets for five years now, and while you get used to being yelled at, people passing too close, and stupid car stuff . . . it's never as fun as doing a long ride in the countryside.
I ended up getting a steel frame touring bike. It has a very wide range of gearing, so I can hang with a fast group or slowly drag heavily laden bags up hills equally comfortably. While it's a little heavier than a true road bike, it's pretty robustly built so I'm not worried about banging it up a little bit.
