What are your recommendations? I just started thinking about bikes this morning, but I’m preliminarily leaning toward a hybrid fitness bike such as the Polygon Heist X7.
I’m going to be riding rail trails solo for… fitness…most often a 50-mile round trip one that starts very close to me.
One description of the trail is “fine hard packed crushed gravel suitable for road bike tires in most places, but some sections can be more difficult and are better suited to gravel or mountain bikes.”
Tubeless seems important to me because my wife doesn’t drive and there’d be no one to pick me up if I got a flat tire. (I don’t want to find out if Ubers accept muddy bicycles in the trunk.)
I’m interested in air forks for their adjustability. My old 1991 Giant hybrid had flat handlebars, and I liked them, but is a 50-mile ride too far for those to be comfortable?
I just started learning about bicycles again this morning and haven’t ridden one since I used to ride that Giant in the early 1990s. So I’m open to suggestions on what style or genre of bicycle to get as well as which models.
by BuyingLows
1 Comment
On some of your specific points: With tubeless tires you can still carry a spare tube to put in if you get a flat, or plug the tire, and many small punctures self seal with a tubeless setup. It doesn’t mean that tubeless is worthwhile for you but getting stranded isn’t any more of a conern than with tubed tires.
If you are going to get a suspension fork for this terrain then an air fork would be the way to go because of small bump compliance. Overall this just isn’t rough enough trail to need a suspension fork so a coil fork would just add weight and complexity without the responsiveness to be beneficial. The number 1 thing to improve small bump compliance by a long way is tire choice and setup.
For a 50 mile ride flat bars can be ok the main issues are is that they often only have one hand position so you can’t mix it up and end up with pressure on the same part of your hand and nerves the whole time. So for long distance rides with flat bars people often experiment with bars with more backsweep, ergonomic shape grips, adding bar ends or extensions with multiple hand positions.
A hybrid fitness bike like the polygon you mentioned is perfectly reasonable. It is a fairly safe choice that can either be all the bike you ever need, or a starting point for upgrades or even develop your plan for a more specialized design bike in the future.