First day

[Rafreg]

Hey all

Just though I would report on my first part of my commute. I have never commuted before. Today was the first part of it. 12 miles to work, and 12 miles back. I have a Specialized Sirrus. Only brought it second hand to see how I got on. What I feel is I may need a mountain bike as I am mainly sticking to paths, some are quite bumpy. Can anyone say if you can commute on a mountain bike? Might sound a silly question and I apologies for that, but I know nothing about bikes.

Regards

 

[abo]

Never admit to riding on the pavement on a cycling forum

You don't really need a MTB for what you're doing, but if you really just fancy a MTB then get some tyres with a lower rolling resistance and it'll help you out. I've got Double Fighter 2's on my MTB beause I wanted to retain some offroad capability, but you could go for some Schwalbe City Jets for even better on-road performance, a lot of people on here really rate them.

You can always switch back to knobblies at the weekend if you're hitting the trails

 

[Rafreg]

So I can just fit MTB tyres to my sirrus and it will be ok?

 

[abo]

Well... I'm a bit of a n00b, but I'd guess the standard gearing on your Sirrus will be quite high for MTB use, plus if you fitted MTB tyres you'd need to look for 29ers as your Sirrus has 700c wheels instead of 26" MTB wheels.

Personally, if you're wanting to ride to work and back during the week and play off road at the weekend I'd do one of two things:

• Flog the Spesh and get a hardtail MTB with LO forks, and do the tyre swapping as I said, or
• Keep the Spesh for weekday use and buy another bike for the weekend, this will give you more flexiblity over what you get for your playtime e.g. a FS bike or something

But I wouldn't be putting 29ers on your Spesh, you'd be ruining what seems to be a nice commuter, all IMHO of course