I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike.

Oh, hey! A cycling thread! How did I miss this?

I've had a good year on the bike. My old Trek hybrid was getting a bit beat up, so I splurged and bought a Fisher Ion CX Pro 'cross bike in March. I wanted something a little sportier that would still carry a rack (and fenders, too, though I haven't actually gotten around to installing any yet.). My old bike had a drop bar conversion done very early in its life, so I figured I'd just get a bike with drops this time around.

I've logged just over 4000 km on the bike so far this year--a personal record by far. The two tours I did didn't hurt the the total, but I was also able to get out for a lot of rides after work and on weekends. I don't commute by bike, since my office is just a bit too far away. But I do have a nice 48 km route that I can do when I get home. Just not now, because it's dark at 4:30 and some of the trails I use aren't very well lit. :(

I also did my first century this year (161 km; 100 mi.), on the optional ride day at GOBA. Better late than never!

Now that it's Crappy Weather Season, I'm looking at the basement and trying to figure out where to set up the trainer. But it's so borrrring. :P

-- Peri

So Operation Spend More Money On The Bike Than It's Worth is complete, and judging by today's quick ride, was quite successful.

Here's some before and after pics. This is what it started off as:

Below you can see a spot where the clearcoat had failed, and there was some fairly juicy rusting on the bottom of the tube. For those larger rusty bits, I sanded it back to sound metal, and then just clearcoated it. I didn't really want to faff about trying to match colours, and I don't mind a bit of a distressed aesthetic for a working bike; I think it came out OK. I'll keep an eye on those patches, and reconsider if they turn out not to be durable enough.

The cassette and RD looked, uh, awful. I do actually clean my bike from time to time, but hadn't for a few months, since I knew I was going to be taking it all apart. That's a 7-speed cassette, 12-21, and very, very worn.

And here's the chainrings. These are a bit of an oddball size, 46-36, which apparently is sometimes used in CX these days:

And now for the new stuff. It's a Campagnolo Veloce groupset, which is their lowest end group. 10 speed, though. Wheels are Ambrosio (Italian!) rims built up with DT Swiss hubs and spokes.
The RD. Cassette is 13-26:

The FD. 53-39, which gives me a bit more oomph at the top end. I did tend to spin out with 46-12, so looking forward to that. 39-26 is lower than 36-21, so I win at that end, too! You can see where there was more rust cleanup - the metal under the old FD band was in poor shape, and there was a ding in the chainstay that needed looked at:

A view from the front. Very happy with the brakes. Not entirely happy with how the housing is routing around the headtube, as you can see there's contact there, which isn't good. Something else to keep an eye on.

And the overall end result:

Today's ride was just a quick one, but enough to show that it'll take a bit of getting used to. Campy brifters work rather differently from Shimano ones, so there's some muscle memory to overcome. The shape of the shifters is different, too - they feel fatter. But the bike was very, very responsive (better wheels, and it's a few ounces lighter than it was), with no squeaks or groans (unlike the old version!), braking is really good (I almost overapplied them the first few times), and shifting is responsive and precise. I had a good time building it up, and learned quite a bit - building the wheels was the highlight, I think.

Roll on the spring!

Ok looking for some advice. My Christmas plan worked. I have $600.00 dollars for a new bike. Woot.

Cycling has become my primary method of weightless/exercising so I am really looking for the most bang for my buck. That said, if I really need to bump it up to $700 I can but I pretty much want to stay within my budget...so can I do it?

I have been riding my Giant "comfort style" bike pretty heavily for the last year but frankly I have out grown it and it is time for a more "real" bike. My riding consists of lots and lots of hills so light is good. It is all basically roadway/bike path riding but that said I prefer (I think) a more mountain bike style as opposed to a racing style. Plus I think they tend to feel, at least to me, a bit sturdier and that is a good thing for the roadways that I ride on.

So I will definitely be doing my research and I have a great bike shop near me- I am not worried about getting a good deal- their daughter goes to school with my daughter and they are very close so I am comfortable that I won't be sold something I don't want or need. But that said, I happily defer to those that know more than I do to at least point me in the right direction of make and model. Thanks!

Oh yeah brakes---I am naturally a very heavy user of brakes- does that mean that I should be looking at something with a disc brake system?

$700 isn't much for a good bike. You'll probably want to look at a used bike.

I also think you'll want to go for a road bike, even if you feel less comfortable ATM on one. They're meant for distance and time, and are built to accommodate long sessions. Mountain bikes are heavier and made to handle shifting weight: if you're going over a drop, you're going to be off the seat, pulling on the bars, etc. If you're not doing stuff like that, you really want to be able to shift your hand position to help your arms and back rest. And while a road bike may not seem as sturdy, shocks add pounds of weight to the bike that will limit your speed and time on the bike in the long run.

My suggestion: go to a local bike shop and demo the road bikes. Try to ride for a few miles, then compare that to a mountain/hybrid bike on the same route. The later two will feel comfortable, but you'll get around MUCH quicker and easier (if I'm right...) on the road bike.

And don't worry about the brakes. Good bikes have good brakes.

Ok I won't sweat the brakes then...

As for the amount, yeah I do have to stay in my budget. That said, my last/current Giant Cypress ran me 249.00 and that did me good for a long time so I am hoping the that this upgrade will be substantial for comfort, speed and fun.

I have been looking over a few possibilities after gleaning some reviews and threads.

Trek FX 7.2 http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/town/fitness/fx/7_2_fx_disc/#

and the Kona Dew Plus http://www.konaworld.com/bike.cfm?content=dew_plus

and even the Giant Escape 0 seem to be getting decent marks http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us/bikes/model/escape.0/8910/48612/

That said, yeah I do have a good shop that I will be going to so test riding and such are not a problem.

Went for a ride to test my santa-provided booties, and the damn zip broke as I was putting them on. I want that elf fired. It's a very windy day, and it was in my face the whole way out, so that felt like very hard work. The tailwind on the way home was just lovely.

My feet still feel like blocks of ice

I'm planning a long ride this Summer - Toronto to Ottawa, about 500K - and am wondering if anyone has any insights for that kind of trip? I can manage a basic list - spare tubes, chain tool, multi-tool, protein powders, etc - I'm looking for the esoteric thing I should pack that may not occur unless one had ridden a similar distance, like... sunscreen :p

Spokes. Lots and lots of spokes.

Really? I think if I'd been mistreating my bike so much that I required 'lots of spokes' the wheel would be out of true and I'd be in the middle of nowhere with no way to realign it anyway, so why bother?

What were you doing that you needed lots of spokes? I don't mean to be challenging, you're just the only person who has made that recommendation.

If no one has given you the advice to bring spokes on long distance self-supported touring, you're getting bad advice.

Fully loaded bikes (your weight + your gears weight) riding on a variety of road surfaces puts the hurting on your wheels. You may get lucky and not break any. You may break several. There's a reason that some touring frames (Surly's LHT for example) come with built in spoke holders. You won't break lots all at once, but you will quite possibly break more than one.

The new ride. Wow, what a huge improvement over a "comfort" bike. My (mostly) 8 mile hill course is so much easier on this thing. It is an Escape 1. Good set of components, composite fork and 27 gears for the hills. Plus I got a 100.00 discount since the bike shop owner's kid goes to school with mine so that helped my budget a lot. Yeah the difference in riding is night and day.

It turns out that thirty minutes per week on an exercise bike is inadequate conditioning for a twenty mile ride on an actual bicycle. It also turns out that the people joking about my ass being sore the next day weren't, y'know, joking.

Though the bit of my body that's most sore is my left palm, which I don't pretend to understand.

Wear biking gloves. They help ALOT. And yeah, 30 min per day would be better to get ready for 20 miles. I recently got my one day ride up to 12.5 miles on about 1/2 hills and 1/2 on the beach path...and I think I can do a 20 mile one on flat- that is my next goal.

Plus ass pain is real- it takes a few weeks of constant riding to get past the initial hump and move to "yeah, my butt feels pretty good" hump.

The gloves may help. You also might have your seat positioned incorrectly. If you have to lean on your arms too much, this can happen. Also, big soft seats make your ass hurt more because there is more surface for it to rub against.

^^ YES- oh the change from a big fat seat to a "racing style" one was a huge change for the better. It may look uncomfortable but after a few days, you will be much happier and feel much better.

Some notes about my cycling, FWIW.

• I can't stand standard, narrow racing saddles. I'm more old school, so I have a nicely broken in Brooks B17. It's not for everyone, though. It does take some time to break in, but once broken it, it's awesomely comfortable. (The B17 is definitely NOT one of those soft springy saddles, either.)
• Clean and lube your chain every few hundred miles. It makes a world of difference.
• Carry a small pump, and a small saddle bag with inner tube and tire levers. Some people carry CO2 cartridges, but I find a pump more manageable, and the Blackburn I carry doesn't really weight much more than a couple of cartridges.
• Get a bright red, LED blinky light to face back. Even if you're not riding at night, it can make a difference on cloudy days, or if you ride though short tunnels or long underpasses.
• Carry a cell phone and some form of ID. A $20 bill stashed in the saddle bag isn't a bad idea, either.

I've got about 1,000 miles on the Felt Z5 I bought late last summer, and I'm enjoying the heck out of it. It really does soak up road vibration better than anything else I've ridden (steel and aluminum; I've never ridden a titanium frame.) Makes long rides more enjoyable on this middle age body of mine.

Oh, yeah, and for a good time, read Bike Snob NYC. He's hilariously, laugh-out-loud, full on snark, funny, and doesn't take his bicycling too seriously. And if you want to learn a lot more about cycling in an approachable way, it's worth searching through Dave Moulton's blog. He's an old school frame builder from the UK, now in his 70s, but his blog is full of useful tech info, if you search by tags.

Not precisely true. Big soft seats make your ass and taint hurt more because they conform to the shape of your body and cut off blood flow. Firm, supportive saddles that accurately fit the width of your sit bones are what you're going for.

Sup buddy. Flat bars?

If you're riding a bike with flat bars for > 15 miles, you're going to run into a problem where you don't have enough different hand positions to shift around on for comfort's sake. Good gloves can theoretically mitigate the hurt, and like Ed mentioned getting properly fit will also help. Try not to carry so much weight on your hands (work that core) and move them around as much as you can.

Solid advice. Some notes:

IMO, a front light is vastly more important than a rear light, so if you're choosing one (don't, use both) choose the front. Cyclists are very rarely hit from the rear (heyo!) and a front light is more likely to get you seen. But really, ride with both. Preferably something absurdly bright and rechargeable.

RE: Chain lube, buy something dry. Rock n' Roll gold is my favorite, but red is fine if you're only riding on road and blue is solid if you're only riding off road. I hate cleaning chains, and this stuff means I pretty much don't have to.

I'm a fan of CO2, mostly because pumps with detached heads (the best kind of portable pump to carry since they don't wrench on valve stems when you use them) are expensive and bulky. I like CO2 because it's fun, light, and I hate carrying shit on my bike.

Saddles are total voodoo, and the only real way to find out what works is to try a bunch of different shit out until you find something you can reliably sit on for 50 miles without crushing your perineum into jelly.

I was using gloves. I'm pretty sure they helped, as my hands were a lot less abraded (meaning they were not at all abraded) than I remember them being whenever I'd put real time into my mountain bike. I think it might actually be muscle pain. Either that or deep bruising, I don't know. Bars were the typical road bike flat-into-curve thing, but I wasn't really fond of the drop position and spent most of my time with my hands on the flats. I'll work on moving them next time.

If you're on drop bars, you want the bike to fit you so that you're riding on the brake hoods 90% of the time. It's also the most comfortable position for your hands.

Thirty miles today. Pushed myself harder than last time, but I was in noticeably better shape, so that was fine.

We have two seasons of riding on our bicycles. I have not done much, if any, maintenance. Last year I took them to the shop we bought them at for a 'tune-up' but I don't feel like they did fuck all. As we'll be starting to ride soon, what can I, and what should I do to them? One issue that I have had is some 'sticky' gearing. Like, if I go from 2-3 it will stick and take a while to change (this has gotten worse over time), but it can go 3-4 fine, Similarly downshifting from 4-3 is not an issue. I have no idea why kind of shifters I have if that makes a difference.

It's probably just a simple matter of adjusting the rear derailleur (the little thing in the back that moves your chain up and down the rear sprocket "gears"). You could learn to do it yourself if you were so inclined (it's not overly complicated), but your best bet is probably just to find a better bike shop. Any descent bike mechanic should be able to diagnose and fix it easily.

In other news, I did my first outdoors ride of any appreciable length (40 miles) this year over the weekend. And I suck at hills. Again.

Hey, I hadn't checked this thread out in a while, so in the spirit of better late than never: nice build! Although I run Shimano on my Pinarello, I can appreciate the cycling feng shui of doing a Campy group on an Italian road bike. Just need to save up a couple grand for that super-record upgrade ;)

I broke our crappy pump and need a new pump (for the garage). Anyone have some recommendations?

So, I bought a bike a bit ago. I've been bothering FrankA on Steam mostly, but that is probably annoying -- I don't love it when I get home from work and people want to ask me computer questions that an idiot should know the answers to -- so I'll annoy all of you here instead.

I hadn't owned or ridden a bike in about a decade. I got some advice from Frank on what to buy, and forgot pretty much all of it except the price range I should start looking in for my needs, and went to a local sports shop with a big cycling department that I have prior history with (all of my skis have been from there, and they've been around since the '30s. They trotted out a few models for me to test ride and I came home with a Cannondale Quick 6 (along with a bunch of accessories, like a bike rack and shorts -- definitely agree the shorts are very helpful, and you can wear other shorts over them if you hate the way they look, which I do). I don't plan to do much (okay, any) road riding or true offroading so a hybrid like this seems to be pretty much right. The shop also does monthly free clinics on changing a flat, including one that happened to be on the night I bought my bike, so I went to that, and picked up the basics for doing that.

It's been about a month; I took it back to the shop for the (free) 30-day checkup they recommended, and while I was there I had them put on toe clips.

Some comments and questions on my experience:

- Guideline for others also purchasing: this one was on sale by pure chance and cost me about $480. List is in the low $500s.

- I've only been out a couple times. Each time I've ridden about 14 miles total. Is that a reasonable distance to start with? How much should I be looking to go up? How long should a 14 mile ride take a super-new, super-casual cyclist? Because I think I'm slow. (The trail I've been riding has some minor grades but is mostly about flat.) Is it okay if I go a couple weeks between rides? I was looking to go about weekly but schedules haven't always permitted and I've been going about half that often. Will this preclude real improvement?

- Can I listen to music via IEMs? I'm not on the road, but there are other cyclists and runners and such.

- I asked Frank about this, but... I rode with toe clips when I was a kid, but they were bigger, leather-looking ones. These are Giant brand ones with baskets that are tighter. I haven't ridden since I got them put on, but I tried them in the parking lot and got home, and I had trouble getting my feet in them when I get a running start. Do I just have to practice it until I'm not incompetent, or is there advice to be had? If I keep having trouble I may put the old ones back on. The shop asked if I'd ridden with toe clips before, and I said yes because I had, but maybe these are different and I should have taken the advice they'd have offered if I'd said no.

- This is a really stupid question but please tell me how I ought to be using my gears. This bike has front and rear gears; I leave the "big" one in the middle all the time basically and on this largely-flat trail I live between 3 and 5 most of the time on the other one. Going to a smaller number appears to make pedaling easier at the cost of some efficiency in terms of pedal rotation to propulsion. I have no idea which direction is "upshifting" and which is "downshifting." I also do not know if I'm supposed to make it "harder" or "easier" to pedal when going uphill or downhill. Last time I rode, if I made it easier to pedal I usually regretted it and shifted right back because I felt like I was wasting energy -- pedaling too much for not enough propulsion. I told you this was a stupid question.

- I have too few friends who do fucking anything, I've realized. I've been seeing a girl lately who is significantly more active than I've been the last few years. I hope things are going to work out, she is great, but even if they don't she's been really good for me. If you live in the Baltimore metro area, I would love to go riding with you as long as you don't mind that I'm a scrub. Failing that, what's a cool way to find people to ride with? A friend referred me to the Baltimore Bike Club, which at first blush looks like a great answer, but even their casual rides are 30+ miles and I think they might be faster than me. I am not sure they remember what it is like toe a casual cyclist.

- What kind of maintenance do I need to be doing to my bike? Of that stuff, what should I do myself and what should I have the shop do? I know fucking nothing about repairing anything, I can't do a damn thing to my car that's more complicated than adding wiper fluid or putting air in my tires, and I know less about bicycles.

Thank you for reading all my dumb words.

Some context: my first 14 mile ride took about two hours, although we stopped several times including a somewhat extended stop in the middle (when we turned around). My second 14 mile ride took a little bit less than that, but I was with someone less fit than me and not only did we stop more but I actually had to slow down a bit for him on the return leg. (That was a nice feeling. :p) So my general fitness has improved a bit, but 30 miles is highly unlikely to be a 2.5 hour ride for me for a while.

The local bike club does indeed rate their rides by difficulty, but as I said, their "casual rides" are 30+ miles and are not, to me, a casual ride. Hence the question.

"Reasonable" is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and in any case, I wouldn't fret too much over distance. It is, in my opinion, an overrated metric. Rather, I would suggest focusing on being able to get in at least an hour of aerobic activity per ride. You don't need, or want, to kill yourself, but you should aim to achieve a relatively consistent and moderate level of exertion during your ride.

Obviously the more you ride, the faster you'll improve, but if you don't do at least one ride of at least moderate length (timewise) per week you are probably going to find yourself falling into a "two steps forward, one step back" pattern which can be really frustrating. Of course, you can also supplement with other aerobic activity (running, etc).

I am likely to sound a bit school-marmish here, but I really, strongly, highly recommend not listening to music while riding. Awareness is your number one safety asset on a bike, even when riding on a trail. Heck, maybe even more so when you're on a trail because you'll be encountering a lot of people that aren't nearly as alert as they are when they're driving.

I really have no idea why toe-clips still exist any longer. They're like rotary phones -- entirely supplanted by far better designs, in the case of toe clips, by clipless pedal systems (kind of like ski bindings for bikes). I suppose the only potential advantage of toe clips is that they don't require cycling-specific shoes. Regardless, if I were you, I wouldn't worry about this stuff right now. For the sort of riding you're doing, toe clips/clipless pedals will provide very little, if any, marginal benefit to justify the extra hassle.

Rather than providing a dissertation on good gear selection, which is probably not going to do you much good at this point, I'll boil it down to this "golden rule": focus on using whatever gear you need to achieve a sustainable cadence that doesn't feel like you're "pushing" too hard. In other words, you want to aim to be able to turn the pedals over with moderate effort regardless of the grade. This usually means making it easier as you go up hill. Most new-ish cyclists tend to push gears that are too hard -- focus on getting your pedaling speed up.

I just glanced at the BBC ride schedule and I saw at least once ride in the next week that's in the 20 mile range and billed as 10-12 mph in terms of pace. That's a pretty slow pace unless there's a lot of climbing involved. If you can do 14 miles without feeling utterly exhausted, I am confident you can do 20. Try not to over-think the mileage component.

At a minimum, you should learn two things: 1) how to change a flat and 2) how to put your chain back on after it drops. Both are very easy with a bit of practice.

I'm guessing this is a bit late and since you're talking about a pump specifically for the garage you probably already know it, but I just wanted to sing the praises of track pumps. Until I got one I did not believe how much easier it was to pump up a bike tyre with than a hand-held pump or the kind of footpump intended for inflating car tyres. They're not even particularly expensive either. (I have a Topeak Joe Blow Max II which was cheap and does everything I need.)

Today, I decided to finally try shifting my gears around. I've only got one shifting...thing, though. 's on the right handle.
I WENT FASTER THAN I HAVE EVER GONE. I've always been afraid to touch it, so it's stayed near the top. But WOW, I didn't know I was capable of actually being speedy! It was awesome~

Now that the weather is improving here I hope to be able to overcome my totally rational fear of traffic and start riding the bike I bought months ago (thanks for the advice Frank!). That's not terribly interesting I know, but really I just wanted an excuse to post this gif, which belongs somewhere in this thread just because.

I got in a good 26 miles with my bike on Saturday, and on Sunday, about a mile into another ride, the chain broke. Damn it!

Jestin already gave you good answers, but I want to say things anyway, so hey.

So a thing I will recommend that you will not believe me about is: Cycling jerseys. Even after I wore bike shorts, I refused to wear jerseys for a while, because I thought I would look both pretentiously SRS CYCLIST and because I knew darn well that I'd look horrible in them. But... they're super-practical, with pockets on the back that can hold your keys and phone with no danger of spilling it or anything, and they're designed for sweating in and not to flap too much in the wind.

Really, the question is what you want. If you feel like you're doing good, and you enjoy 14 mile rides, and your trails/paths/roads make that a good length to go, then go that length. Last summer when I was first starting to bike, I would do 14 miles as my "standard" ride; lately, I've been doing 22 miles. My old college roommate is on Strava and I see his rides, and he takes 30 mile "recovery" rides the day after his 60-mile rides. (And oh yeah, he's in Colorado, and those rides have him climbing 3,000 ft, whereas the 120 feet that I climb feels exhaustingly hilly.) And there are people who ride way more than him.

So, yeah, it's very individual. One thing I will say, though, is if you're riding a hybrid on dirt/gravel paths, don't compare yourself to road bike people, because it's a lot easier to ride faster and further on a road bike on a paved road.

No, just don't.

Seconding the advice for clipless pedals. I have Speedplay ones and like them a great deal, but if you're doing the hybrid quasi-offroad thing, you might want mountain bike ones, because they work with a more "walkable" shoe. I had some Time Atac pedals on my old mountain bike that I also liked in that context.

I'll be honest and admit that I always forget which direction is "up" and which is "down" too. The way gears work is, bigger gears in front are harder to pedal, and so are smaller gears in the back. Generally, you don't shift the front gear much at all, and just use the rear gears. Make it easier going uphill, so you can keep pedaling at the same cadence (even though you'll be moving slower), and make it harder going downhill, so you can keep pedaling at the same cadence (even though you'll be moving faster).

As Jestin says, you're probably pedaling WAY too slowly, and keeping the bike in a harder gear than you should. I know this is true, and I still do it myself. Here's a video showing you what the proper cadence looks like. If you try doing that, at first you'll feel stupid, because you have it set to such a low gear and you're pedaling so fast and so easily... but then you'll notice that you don't get tired as fast and are going faster overall.

Things you should do regularly: 1) Keep your tires inflated to the proper pressure (they'll lose air naturally, and more quickly than you think. You want a pump with a pressure gauge on it for this, like the Joe Blow that someone recommended up thread. 2) Clean and lightly oil your chain (the bikestore will sell the oil you need). Those are super-easy to do. You may also want to be able to adjust your derailleurs, as they will drift out of adjustment over time; this isn't hard, but it's harder. If you take your bike in for a yearly tune-up thing, they'll do this for you, and if you don't notice shifting problems, that should be good enough. (If you do notice shifting problems, like I say, it's not that hard.)

The way to do jerseys (which I agree are great) without looking like a poseur is to avoid the brightly-colored team jerseys and stick to basic colored/non-logo-festooned designs.

All else being equal, yes. The key to building up mileage (besides just improving your fitness level) is learning to moderate your pace, which goes hand in glove with the stuff about increasing cadence and avoiding "grinding" hard gears.

Actually, although I love my speedplay zeros as much as the next guy, I would recommend that Inigima NOT go the clipless pedal route at this point. Given the type of riding he's doing now, I really don't think they'll be of any benefit. On the other hand, they take some practice to get used to, and are just one other thing to worry about.

That depends on the gearing of the particular bike. One quibble I have with many hybrid and low-end road bikes is that the gearing setups often result in a lot of useless or rarely used gearing ratios, especially for people that are already in descent shape. A few years ago I got into it with a guy at REI that really wanted to sell my partner a bike with a triple crankset even though the bike could be purchased with a compact double, and she really didn't need a triple (she was already a distance swimmer and runner and in fabulous shape). More gears is not necessarily better if you never use them.

This is the only thing you said that I'd disagree with. Even when I was just tooling around the neighborhood on casual little 3-4 mile rides, I strongly preferred clipless pedals. That solid connection between your foot and the pedal just makes everything feel better and more stable. I actually think it's one less thing to think about, since you never need to worry that your foot's going to slip off the pedal even if your shoes are wet.

Thanks for this! I think I've been pedaling at too slow a cadence my entire life. I'm doing a 70k ride on the 19th and I think this will help a lot... the last time I did that distance I was in pain for two days, although that was immediately after having not done any riding at all for six years or so.

I'll second the bit about cadence. I typically ride around 90rpm, making sure to gear down enough on hills to maintain that. It may seem hard, but it's much less tiring over the long haul. Tire pressure makes a difference, too. I keep my Continental 4000s tires at 120 psi for the rear and 110 psi on the front. If that creates too harsh a ride for you, going down to 95-100 is fine, but not much lower than that. Low rolling resistance makes a difference, too.

As for clipless pedals.. they do take some getting used to. I was always a dedicated user of toe clips when I was younger. I moved to clipless when I started riding again about four years ago. I did forget to unclip a couple of times when stopping at a light and slowly and comically toppled over. Once you get used to them, though, it's nearly impossible to go back to either toe clips or bare flat pedals.

I haven't done any long rides recently, but have been doing regular 16-23 milers 5 days a week or so. The roads around the Peninsula/Southbay (Sunnyvale/Cupertino/Mountain View/Los Altos/Palo Alto) is very good for riding -- as many hills as you want, or as flat as you want. Most of my rides are solo; at some point I'd like to find a group to ride with, but I'm not interested more for social rides; I've got no desire to compete.

I use a Garming bike computer to capture progress. Here's a typical ride.

Had my first big spill yesterday. Going at 20mph (per Strava) when, for reasons that are my fault, I found myself tumbling ass over teakettle on the side of the road. One night in the hospital (and 3 xrays, 2 CT scans, a tetanus shot, and an antibiotic iv drip -- they have a very conservative treatment plan for crashes), and I'm off with "only" a fractured humerus (by the shoulder) that'll kee me off the bike for 4-6 weeks, and has me one-hand typing now. Sigh.

Ouch :( Get well soon.

Clipless pedals scare me. Pretty much weekly I have an incident where the only thing keeping me off the pavement is the speed with which I get my foot (or feet, in one case) off the pedal and onto the ground. It's not impossible I'd be able to unclip in time to save myself, but I'm not keen on risking it.