Road Bike Accessory Essentials

I’m going to focus today’s Tune Up Tuesday on the essential items (i.e., if you are buying your first bike, don’t even leave the store without these items).

Safety first, people! It should go without saying that the most important “accessory” for your bike is the helmet. In my opinion, bikes, particularly road bikes that can get up to decent speeds, should not be ridden without helmets.  I have never ridden my bike without it. But I have to admit, I did something stupid when I first bought my bike. Since I already owned a helmet  from my trike riding days, I thought the Schwinn (Wal-mart purchased) helmet was fine to use.  The problem with this helmet, which honestly I didn’t realize until after my first triathlon is that it was cracked! As soon as I realized this I went to Dick’s and bought a new helmet. The new helmet is so light and I love it.

Essential number two is gloves.  Some say that gloves are for safety (to protect your hands in the case of following), but personally I wear gloves for comfort. I didn’t wear them on my first ride and my hands hurt so bad during the ride that it made me want to quit. Like the helmet, I had gloves from trike riding. Unfortunately I lost one of the gloves at my first triathlon (although for sprints I don’t think they are essential and I didn’t wear them at the last two because of time) so the ones picture are new. I paid a premium for these (my old ones were also, shamefully, Wal-Mart purchased) for the added gel padding. At first I thought they were a bit tight but they have stretched a bit to become more comfortable.

The third essential (although not third amongst all items on the list) is cycling shoes.  The benefit to cycling specific shoes combined with the right pedals is that you get a significant increase in power while riding. My bike already had so-called egg beater pedals on it and luckily I already had shoes from a foray into spinning a year and a half ago. The only change I had to make was to the cleats on the shoe (my pedals require a different type than the spin class bikes).  I really think I paid $40 or so for these shoes, which is super cheap. In fact, every time I check in the stores on new cycling shoes none are even close to $40, so if I really paid that much, I got a great deal!

The small essentials you may not think of (from bottom left, working counter-clockwise): (1) tire levers: these are used to remove the tube from your bike. Cheap but very necessary tool), (2) I call this an all-in-one tool. I’m sure it has a real name. This tool has every single … tool on it that you could need for your bike. I have used this more times for my bike than I have used every other tool in my house combined. It’s also important to have it with you on rides for emergency situations (like changing the tires), (3) extra tubes. You will get a flat and you will have to either repair it (see #4) or replace it Unfortunately for me it happened early on in my bike riding. Thankfully I had purchased tubes beforehand. I even have a favorite tube now and think it is worth it to spend a few extra dollars on the nicer one, and (4) patches. Frankly I haven’t had much luck with these, but that’s because the holes I was getting in my tubes when I was first riding were too numerous at one time to patch. I think these will come in handy in the future if I get holes that aren’t numerous.

So all that stuff I listed just above, you need a place to put it. This handy seat bag holds all of the above plus my cell phone and my emergency stash of cash (between $10-20). I have never used the emergency stash (well except one time when my bike was in my car and I needed to pay for parking ) but I think it’s generally a good idea to keep some cash on you.

On-bike pump. This is an essential if you ever plan on changing the tube on your ride (I’m not quite sure how you are going to get home if you don’t plan on changing a flat tube, but I suppose that’s your decision to make). Frankly this thing sucks and gives me a better work out than any ride. I can’t get near enough pressure in the tube from this thing, but it works enough to get air in the tube to get me home.

The last essential is a real pump.  Now you may think you have a pump at home, but I learned that for road bikes they often have different valves. My bike happens to have Schrader valves, which are not the same as valves on regular mountain bikes. Schrader valves are a little tricky to master at first, but I figured it out eventually.  I would highly recommend that any pump you buy have a pressure gauge on it so you can get your tires up to their correct psi (this is much more important than you might think). I pump my tires up before every ride.

I realize I didn’t cover water bottles and holders in this post, but they aren’t a complete essential (you could go on a ride without water if you choose), but I will cover those next week because trust me I think hydration is really important!

Do you consider any other tools to be essential to cycling?

Eat: Not going to lie, I ate a chocolate chip cookie for lunch today. I also ate lunch out again (a wrap). Not good and I still feel guilty. The next two days I’m out of the office in mediations so those lunches will be catered but I plan to order salads and decrease the potential unhealthiness.

Run: 15 minutes on the bike for a warm-up and then Workout B from Stage 1 of NROLW. I will just tell you that I hate lunges, but I did them all.