I agree, $5000 is a WHOLE lot of money to shell out up front, but like road bikes, there are entry level tri bikes as well. While an entry level road bike may cost around $800-$1000, an entry level tri bike will cost around $1200-$1500. Like the Quintana Roo Kilo, which is now priced at $1500 I believe. Still more expensive than a road bike, but not quite the $5000 that the QR Tiphoon costs!

I’m upgrading to a QR Seduza, which is their mid-level bike, in a month or so and hope to get a nice cervelo road bike, probably the team soloist, later down the road so that I can have a nice Tri Bike and a Road bike. Never mind that I won’t be able to feed myself for the next year or so. I love bikes!!

Very good point. I personally don’t do triathlons so it’s good to get your perspective. I certainly did not want to recommend that someone getting into the sport go immediately out and buy a $5000 bike and then find out they didn’t like it. It’s great to hear you’ve upgraded and are enjoying the sport! Thanks for your comment.

Very nice, comprehensive, article you’ve got here. It gives people people virtually all the information they need to make that first decision. However, I do disagree with your suggestion that “entering the world of triathlon might be best served with a normal road bike”.

The type of bike you should buy for triathlons depends on how committed you want to be to the sport, how comfortable you already are with riding bikes, what kind of distances you want to ride and how much money you have to spend on bikes.

While a road bike generally suffices for triathlons, a TT bike is not only more aerodynamic (thus faster), it is also much more comfortable to ride for those longer distances. So if some one is already fairly comfortable with riding a bike and plans on doing longer distance triathlons (half ironman or full ironman), I’d say go for a TT bike.

If you’re not quite comfortable with bikes and are not sure about your extent of commitment to the sport, go with a road bike. I, myself started doing tris with a road bike my first year and am now upgrading to a beautiful new
tri bike that is sure to drain my bank account

Maybe I should just accept the fact that I’m lazy and probably wouldn’t make it up to the mountains that often, and just go for a road bike. But only if I can properly pimp it out.