REASON ONE: Many of you come from backgrounds other than cycling (most of you in fact). Therefore, you don't have experience, tradition or expertise. Likewise, many of your friends in triathlon are similarly challenged by having to play catch-up and become bike experts in a short period of time.

REASON TWO: Triathlon is swim-run-bike, but that can mean a lot of things: short course and long, hilly or flat, beginner or veteran, serious or recreational. There are many different geometries, configurations, and price points.

REASON THREE: Our sport is the stepchild of three other sports. You'll get good service in a running or cycling specialty store, but more often than not such stores are manned by single-sport purists who may not understand––and in some cases may even disdain––the particular needs of a triathlete. Furthermore, from the point of view of buyers and product managers triathlon is a sub-group of road cycling (growing, yes, but still a sub-group). It is a niche. Bike shops will commonly lump triathletes in with road racers, and try to sell a triathlete what a road racer would buy. Sometimes this is a good idea, sometimes not. Sometimes this results from the fact that road race bikes are all the road shop has on the floor, sometimes because the salesman doesn't know any better.

REASON FOUR: There are the undeniable economics of it. As in the case with airport security, what you pay is in some way linked with the expertise you get.

The Slowtwitch Bike Picker is a response to all of the above. Whether or not you end up buying one of the bikes we recommend, what we hope most of all is that you pay attention to our line of reasoning. We hope you get the concepts behind what what we're talking about. We're less interested in providing you with a list of bikes as we are in arming you with some reliable concepts upon which you can rest when deciding which bike to buy. It is an imiportant decision, not because you might spend a hundred dollars too much but because you might spend the next several hundred saddle hours on an uncomfortable and ill-suited bike.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are giving you our best guess as to what you might want to consider choosing for your next bike. We are not saying that the bikes we recommend are in stock, roadworthy, or spec'd as advertised. We aren't saying that any particular dealer or bike company is reputable, financially sound, scrutable, or nice. We aren't saying that any companies or bikes we DON'T recommend are unfit choices. We're NOT saying that our recommendation is an exhaustive list of bikes you might want to consider. This is a free service, and you get what you pay for.

That said, we also encourage your input and comments, suggestions, and criticisms, so as to make this service a better, more complete, and useful one...

ANOTHER NOTE: You may find some valuable reading elsewhere on Slowtwitch before you make your decision on which bike to buy. One important choice is of course from whom to buy your bike, and we broach this subject in our Dealer Profiles. Finally, we also give you some pointers on how to fit on your tri bike (if that's what you ought to be riding) in our Tri bike fit section.

ONE FINAL NOTE: We are not labeling the options we recommend below as "A, B, and C," to ward off any thoughts any of you might have that we're favoring one over the other. If we feel one of the options is superior to another, we'll say so in the text. The order in which recommendedbikes fall is of no significance, and you should not assume that there is any.