Anybody commute on a road bike with race geo?

A lot of people ride road bikes.



This is my current commuter, right after I bought the panniers and lowered the gearing. It was a sporty bike in the '80s, and while never top end, it would have, and could still if I take all the crap off it, meet the regulations for a massed start bike. If I strip all the crap off, I think it actually comes in lighter than my nice road bike - it's an aluminum frame and steel fork, without STI shifters, while the nicer one is steel and with a carbon fork and with STI levers and more gears. I have other bikes I'd rather train or compete on, but this one doesn't require me to put on funny clothes or shoes, accepts panniers, has fenders all the time, has low enough gearing to get all that up a pretty steep climb twice a day without undue effort, etc. etc. I also don't care as much that commuting in cities tends to beat up a bike.

My previous commute bikes have been an old 10-speed converted to singlespeed, a Trek 1000 sport/touring bike with a 2x6 drivetrain, like this one, a Schwinn Mesa GSX mountain bike (was my One True Bike at the time,) a Novara hybrid, and an old Motobecane badly converted with flat bars, working backward from the present.

i've got a 58mile roundtrip commute. have been doing it on my rocky mountain solo cxd (disc brake, 130mm spacing rear, drop bar - FOR SALE as of today - PM me if interested) until now. too slow for such a long commute. just bought a madone 3.1 with the exact same geometry as my madone 6.2. the only difference is that the 3.1 is heavier, crummier parts and no tapered headtube. yet it, unlike my 6.2, has fender tabs and is so much faster than the rocky - which is a great bike, but suffers on the steeps due to weight and more upright position. i am so stoked for my new ride and that it will allow for greater specificity in training (as my commuting miles are the bulk of my training hours for road and endurance xc racing). wish i could keep the rocky for shorter trips and gravel grinding but my wife (correctly) is making me replace bikes rather than add to the stable as the barn, as it were, is rather full.