- Feedback
- View
I love my road bikes, despite their current dust gathering duties, they are mine and I hug them.
Is a road bike really worth it?
- Thread starter jaypee
- Start date
I have a few which I love to bits:
Dawes Clubman - Audax/Winter/Turbo trainer.
Condor Italia 1991 - Audax/Winter.
Condor Heritage - Tourer.
Condor World Series - Slow pace/ relaxed rides along the coast.
Jack Taylor - VCC Club runs/events.
I'm more of a roadie than MTB to be honest, I love the mountain bike but I like the freedom of being able to leave through the front door and hopping straight on unlike the mountain bike as I'm a bit limited where I'm based. In fact I'm debating on buying another road bike after I've finished my current project, a Condor Super Acciaio seems very appealing! If you want a bike to a variety of disciplines get a audax bike, for the past 3 to 4 years I have used my Dawes for lightweight distance riding to fully loaded touring in Holland, and I also use it on the turbo trainer and mudguard fixings make it a blessing in winter! I've only considered a more racy bike due to longer distances I've been doing and crit racing with the local club. If you have a itch needing a scratch, Scratch It!
And as LGF says hoods for the win!
Dawes Clubman - Audax/Winter/Turbo trainer.
Condor Italia 1991 - Audax/Winter.
Condor Heritage - Tourer.
Condor World Series - Slow pace/ relaxed rides along the coast.
Jack Taylor - VCC Club runs/events.
I'm more of a roadie than MTB to be honest, I love the mountain bike but I like the freedom of being able to leave through the front door and hopping straight on unlike the mountain bike as I'm a bit limited where I'm based. In fact I'm debating on buying another road bike after I've finished my current project, a Condor Super Acciaio seems very appealing! If you want a bike to a variety of disciplines get a audax bike, for the past 3 to 4 years I have used my Dawes for lightweight distance riding to fully loaded touring in Holland, and I also use it on the turbo trainer and mudguard fixings make it a blessing in winter! I've only considered a more racy bike due to longer distances I've been doing and crit racing with the local club. If you have a itch needing a scratch, Scratch It!
And as LGF says hoods for the win!
Titiritero
Retro Guru
Re:
I owned for a short while a beautiful second hand Olmo road bike, with nice lugged steel, mostly "to try the road thing".
However, I ended up selling it. I prefer the versatility of my other bikes (changing from asphalt to good paths to challenging singletrack, adding/removing mudguards, playing with the tire width, adding/removing racks...). The road bike was too constraining for my liking, only road, which is something I enjoy less everyday due to the increasing traffic and speed of today's drivers.
Whenever I need to do a 100% road ride, I just take my tourer with drop bars, which allows me to put up to 700x45 tires and get to a dirt track if needed, or add mudguards in winter, or a rack for the commute, while barely affecting my overall speed (no doubt due to my low fitness level
).
The fixie fashion and the fact that most bikes in the last 20 years come with overpriced STI shifters has also severely increased road bike prices, and it's nearly impossible to find a new entry level bike for less than 600-800 EUR. And the nice old ones with steel frames have all been bought by hipsters to convert/destroy them into fixies so now it's cheaper to buy a 5 year old bike than a 15 year old one, even if the latter has worse components...
I owned for a short while a beautiful second hand Olmo road bike, with nice lugged steel, mostly "to try the road thing".
However, I ended up selling it. I prefer the versatility of my other bikes (changing from asphalt to good paths to challenging singletrack, adding/removing mudguards, playing with the tire width, adding/removing racks...). The road bike was too constraining for my liking, only road, which is something I enjoy less everyday due to the increasing traffic and speed of today's drivers.
Whenever I need to do a 100% road ride, I just take my tourer with drop bars, which allows me to put up to 700x45 tires and get to a dirt track if needed, or add mudguards in winter, or a rack for the commute, while barely affecting my overall speed (no doubt due to my low fitness level
).The fixie fashion and the fact that most bikes in the last 20 years come with overpriced STI shifters has also severely increased road bike prices, and it's nearly impossible to find a new entry level bike for less than 600-800 EUR. And the nice old ones with steel frames have all been bought by hipsters to convert/destroy them into fixies so now it's cheaper to buy a 5 year old bike than a 15 year old one, even if the latter has worse components...
Re: Re:
Why get a new one? 500 - 800 € will get you a lot of bike on this forum. With or without Sti levers
Mike
Titiritero":asgivqa6 said:I owned for a short while a beautiful second hand Olmo road bike, with nice lugged steel, mostly "to try the road thing".
However, I ended up selling it. I prefer the versatility of my other bikes (changing from asphalt to good paths to challenging singletrack, adding/removing mudguards, playing with the tire width, adding/removing racks...). The road bike was too constraining for my liking, only road, which is something I enjoy less everyday due to the increasing traffic and speed of today's drivers.
Whenever I need to do a 100% road ride, I just take my tourer with drop bars, which allows me to put up to 700x45 tires and get to a dirt track if needed, or add mudguards in winter, or a rack for the commute, while barely affecting my overall speed (no doubt due to my low fitness level
The fixie fashion and the fact that most bikes in the last 20 years come with overpriced STI shifters has also severely increased road bike prices, and it's nearly impossible to find a new entry level bike for less than 600-800 EUR. And the nice old ones with steel frames have all been bought by hipsters to convert/destroy them into fixies so now it's cheaper to buy a 5 year old bike than a 15 year old one, even if the latter has worse components...
Why get a new one? 500 - 800 € will get you a lot of bike on this forum. With or without Sti levers
Mike
Titiritero
Retro Guru
Re: Re:
Not planning in buying a bike myself. Just talking about why road bikes nowadays are being left as "expensive toys" for the committed cyclist due to its high entry prices. Even a used road bike with nice frame and components will cost over 300 EUR due to the reasons I mentioned above, while there are plenty of stories in this forum of used but excellent mtbs bought for 150 EUR or less.
Hard to see nowadays an "average Joe" on a road bike (except the odd one that bought his bike 20-30 years ago and keeps it with pride). Now it's all Freds with full "pro" gear and amazing (for its components and for its price) bikes.
With mountain bikes on the other hand you can see "pros" with 3k bikes and beginners with entry-level but perfectly reliable big brand Alivio bikes for 300 EUR, all having fun. Just a more "democratic" branch of the sport...
Mike Muz 67":1n9844b6 said:
Not planning in buying a bike myself. Just talking about why road bikes nowadays are being left as "expensive toys" for the committed cyclist due to its high entry prices. Even a used road bike with nice frame and components will cost over 300 EUR due to the reasons I mentioned above, while there are plenty of stories in this forum of used but excellent mtbs bought for 150 EUR or less.
Hard to see nowadays an "average Joe" on a road bike (except the odd one that bought his bike 20-30 years ago and keeps it with pride). Now it's all Freds with full "pro" gear and amazing (for its components and for its price) bikes.
With mountain bikes on the other hand you can see "pros" with 3k bikes and beginners with entry-level but perfectly reliable big brand Alivio bikes for 300 EUR, all having fun. Just a more "democratic" branch of the sport...
I'd agree with much of that. It is rare to see someone in normal clothes on road bike these days - so it's not just the bike, but the gear as well. I'm not surprised given the current boom (in the UK at least) has grown out of the hipsters in London/various British cycling successes at the Tour/Olympics. Had mountain biking had a similar profile in the last few years - I daresay everyone would be riding down canal paths on full suspension bikes wearing downhill armour. There's an element of fashion.
Hybrids haven't completely gone away though - and I think in many respects they embody the democratic principles of a reasonably priced bike available to anyone that can do most things pretty well. Some of them even look like early MTBs.
Hybrids haven't completely gone away though - and I think in many respects they embody the democratic principles of a reasonably priced bike available to anyone that can do most things pretty well. Some of them even look like early MTBs.
- Feedback
- View
I'm going to ride a road bike in 'normal' clothes just to buck the trend.
dirttorpedo
Senior Retro Guru
Re:
Interesting take on the whole mountain bike vs road bike culture. Locally I'm seeing a lot more people riding in regular clothes on road or street bikes. Yes, many of them are hipsters on single speed converted vintage racing bikes and others are riding touring bikes, city bikes, and whatnot. I've found that mountain biking is the branch that has become heavily specialized over the past 15 years with the move to single purpose downhilling, freeriding and all mountain style bikes. Those late 80's and early 90's mountain bikes were incredibly flexible with the swapping of tires and the adding of a few accessories you could go from trail to tour quite readily. Can't imagine doing that on a modern mountain bike with suspension. I do have to admit at the higher end of racing those bikes are pretty specialized as well, but there are lots of CX bikes and sport bikes and touring bikes with more relaxed geometry, braze ons for racks and fenders and lots of room for fat tires that are pretty flexible and can go from dirt to pavement quite easily.
Interesting take on the whole mountain bike vs road bike culture. Locally I'm seeing a lot more people riding in regular clothes on road or street bikes. Yes, many of them are hipsters on single speed converted vintage racing bikes and others are riding touring bikes, city bikes, and whatnot. I've found that mountain biking is the branch that has become heavily specialized over the past 15 years with the move to single purpose downhilling, freeriding and all mountain style bikes. Those late 80's and early 90's mountain bikes were incredibly flexible with the swapping of tires and the adding of a few accessories you could go from trail to tour quite readily. Can't imagine doing that on a modern mountain bike with suspension. I do have to admit at the higher end of racing those bikes are pretty specialized as well, but there are lots of CX bikes and sport bikes and touring bikes with more relaxed geometry, braze ons for racks and fenders and lots of room for fat tires that are pretty flexible and can go from dirt to pavement quite easily.
