Hey, thanks for stopping by! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also subscribe to BikeHacks by email. Thanks for visiting!
Local cyclist and friend, Matt Haughey, will be riding in Cycle Oregon this summer and wondered whether upgrading his roadbike would make much of a difference in his performance.
Matt rented a high-end road bike just to see if the marketing hype surrounding such bikes had any grounding in reality. He was hoping for some performance increases, but wasn’t holding his breath:
As much as I love reading about all the latest gadgets in the cycling world, I’ve long been skeptical about their actual utility and I wanted some data to back it up. In this test I expected to see negligible gains, I expected a rough ride on a stiff frame, and I expected to conclude that $5,000 bikes are generally a waste of money for all but the top athletes. I wanted to free myself from the feeling that I had to constantly upgrade every year to the latest, lightest parts available.
His expectations weren’t met, and the bike performed nicely:
In the end, I’ll admit the $5,000 bike won me over on feel more than performance, though the gains weren’t too shabby. I attained speeds I’ve never ridden at before and I suspect if I owned a similar bike that I’d continue to improve and attain levels I couldn’t do with my old bike. But more importantly everything about riding felt better on the high end machine.
There’s a level of marketing hype that permeates most sports. As a surfer, I always figured the next wetsuit would keep me warmer while being more flexible than my old wettie. Or that a new board would be faster and last longer. As a climber I remember believing that new shoes would make me a better climber, or that ‘biners with (then new) bent gates would keep me from falling farther since I could clip faster. There’s usually a grain of truth in the hype, but it’s nice to see an objective review that finds the gear can do more than promised.
(photo by mathowie)
Kinda related posts
Filed Under: gear
2 comments for this entry ↓
1 Matt // Mar 15, 2008 at 1:34 pm
My question is, is there in an incremental increase in seat post height with each incremental increase of $1K in prize. Jeez Louis that seat post looks high!
2 Joshua // Mar 17, 2008 at 6:03 am
My seatpost is immensely high, but it’s just because I’m somewhat immensely tall, no correlation to the price (bought for $30 used, cost about $460 MSRP in early-mid 90’s).
Leave a Comment