Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwertox | Hacker News Reader

I started biking around three years ago. Lots of biking, like 5000-8000+ km a year.

As long as I don't weigh my ideal weight and aren't planning on becoming a machine myself, I have zero interest in spending anything in optimizations which will make my bike a better one. I don't care if it could go faster or be more lightweight, spending 600€ for the bike was enough. The cheapest 30€ Schwalbe tires are good enough; I didn't even have a single flat tire this summer after I learned to avoid driving over blackberry branches.

And I really enjoy it. During this summer, with the extreme heat, where I loved the 28°C in the shade of the woods I was thinking about how much I'm going to hate this fall, and now that it's here, I love breathing that cold, fresh air and smelling the humid forest. The only thing I hate is when there's frozen snow on pavement in the winter.

The only thing I spend money on for biking is quality clothing appropriate for the seasons and accessories like good smartphone holders or bags.

Reminds me of this bicycle subreddit where they spend thousands on bikes and cosplay attires to get smoked by 60+ years old dudes on 40 years old bikes

As a casual rider you'll be the bottleneck for years before your gear matters even the slightest

There’s also a saying in bike communities, along the lines of, it doesn’t get easier you’ll only ride faster. Riding a heavy bike with no aerodynamics will lead to building strength faster. While it can be a bit frustrating if you’re new and riding in a group, joining more beginner friendly groups and upgrading the bike later is much better overall.

It is however really important to get the posture and pedaling technique right. Way too many people in expensive gear do push-only instead of a push-pull. That’s like biking 101. It’s much better to get that smooth pedaling and core support. It’ll prevent injuries and fatigue.

> push-only instead of a push-pull

My body never got this until using fixed gear. The whole circle is important.

I've been circling the fountain pen reddit for a little while now and it's a similar thing. They spend thousands on pens, import ink from Italy, buy fancy paper, but their handwriting looks like a doctor's scrawl.

I almost went down that route! I settled for a $5 Platinum Preppy instead for a few years and picked up a Procyon recently. Don't think I'd spend anything more than that though. I tested out some $250-500 pens and didn't notice a difference but from Preppy -> Procyon is huge with how much smoother the Procyon is.

The bike subreddits are super painful. Mainly full of "Freds"

IMO there is not actually a ton of what you talk about. If anything, it's the opposite, a ton of really inexperienced folks posting about their first 20 mile ride. Note that this isn't a bad thing, just that serious cyclists aren't really hanging out there.

Calling a kit cosplay attire is silly though. There are huge benefits to a bib and a jersey.

I'm not wearing spandex because I need to be the fastest guy. I'm wearing it because it has a chamois, convenient pockets, and is a bit more aero (which means that days with a killer headwind are slightly less bad)

> As a casual rider you'll be the bottleneck for years before your gear matters even the slightest

For absolute performance, maybe, but for enjoyment of riding the gear definitely matters. For a beginner it's important that the ride is enjoyable so they don't get discouraged and call it quits.

For relative performance against yourself, and in all honesty that's most of us really get out of it in the end, it's good to see times drop and speed increase just because you bought a better bike.

For me it was the other way around, I moved from a very aero cheap fixed gear to a boxy (but with a plentiful cassette) midlevel gravel bike. I was expecting that the gears I had extra would make me have faster times, however the fat tires and less aero profile makes me about half a minute slower for a 6km round. The power I'm pushing however, has increased, maybe because I can keep it more uniform by shifting to lower gears when I get into windier sections. Shrug.

All I want to say is that good gear is beneficial, maybe not for performance, but definitely for enjoyment of a ride. And at the beginning that's pretty important for someone to build a habit out of riding.

I appreciate your approach but the reason people like optimizations is for speed. The thrill of riding fast is what keeps a lot of us coming back.

Lots of people optimise because they fell in the rabbit hole of optimisation and it became an addiction. Like in every hobbies some people completely lose touch with reality. I've seen videos of people comparing weight of bicycle seats and how to shave like 13 grams of weight of the bike, meanwhile the dude had a dad bod and shaving his torso would have shaved more weight than his $$$ seat

Don't get me wrong, I also love to go down a forest path at 45 kph to the point where I get scared, but I know that I also have to go up again. But going as fast as possible on a horizontal path is not attractive to me at all. If I want to expend energy, I prefer to ride up a hill where I then can have the fun of riding down, even if I have to pedal 20 minutes up to then go down within a minute or two.

But I also recognize that there are those who are already super efficient and want to get the absolutely most out of their gear, even improving it as much as possible, which is really ok by me. I wish I were at that point, but I think I'd first have to go to the gym for that.

There is riding fast and there is riding fast but just a tiny bit slower.

I have a modern race bike, less than 3y old with some but not all of the latest aero features. I also still own my 30y old racing bike that I used to race until 20years ago (it was already old bike then). It stays at my parents place and I ride it maybe twice a year. If you ask any bike reviewer he will tell that old bike is obsolete, feel much slower and make me lose 45s over the course of a 50km ride according to the data given by the manufacturer. If you ask me, sure I feel a difference, mostly in feeling, when I start riding the bike. But after 5 minutes all this is forgotten and I enjoy the ride as much as on my more modern bike. And that bike is perfectly fine surrounded by superbikes in a group ride. Actually I did one this summer with a group that tend to stay together but ride at a fast steady pace until the last 20k where the wait "policy" disappear and people start to attack the climbs at max pace. I ended up in the 5 rider leading group out of maybe 40 and I was totally out of shape.

That old bike would sell for 300-400€ in the second hand market right now. The difference with a 2k and 8k modern bike is much lower.

Ultimately, it's the engine.

The thing is that expensive isnt always better - those "cheap" Schwabe tires are actually superior than most specifically because of the way they are designed - not because they are cheap or expensive (touring style tires). You could also buy more expensive touring tires and they would be better than those cheap ones - but expensive tiny skinny tires would not (nor would big expensive nobby tires). As someone who did a lot of different bike riding and has built many bikes there are also many benefits to going pricier other than just being a wannabe racer - but in the end it is more about choosing the right style of component for the job vs just buying what is priciest or trendy.

That’s absolutely fine. This article is aimed at people who race bikes for fun and for a living.

I'm not here to advocate for expensive equipment but my cross country hardtail MTB (even with the wide tires on the roads, non-carbon) feels like half the effort to pedal than my old crummy commuter trekking bike with narrower tires, so I guess your 600€ bike might already have one of the biggest optimizations packed in ;)

Lots of biking? My commute alone: ~10 000km. A 600€ was crap twenty years ago. Contributions are great when the person making them has something to back them up.

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