I remember years ago going to my local bike shop and trying out the latest in road bikes. I was riding a steel-framed something or other at the time and he put me on an austro-daimler, light weight racing model with an excellent component group and sent me for a test ride. I came back to the shop extremely impressed.
“Riding that bike is like cheating,” I said…and then I bought it.
It had seemed so much faster and more responsive at the time and I didn’t like that I was losing precious time in my triathlon races to people who I could beat otherwise because they had better equipment than me. I would buy three more bikes since that time, but in each case, never had the feeling that the equipment made that big a difference. Then I tried out John’s carbon fiber road racing bike.
The first thing I noticed was the weight. It ran around 15 pounds without the bag and profile bars, which was 8 pounds lighter than the aluminum Trek I had been riding. As I got into the ride and came to small rises in the road, I couldn’t help but notice how quickly I could get back to my cruising speed once cresting the rise. I was hitting all the same cracks and bumps I’d normally hit on the course I was following, but somewhere from the road to me, the shocks and bumps were lost in the frame. I simply wasn’t feeling them as much…and if you’ve ridden 100,000 miles or more in your lifetime, you notice these things. Finally, I found myself climbing a long, steep hill. I’ve time it before and know that it takes me around 10 minutes from bottom to top. On this day, I was up in 8.
Does equipment make a difference? Absolutely. If I was racing again, I think I’d be sacrificing about 2 mph to people with bikes like John’s…an unacceptable level that I’d have to correct. I really don’t care so much about the speed anymore, but comfort is everything when riding over two hours as I regularly do. I’ll continue to experiment with his bike and find out if it alleviates some of the discomfort I’ve been experiencing in my neck and shoulders and if it does…carbon fiber is a must. He claims I can use it for the remainder of the summer, but by then I may just disappear with it. Nice bike, John…thanks.
Bike Duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 2100.
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