jbman100

I don't get it. Whats the big deal? Does being on a less expensive bike make me less of a rider?

Here's the back story. Last week a friend of mine and I rode the metric century in the Tour de Cure. He was on a 6 year old Trek of some sort that he bought used. His ex gets most of his spare cash. I was on my 2010 Merceir Galaxy with just over 1700 miles on it this year. Neither of us seemed to care that we didn't have fancy light weight, loaded with tons of do-dads bikes.

I bought the bike from BD (don't go there) so that I could keep up with my wife while she trained for her triathlons. The agreement was that I would get a in-expensive road bike for this year to ride with her and if I liked road cycling ( and I guess I do with over 1700 miles do far this season) and did 2 events then next year we would get me a better bike. There was no way I was going to keep up with either of my other bikes, which are a 10 year old HEAVY mountain bike and a 5 year old comfort bike. I liked to ride them both but when we went on our rides it was for fun not for speed or climbing ability.

My friend and I were zipping along on a flat spot about 22-23 mph. We passed a group of 6 riders on their fancy road bikes and didn't think anything of it. They were all decked out in matching race kits and seemed to be struggling to to keep the pace they were on which was about 20 mph.

As we were leaving the rest stop we had come to several miles later they were just arriving. I guess a couple of the riders didn't recognize me because as I was walking back to my bike I heard one of them make this comment. "I can't believe that old fart passed us on that POS crap bike". "I wouldn't feel so bad about it if it was a real bike".

I know it's all about the motor (legs and lungs) and not the bike. Good gear helps but the best gear in the world won't help someone succeed if you don't have a good motor. So since I'm still rather new to this are there really that kind of bike snobs out there? Or was I just being overly sensitive. My friend just laughed and blew the comment off. I did as well then but got to thinking about it again today because I transferred some money from checking into the bike/event savings account to be used for next year. Gotta plan ahead.

Thoughts or comments?