big chainring 

I do my share of cycling. Most guys and gals I see out on the road are well, old, like me. The young guys are in their 40's. I saw one "kid"(18-20) last year on a group ride. Are the yutes of today just not interested? When I started cycling anyone over 22-23 was over the hill old. And certainly anyone into their 50's was a total geezer, and very few of those.

RamAlaRag 

I'm 17.

Ricanfred

I'm 40 and have been a "serious" cyclist for over 2 years now. Most people in my club are older.

BillyD

Me too.

downtube42

That's cause you're a boomer. Everybody's your age.

gsa103

High entry cost and the popularity of mountain biking.

GhostSS

Basically this. I had a mountain bike when I was a teenager that I used up to the end of college because it's what my parents bought for me. I didn't get "into it" until I graduated, got a steady job, and could buy a bike more towards my own tastes. You don't need an expensive bike to enjoy cycling of course, but younger folks tend to not think of cycling as a sport or recreation, just a mode of transportation in my opinion.

roadandmountain

Nice bikes are very expensive.

Also, teens and 20 somethings are more into cars for conveying the 'cool' factor.

f4rrest

Lots of kids on FG around here.

halcyon100

I think you will find younger cyclists if you look at certain college towns and in gentrified areas of certain cities... mission district in SF and brooklyn, NYC... Portland... UC Davis in CA... Burning Man... I see a fair amount of old school road bikes with down tube shifters in certain areas of SF, along with the fixed gear bikes. It is hard for me to understand riding a fixed gear bike in SF, with all the hills. I think the 20 - 30 year old folks consider them to be hipster fashion accessories and ride them around the mission district and lock them to a post or something before going up a hill.

Some of the local high schools and colleges now have road and MTB cycling teams and I have occasionally seen them out riding.

I'm in my late 30's and got into mountain biking while in high school. There were no high school teams or anything then. I had a friend into biking and her parent's wouldn't let her ride by herself so she kept after me until I got a bike and went with her. I tend to be more introverted and I think biking appealed to me a lot more than team sports, which is what most other teens were doing.

As a teen, I had an old and heavy steel bike and put the rock shox judy fork on it - when suspension forks were first coming out. I had to work full-time one summer to get a mountain bike I wanted. I guess I was unusual in that I didn't have a car then and wasn't worried about getting one. In college, I got more into road biking. I mainly took up road biking because I heard that people who trained on road bikes would be better able to build muscle and speed for mountain biking.

Team Sarcasm

23 here. Allmy friends spend their extra money on cloths, shoes,, vacations/trips, and/or car accessories, etc. I save my money and spend it on my bike. All about priorities

coasting 

cycling is good for oldies.

BoSoxYacht

I'm 45, but have been into road cycling since I was about 10. I have older brothers that were into road cycling, so it was natural that I would try to be like them.

wallrat

I'm 43 and started MTB at 40 after we had a second kid. I started road riding last year at 42. I use to rock climb and couldn't do it seriously after the first kid because of the huge time commitments. There are a lot of multi day trips and gym time. So I decided to do something around town, like riding. I live in Marin County so it was a natural fit. I'll start climbing again after the kids are a few years older.

JonnyV

30. Been riding since I was 18.

superdx

Buying a nice road bike and all the clothes, accessories and lightweight parts pretty much requires a steady salary. Added up together you'd be spending anywhere from 3-8k if you took it seriously. Pretty much limits it to people with a job, thus older.

But that's road bikes. Lot of people are on wal-mart cycles and cheap mountain bikes. They may not be avid cyclists but there are more of them than us.

roadandmountain

The price of full susp. bikes seems to be growing exponentially. Generally $3K to $10K at this point.

Homebrew01

I think op meant physical age, not emotional age

pgjackson

Yes, and 20-somethings are too self conscious to wear spandex. I know when I was that age I would never have worn bibs. Didn't get in to cycling till about 40 and didn't care what people thought. Cycled in San Diego for about 3 years. Never saw anyone younger than their 30's.

JimF22003

"Kids these days..." are being sheltered in some ways that would have seemed ridiculous in the olden days when I was growing up. We left the house at daybreak, usually on our bikes, and had to be called in well after dark. You have to develop the habit of being able to navigate, explore, fight it out with cars and other kids if necessary without having Mom watching your every move and screening your snacks for peanuts or something.

Now parents drive their kids across the street rather than let them walk or bike out of their sights. I love it when I see younguns out and about on the roads on their bikes, but I don't see it very often.

Genaro

I'm glad to hear 40 is young. i'm 39 and have met alot of cyclists like me that are retired runners with bad knees. Cycling is just easier on the joints and bones.. Speaking like that does in fact make me feel old..

Genaro

Funny, I was telling my wife just the other day, that if my parents would have known just how far we used to ride our bikes, they would have had a heart attack. What they didn't know,, welll, they didn't know. I was 14 and would ride 40-50 miles away with my buddies just to say we did it.

qcpmsame 

In our area, Pensacola, FL, it was the old guys that were in the majority when I began serious bicycling back in 1972. Most "kids" rode sting-ray knock offs until they got their license and it was goodbye to bicycles. I was odd man out most of the time with my cycling. The club here, West Florida Wheelmen is mainly 40+ now, some of the younger members are starting to gather interested friends and strangely we are across the board in disciplines, MTB, Roadies and Tri-geeks all together.
This area is a backwater, what filters in comes mainly from the military guys here for flight training or as instructors, then they return to die when they retired.

My kids wanted MTB or freestyle bicycles until a few years back, they were 22 and 20 respectively when they realized what a good road bicycle could offer them and what a real MTB was made of. Now our daughter rides my old R500 as a roadie, in Atlanta, she is car free. Our son has some kind of brain damage, he is a distance runner, but he is looking for a riad bicycle in the near future since he is now employed as an ESL instructor and the University of West Florida, after his college finally paid off

The "cool-Factor" is probably the biggest thing I can see as the limiter for younger riders, along with cost, parents will spend mega bucks for game systems or bling cars for their children but a bicycle is supposed to be a Wallyworld special for around $100.00. The BSO falls apart and they lose interest or simply shun it as lame. If the parents would get just a decent entry level LBS bicycle, CL or other used is fine, their children might stay interested and not become overweight population statistics. End Rant mode.

Sorry for the spiel, it is one of my pet peeves that younger riders don't come into our sport, it was a big positive factor when I was a teen.

Bill

Dan333SP

I'm 28 and most of the people I ride with are in their early 20s. I'm also a graduate student so I compete for my school's club team, which is mainly undergrads, so that skews things. The serious riders in their early 20s all have supportive parents who bought them their gear, a couple of them have legitimate shots at domestic pro contracts so the parents think of it as an investment. I will say that the entry cost is very high (not just the bike, everything related to it, even race entry fees add up), and that is a big barrier for a lot of my mid 20s friends who are looking for a new way to work out that doesn't destroy knees.

paulie719

I'm 32 and that's exactly why I started riding! I love being outdoors, but running 4-6 miles a day was really taking a toll.