Fascinating thread, I think.
I'm gonna go out and say it right here - it's all a matter of proportions, perspective, and.....money. I'm a Super Clyde - right around 325 at the moment. Hold that thought. I got a '99 Schwinn Peloton, minus wheels, from a really skinny rider (he kept the rolf vectors, lol). It's a Reynolds 853 frame (probably made by the same folks that did the Lemond bikes), but I haven't stripped it to see what it really weighs. I've toyed with the idea of building it up with SRAM Rival, 3T stem/bars, Thompson Elite seatpost, San Marco Concor Light saddle, Look Keo Classic pedals. So I went to Competitive Cyclist and played with the build calculator (fun!) and for a whopping $1900 'built' everything but the frame/fork/headset. With a Mavic Askium wheelset, everything weighed 13.04 pounds. I'd figure the frame/fork/Ritchey headset couldn't weigh more than 7 pounds all told, so for a $2200 total investment I'd have a 20# steelie.....cool, eh? Well, not so fast! There's that little problem of the obvious foolishness of spending $2200 for a 20# steelie when you weigh so much yourself! Plus, would the wheels even hold up? Of course, I considered the SRAM groupset partly so I could move the Ultegra/DA stuff to another frame of some sort, but it would be so much cheaper and easier to just get a Mavic OP wheelset/cassette, and get to riding. At about $300 all told a much wiser investment.
Do you folks see where I'm going with this? Different people have different needs versus wants, but there's always going to be a middle ground with a fuzzy gray area on each end. Sure I like to dream of riding a 15# Pinarello, but that won't make me or anyone else healthier just because. Quite the opposite. If we all REALLY wanted to get a better workout, we'd ride Varsities! (btw - did you know that a 22" Varsity frameset, nothing else, weighs almost 13 pounds on the bathroom scale all by itself? Just about as much as everything I built up on that ride calculator? And to think people try to sell the darn things for sometimes absurd prices. But that's for another time
BTW does anyone happen to know what a '99 54cm Peloton frame/fork/headset DOES weigh? See, I'm getting a nice tax refund next year, and......
Tom