caloso

Fixed it for you.

Jandro 

hahaha

jon c. 

Probably because the wheels on those things cost a small fortune.

banerjek

That type of riding is 10 times harder than regular road riding. So if you've ridden your road bike 10 times on more ordinary roads, it's toast. I'm willing to handle the disposal of your old bike for no charge...

EdIsMe

This is actually true and it's been said more than once in interviews and videos.

-BUT-

It isn't because the bikes are toast after the 1 ride, it's because these same bikes have ridden all of the early-season classics and by the end of the Roubaix are pretty beat up. Also, when the paycheck for winning one of these races is $1 million+, spending $25k on a new bike seems like a no brainer.

zymphad

@OP, if you are worried, then buy what you can afford to replace, not what you can afford to buy. From reading about bike maintenance and purchasing, the unanimous advice/opinion I've read has been, don't get attached to your bike and components. Buy it knowing it will wear out or may break. Buy what you can replace and not cry if it does break.

Marty can get away with that cause he's a professional, hall of fame cyclists, and can wreck as many bikes as he wants.


Read this too. But they can get away with it because if you're racing Paris Roubaix you already have multiple spares and sponsored. Specialized isn't going to blink having to supply more bikes to their sponsored race teams...

Dave Cutter

I wonder.... if there was a different question in there somewhere. Like... this is what I am hoping to do with a bicycle... what would be some good options in a bicycle that I should look at?

It doesn't matter how durable a road bike is... or isn't if you're planning on riding the mountain bike trails. A road bike constructed and equipped for racing... won't be so useful [as other road bikes] if your planning on do a little credit card touring.

For the types of cycling I do... I have what I think is the perfect bicycle. But then again... that requires me to have more than one bicycle. But I wouldn't call any of them fragile.

Carbon Unit

I bent my steel framed Panasonic hit a concrete parking block in a dark parking lot. I don't know if my carbon frame would have faired any better and I don't want to find out.

gsa103

Total damage for road bike party 1: A couple of pinch flats and a scratched shifter. He can get away with because he's ok with crashing the bike, not because its likely to happen.

Road bikes in general are more durable than road bike riders. Rarely is there a crash with significant bike damage that doesn't also involve significant rider damage.

thelazywon

I crashed my Lynskey with Dura Ace 9000 at about 20 mph. Hit a buckled piece of concrete and went over the bars. I looked up as I hit the pavement and saw my bike doing front flips down the road, then fell over on the drive side and slid for several feet. The only damage it took was a slightly bent derailleur and hangar, slightly scratched shifter lever, and scuffed seat. Very, very minor. As for me, well I was pretty effed up. destroyed my gloves, and shredded my knee and elbow.

link0

Road bike frames are not fragile, but road bike wheels can be if they have low spoke counts. Also, the skinny tires on road bikes don't offer much shock absorption, so due to that, the wheels receive quite a bit more punishment.

hyhuu

There is good reason for some people not riding a road bike on road with lots of potholes but it's not because road bike is fragile. But rather, for comfort and to some extent handling issue because road bike generally can't be fitted with larger tires, which helps smoothing out the ride.

StanSeven

Yep. The truth. Yet so many people worry about damaging their bike and not think about themselves.

Kopsis

You mean like Turn 1 at Sebring? I'm pretty confident that my kidneys will turn to jelly long before I break the Z51 suspension on my Corvette Which, by the way, uses carbon composite springs (so much for carbon composite being inherently fragile).

A well designed road bike in the 16lb range is surprisingly durable and designed to be ridden hard over imperfect surfaces for many miles. Many bikes in that range can even survive the rigors of Cyclocross racing. Now, if you go weight-weenie and start pushing down into the sub 14lb range, you start eliminating much of your design margin and drastically increase the odds of stress and fatigue failures. But even in that case, high frequency road buzz is as likely to cause the failure as relatively intermittent high impulse loads.

bikecrate

I did a sliding crash into a car door once which caused $900 worth of damage. My bike was undamaged and other than a few scrapes I was fine too. Therefore I conclude car doors are more fragile than road bikes.

Looigi

Cute, but it is actually and literally a $15,000 bike. There's an article around somewhere on the net about the build. Between the frame, group, wheels and other components is was 15k. In Road Bike Party 1, he uses a $10k Pinarello.

Up North

In his latest video he uses a $24,900.00 bike according to write up someone cut and pasted on here someplace.

coasting 

fragile?

only if made of carbon.

Tim_Iowa

Road bikes shouldn't be called "fragile", but they are less burly than a mountain bike because road bike designers value light weight over durability.

If you're using it for commuting on potholed roads, find a road bike that can fit wider tires and fenders so you have a more comfortable, drier ride. Like others said, road bike wheels with skinny tires can get damaged by potholes and curbs. Stronger rims with standard spoke counts (32 or more) will withstand commuting abuse much better than lightweight racing wheels.

wphamilton

I tried a MTB trail on my road bike a few years ago. The front 700c-28 tire lasted about a minute, so that part is more fragile.

The wheels, being larger are not as sturdy as 26" wheels. High spoke count wheels are pretty solid though so that's not necessarily more fragile on a road bike, but possibly.

I'm more worried about banging and denting a road bike frame. Is that justified, I don't know, but I think that the tube walls are thinner to save weight and while they may be as strong structurally they're easier to crush.

For normal riding on roads or urban riding I doubt that road bikes are any more fragile.

Beatofmyowndrum

This was a good explanation. On a side note where are all these elusive potholes? Maybe I don't notice them because I'm in the comfort of my car but I feel like I never see giant holes that go straight to hell in the street! You guys should write your congressman about those...

bbbean 

Fragility is relative. But if road bikes were as fragile as some claim, there's be long lines at the repair stand at every bike shop, and serious riders would have long ago moved on to some other design.

rjones28 

They don't want to spill their beer.

peaches123

I don't think you're supposed to ride right into those.

c0urt

considering the damage i have done to myself vs the the bikes, i wouldnt sweat it much.