Not liking your bike or gear

Another +1 for carbon race bikes.

My only beef with my TCR is the 25mm rear tyre clearance. Mudguards and a standard 27.2 seatpost would be nice to have, but the handling and direct feeling when you put your foot down is great.

You know what, now I think about it I may just be easily pleased. I regret selling every bike and enjoyed each in their own way.

Fyi no pic is showing

Is a carbon bike lockable in London?

and fitter

Do I regret selling my condor pista, or am I just pining for feeling I had before becoming a parent?

am I just pining for feeling I had before becoming a parent?

New forum name?

Surely they're starting to be a bit more ordinary these days?

Yes, if you carry locks weighing more than a steel frame.

Mine is in the loft hoping to one day return.

Love that bike.

I should probably get a Fratello. They're basically the same as a pista right?

1 Attachment

Rename thread to gravel buyer's remorse.

I sold a frame I was enjoying owning and riding, it did what I wanted from it and more, I also liked the look of it and the brand felt right too.

what frame was it?

A baby blue Foffa

Salsa Casserole

I assumed a Trek.

Why else would you be too embarrassed to name it?

Trek was the employment that put the squeeze on riding bikes from other brands. Especially if you were a manager or higher.

I always find excuses to ride something that appeals more, be it deep rims, fat tires, handlebars or whatever.

I loved how comfortable my gravel bike was but I didn’t like the fact it would not ever stop (or really even slow down) even with handfuls of brake lever. I changed the groupset to GRX and did the tublez now it’s like a whole new different bike.

Ultimately nothing is going to make poor geometry or the wrong sized bike work well, but if the frame is good then sometimes all you need to do is buy ten more other bikes.
Colour (black) is the most important thing.

New forum name?

New gravel thread name

"If your bike feels good it usually means you're going well yourself"

So said an ancient but very experienced clubmate.

Put this the other way round and you get: 'I'm not satisfied with my bike', but really the problem lies with the rider.

When I was very young I had a really terrible bike and plenty of enthusiasm. Gradually my bike improved but sadly I ran out of that enthusiasm before I really established whether I had any real potential as a young coureur(it came back later, but that's another story). My point is that 'it's not about the bike', it's about how the rider feels.

I'd say it's a characteristic of the current generation of cyclists to imagine that the bike is more important than it really is; this view is certainly encouraged by contemporary cycling journalism which often seems to be little more than advertorial.

So before buying more stuff ask yourself: is my fitness ok, and: have I fallen (temporarily) out of love with cycling?

Martyn Roach* said "Enthusiasm is a rider's greatest asset".

*https://veloveritas.co.uk/2020/07/10/martyn-roach-jul20/

I think the point is for many of us we aren’t racing so the fitness is really immaterial. If the bike doesn’t look right and doesn’t feel right, even if it’s “fast” then it’s just not fun.

not fun

Checklist:

Position
Geometry
Tune
If it passes those, add lightness for fun.
If that fails, maybe it needs to look cooler

Bought a rose Aluminium road bike.
The geo was a tiny bit off and so I couldn’t get “in” the frame. It was pretty rapid and I did some good Strava ing but it felt like a chore. So I got rid.

A bike fit would probably have fixed the problem, but I was done with the bike.

Lots of relatable posts here. Also worth thinking about whether the idea of a new bike (and the dopamine release comes with all the possibilities) is the mind’s way of getting at something deeper — are we feeling fulfilled in other aspects of our lives etc.

This is a topic that deserves much more attention. Sometimes the "stuff" is not the real culprit of our dissatisfaction.

Sometimes, when a bike or a component doesn't resonate with us as we imagined, we feel angry and powerless.
Maybe it's just the realization that the actual results are not as good or as "dopamine-filled" as we imagined them to be.

In a couple instances, i retrospectingly realized that the bike was just an empty spot that i felt the urge to fill for the sake of it, and that the problem had really been elsewhere from the beginning.