The strangest question that I always get asked about my (quite fancy) bike is: "Is it fast?"

Well that depends what engine you put on it sir...

Which isn't to say that the bike doesn't make a large difference. I just replaced a bike with an all-steel frame and garbage drivetrain with one with an alloy/carbon plus shimano 105s, and the difference is absolutely remarkable.

The difference to your wallet is probably a lot larger than the difference to your waistline :)

There's also usually a quite noticeable difference in sheer fun, and that's what cycling is mainly about. More money can buy a lot more fun.

Given that I'm hoping the difference to my waistline to be 0, that should be trivially true ;)

But the hit to my wallet wasn't as bad as it could have been, in general I'm a big fan of buying second-hand. Local bike shop gets to charge me for fixing the previous owner's lack of upkeep, I get a lot more bike than I'd otherwise get for the same money. Not to mention that new bikes are hard to come by these days.

That's a good way of buying things in general. Especially high end racing bikes, a relatively large number of which are bought on impulse only to end up gathering dust. I bought a very nice Guerciotti like that, as good as brand new, and for a price that made me check the stolen bike registry first.

I know what you mean, but I think there definitely is a difference riding cheap versus expensive bikes. As with most sports requiring tech, the more you spend, the less you tend to fight the tech itself (friction, weight, etc). Granted it's diminishing returns.

Of course, but as anyone will notice if they go from a bicycle shaped object that weighs 30 pounds and has fat tires to a road bike (even an aluminum one), the difference is quite significant.

I hope this isn't flame-war material but why do recreational cyclists bother spending big money on lighter bikes or thinner tyres or anything at all? If you want to make it easier to ride, you can get a motor and Li-ion battery, often more cheaply. I did that when I used to cycle to work for practical reasons. But then why are you cycling instead of driving in the first place?

Because road cycling enthusiasts are just as susceptible as enthusiasts with other hobbies to take the obsession with gear to silly levels.

Grill/barbecue backyard dads obsessing about charcoal vs. briquettes vs. gas, BTUs and so on.

Motorcyclists and their endless discussions about motor oil and chain lubrication.

Amateur DIYers with tool collections that be excessive even for hardcore professional craftsmen.

PC gamers with their obsession over performance tests of the latest CPUs and GPUs, mechanical keyboards and ultra-high CPI mouses.

In the end, it's all just a dick measuring contest. If you have fancier gear or you have fancier-looking graphs than your neighbor, you are better at your shared hobby, because the numbers say so.

At least the cyclists are finally realizing that super skinny ultra high-pressure tires are actually counterproductive, and that a wider tire with lower pressure performs better on the uneven surfaces of the real world. But because the super skinny rock hard tires performed best in tests on perfectly smooth rollers, everyone had convinced themselves for decades that more flexible tires were bad, because the numbers said so.

I feel like the increase in wheel width may have had the biggest effect on the tyre shift. It was hard to buy a road wheel that wasn't a 15mm bead width a few years ago, and it is becoming difficult to buy wheels that are not >20mm now. I can realistically choose a 28-622 and run it at 5bar today, that wasn't an option a few years ago. In fact, five years ago my everyday bike didn't even have frame clearance for a 25-622.

There is a different argument to be had if the point is "don't buy frames with road/tri geometry".

I guess my point is: some of us aren't just choosing shiniest shiny, we're choosing an option from the list that only includes shiny.

Good question. When you are commuting and need to be practical, you might prefer electric. But cycling for fun on a roadbike is about being outside, enjoying the surroundings, and putting your legs to work. It can make you feel alive and just give sheer joy putting your body to work and have your legs be the engine of your bicycle.

You still do all of those things on an e-bike, all it does is provide assistance, which means you can go farther, spend more time outside and see more of the world around you. You can adjust or even completely turn off the assistance.

There's an argument to be made for purism, but where do you draw the line? Do click shifters ruin the purism of cycling? The presence of multiple gears? Freewheeling hubs? Are clips, straps or clipless pedals just crutches for people with bad technique? Does the presence of a chain and gearing decouple you from the raw and pure connection to the wheel?

Where does one draw the line?

I think there is a misunderstanding about why cyclists go biking for fun for 100+ km uphill, on roads or in the woods on Sunday mornings. The reason is that they like to pedal and stay fit. I do.

Suppose we have cheap and light exoskeletons that people can wear and run for 100 km at 15 km/h on a single charge. Would that put an end to people running 5 km in 45 minutes with their own legs? I don't think so.

I might buy an ebike when I'm older (and I mean well past 60) but why should I use one when I can do 150 km in a day for fun? If I'm in hurry I drive my car.

Another use case for an ebike would be a long commute and I don't want to sweat on my way to work. It's not my case but I would consider a bike with a battery for that.

I absolutely understand the desire for doing things the same way as the professionals or imposing artificial limitations to push oneself harder. That and keeping fit is why I lift weights.

Still, if keeping fit was the ultimate goal, everyone would be riding heavy old steel frames instead of chasing sub-1% efficiency gains ;-)

There is a huge element of gear geekery involved and to an extent also some cargo culting. I know, I've been there myself for a bit. Now I ride a 3-speed stepover bike with a basket on the front, because trying to always go faster was going to get me maimed in traffic at some point.

The reason is that a light and stiff bike is much more fun to ride! An expensive road bike is optimizing for fun and performance. A heavy old steel bike is optimizing for cost and reliability. If you are riding for fitness then fun is important.

My counterpoint is that I have a lot more fun when riding my relaxed steel frame bike at a moderate speed, than I ever had when riding a road bike fast. That means I ride farther and for longer, but it's the kind of fun that cannot be quantified in hard numbers.

I find the performance-chasing stressful, whether on a bike, in a car or in front of a PC, and we could all do with a bit less stress in our lives.

Shows that having fun is subjective.

But the point is, an electrically assisted bike is even more fun. Or if you don't like any extra assistance, tune the power to just compensate for the weight of a steel frame so it feels like a carbon-fiber bike but at lower cost. Why isn't that the most popular type of high-end recreation bike?

You can tune so the acceleration feels like a lighter bike, but for braking and cornering, you're still going to feel the extra weight, there's no way to artificially lighten an object, you can't cheat mass and gravity, it's the same reason why a Tesla Roadster is a very different car from a Mazda MX-5 and the Mazda would be a fundamentally changed car if you made it electric.

Still, for the vast majority of everyday cyclists, the "purity" of the experience doesn't matter, they want to get from A to B in a practical manner. They want to see things and do things, the bike ride is not a goal in itself.

For the sports cyclist with aspirations based on their professional idols, they want to ride what the professionals ride, not a simulation. Personally I think the whole concept of trying to ape the professionals is a bit silly, which is why I don't do it anymore :-)

I think you could have power assisted brakes to simulate a lighter bike if you really wanted that.

The lure is getting fit and achieving something graspable with that fitness. Riding an artificially incapable bike would ruin the latter, like cooking something nice with one hand tied behind your back, riding an e-bike would ruin the former, like advising a weight lifter that he could raise that bar much more frequently if he removed those annoying metal discs from the ends.

Hmm, so is it that the difference between 0 and non-zero power assistance happens to provide a natural well defined boundary between not handicapping yourself and still posing a challenge? It's not really about the power assistance at all but about having a clear scope to avoid drifting off into easier-and-easier land until you're weightlifting without weights and "cooking" by hiring a personal chef?

Kind of, but it's not a continuum at all. Cyclists may use a surprising number of batteries (some configurations provide you with no less than five charging states to keep in mind, and that's before adding lights, and not counting the three coin cells also hidden in that configuration), but when you start using external power for propulsion, from a cyclist's perspective, puts it into an entirely different category: it's not a particularly easy bike, it's a very weak motorcycle. Obviously from a driver's perspective it's exactly reversed and cyclists will happily tap into powered drafting opportunities whenever they arise, but the category borders are what they are. Imagine showing up at a marathon start block wearing roller blades: good luck convincing anyone that you do and love the same thing, just having a slightly different taste in footwear.

I'm not talking about organized sport, just recreation, so rules don't matter. Nor about other electric devices, just powered propulsion. I used to cycle for fun and had no idea what rules the actual sports might have had - it didn't matter to me. I'm sure there are others who also do it for purely personal reasons and don't need to follow any rules.

Just calling it a weak motorcycle doesn't really explain anything other than the cyclist's confusion about what he wants.

Well, a sport is inherently circumscribed by a set of rules. And those rules are often completely arbitrary - why is the basketball hoop that high? Why have a 100 meter sprint instead of 100 yards? But even though the rules are arbitrary, in order to be doing that sport, you have to be within the rules.

When cycling a motor could certainly improve my power output. But as it's outside the rules of most cycling bodies' rules for competitions, I can't improve my times by putting a motor on my bike any more than I can lower the basketball basket to score more points.

Of course, that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with an e-bike - someone sprinting 70 meters is still running, even if they're not within the rules of the 100 meter sprint! And e-bikes are a fine option if you want to replace a car (for certain distances), haul a lot of weight on a cargo bike, as a general fitness activity, or to keep up with faster riders for social purposes.

Why do people buy porsches? For a much more reasonable amount of money you can get the porsche of the bicycle world. And you will notice the difference more than with a porsche because with a bicycle you form a large part of the machine.

The thrill of pedalling a bike to a fast speed is not just in the speed but in the human powered element too.

As you've alluded to ebikes exist already as do ICE motorbike; still we enjoy pedal cycling.

Just as the existence of cycling doesn't invalidate the enjoyment of running or skateboarding just because it's faster and it's the same for pedal cycling vs powered bikes.

The modes of transport are just different.

You answered your question yourself: for recreation.

Putting a motor on feels like cheating, getting a lighter bike is the easiest way to see improvements in your ride. Your weight and fitness levels are much more difficult to assess than changing to a different bike.

It's not only a matter of weight savings. I had an iron bike, an aluminium bike and now I am riding a carbon bike. The differences in comfort and maneuverability are impressive: the iron bike was comfortable but not reactive at all, the aluminium bike was very rigid and uncomfortable, but light and very reactive, the actual one is comfortable and reactive. I can afford long trip (more than 100km) without any pain at the end.

On the flip side, you would be still be faster on the $10000+ machine, and you don't even need to train to get the benefit!

10% faster for the low low price of $10,000.