The State of Road Cycling
I'd like to crowdsource the forum for a generalized idea of how road cycling is doing as an activity. This may be a great thread to rant in (or an absolute handful for mods, so keep it nice). Catharsis is healthy, so all opinions are welcome, even if unpopular.
My background:
I'm a road cyclist coming from a MTB background in the 90's and have been riding/racing for the better part of 24 years. I've lived in Colorado, Montana, and now Oregon, so mountainous places with varying states of winter. I've raced as a junior, P/1/2, and Master. My knowledge of bikes and athleticism has taken me all over the country and afforded me some truly insane experiences, and it shows no signs of stopping.
I see road cycling falling out of popularity with the racing crowd, and to some extent, non-racers as well. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's dying, but road participation on all fronts is down. In no particular order, here are my top 3 reasons:
Risk.
I see the inherent danger of road riding increasing as cell phones in the hands of drivers continues to be a problem. I feel that we are in the "death valley" between the increased prevalence of cell phones creating this hazard and the inevitable self-driving cars that will (hopefully) eliminate car vs cyclist collisions. The AI is here, but not the willingness to give up control/pay for it. It's truly shocking how casual the attitude is towards potentially liquefying a cyclist with your car just so you can comment "love this!" on Justin Bieber's Instagram photo.
On top of cell phones, drivers are becoming increasingly impatient and, subsequently, aggressive with cyclists. Cyclists are far-and-away THE most-hated and vilified people on the road. I have my own thoughts as to why this might be, but maybe someone with a sociology degree can tell us why it's getting worse. I told a story in another thread about how a drunk woman told me that she wants to kill cyclists for being on the road TO MY FACE, knowing full well that I am an avid cyclist. The increasing risk segues into my next reason:
Gravel.
A lot of the guys I used to race road with have gone gravel, and the predominant reason for the shift is "it gets me away from traffic." I've dabbled in gravel, and most of the races I've signed up for this year are gravel. I feel that is as much a safety move as it is a physiological one. If any racer is distressed by the current flood of retiring World Tour pros entering gravel events, there's two main reasons:
1: Gravel racing is becoming the new hotness in the market and there's money to be made. A retired WT rider needs to eat, and what better way to cash checks than to beat on the local Strava heroes for $1500/pop.
2: WT riders retire for a myriad of reasons (injury, burnout, etc), one of which is the loss of the "snap" required to do well in WT racing. With age, that snap goes away, and what's left is a MASSIVE diesel engine. Enter gravel racing. The ability to hold tempo for 5-8 hours with a few FTP efforts is exactly what races like BWR, DK, and Tushar require.
For non-racers, gravel not only gets you away from cars, but it's also a very welcome change of scenery from what might be the old stale road routes. With the changing surface comes the reason to buy new bikes and gear, which is in itself, exciting. ...which brings me to my next point:
Cost of admission.
As I stated in another thread, I've had bike/equipment/nutrition sponsors for most of my life. Now that I don't have bikes and equipment being handed to me, I was shocked to see what a decent road bike goes for nowadays, and it's difficult to see the value. Why does a top-end road bike cost several thousand dollars more than a top-end mountain or gravel bike from the same manufacturer? The amount of engineering and component optimization going into a MTB is arguably higher than a road bike, and they are every bit as difficult to manufacture (if not more).
My local group rides show this pricing as well. The bikes used to be fairly heterogeneous throughout the group. You'd have people on 15+ year old bikes because they "still work", a fair bit of 5-10 year old bikes in varying trims, a few race rigs (Ultegra or better, ridden hard and put away wet), and one or two superbikes that everyone geeked out over.
Now the group rides somewhat mimic the income gap; There are a lot of 15+ year old bikes that were in the 5-10 Y.O. group 5-10 years ago and are still being ridden with no intention of being replaced because the same bike is now $2000 more expensive, and nobody likes a downgrade. The 5-10 year old bikes are almost nowhere to be seen now, and the race rigs number even less. Superbikes on the other hand, seem to be making a huge surge. It's not uncommon to see several $15000 bikes with ceramic over-sized RD pulleys, powermeters, and other "me-fast" tech bolted onto a bike that has 40mm of headset spacers, upturned 80mm stems, rolled-back handlebars, and SPD mountain bike pedals being ridden once a week by a person wearing a baggy Showers Pass jacket and a $400 aero helmet. One category that needs to be addressed is the prevalence of mail-order bikes becoming a staple in the road community.
Canyon Bikes are a great representation of the unwillingness to pony up the outrageous prices posted by Specialized/Pinarello/etc. Skipping the storefront allows for better pricing to spec, and that's beginning to show in the groups I ride with. Canyon is popping up everywhere, and I hear the same thing from every rider: "It was [insert substantial amount of money here] cheaper than the same bike from [insert popular manufacturer here]." Are they good bikes? I don't have any experience with them, but they seem to be loved by everyone that rides them.
The idea that things need to cost a lot to get a lot is an issue in commerce right now. When someone wants to take up road riding, they see what's out there and get discouraged. I can't count how many times I've had to tell someone that a $400 pair of cycling bibs is NOT 4x better than a $100 pair of bibs, or a $15000 bike is in no way 15x better than a $1000 bike. I've been helping a friend try to enter the sport and he sees any bike under $2000 to be "junk" due to the contrast in pricing with the top end bikes. It's maddening for both of us.
So, BF... What say you? How's road?