tFUnK

My reflection was only meant to note what I've noticed between 2009 and now. Your experience may be unique and obviously different from mine.

It is also certainly not meant to be a commentary regarding what's better or worse; I think for the most part the field/industry has evolved for the better but there are certain things that may appear as gaps. For example, I don't think anyone will say 8 speed is better than 12 speed, but one might make the argument that 8sp chains are inherently stronger than 12sp chains (not sure if true, but possible?).

Likewise, I'm riding 12-32 cassettes now and don't see myself ever going back to a 12-21 straight block, but there are times I miss the 1t jumps between shifts. Am I not allowed to lament that?

Along those lines, a modern mid-level road bike with electronic 105 or Rival AXS and hydraulic discs, I'm sure it's a joy to ride, but it's still going to be a couple pounds heavier than a SRAM Red 10sp rim brake bike. I think the more modern bike is overall better but in some use cases perhaps lacking.

I wouldn't consider myself a Luddite but I'm also not buying a new bike every 2-3 years; I've resto-modded some of my frames from the early 2010s and while I'm stuck with narrow tires, rim brakes, and external cables, they're still fun to ride, especially on fresh tarmac (yay tax dollars at work).

My most modern bike is a gravel bike with mechanical discs, carbon hoops, and currently running 31mm open tubulars. It's super smooth, but it still feels heavier than my rim brake road bikes. Am I not allowed to feel this way?

Ghazmh

GPS head units.
Varia.
Tire width.
Disc brake take over.
Proprietary components.
Internal routing for everything.
Droppers.

PeteHski

You picked a bad example with 8-speed vs 12-speed chains. The former are not inherently stronger and lab tests have shown them to wear quicker. Advances in drivetrain tech have basically outweighed any inherent advantage that may have come from having less gears on the cassette.

Your point about weight is true, but the only scenario where that matters is dedicated hill climb racing, where a few seconds matters. For everything else it is inconsequential and often outweighed by aerodynamic improvements.

Of course you can subjectively feel however you like about new bikes. But have you actually ridden one of those mid-range modern road bikes that are a couple of pounds heavier? Does your own bike turn to crap when your water bottles are full? Are the narrow tyres really faster? Which bike has the most cornering and braking grip? Which bike is more comfortable to ride on less than perfect roads?

Fairly recently I had the opportunity to ride an early 2000s Trek Madone with full works Dura Ace build. It honestly felt terrible in comparison to my current mid-tier road bikes. The ride was harsh and the shifting agricultural in comparison. Life moves on and I enjoy the newer bike tech.

PeteHski

Running a dropper on your road bike or just forgot this is the road sub forum? If the former I can see the attraction if riding a lot of alpine descents.

ussprinceton

I agree with what everyone has posted. I am quite happy to have lived in my generation, as I get the experience different changes in cycling throughout the years. It is the wave of the future, and the future is bright

tFUnK

Fair points PeteHski As a non-competitive cyclist I'm not chasing seconds on segments but I do like to put out hard efforts on occasion. A light bike feels better and more responsive. On the hills I'm suffering too much to notice but I do notice it more on stop/starts and accelerations. When I first got my Guru Photon it came with tubulars and the whole thing was 13lbs and it felt unintuitively light. Riding it was like riding without a bike (if that makes sense). That was a point of revelation for me, I understood then why "weight weenies" is a thing (not that I'm a weight weenie). My point here is lighter may not be better objectively (but it can't be worse), and subjectively it matters to the overall riding experience.

Fully agree modern bike are smoother, faster, more comfortable, have better geometry even. The closest thing I have to a modern road bike is my 2015 Trek Boone. It's technically a CX bike but the geo is pretty close to road geometry. It rode like an anchor despite being carbon and having a 34x32 climbing gear. It came in at 21.5lbs and I have since upgraded to carbon hoops and different cranks and now it's fantastic (probably at around 20lbs now). I've not taken it on climbs or hard efforts yet but look forward to seeing how it compares to my yesteryear road bikes.

msu2001la

I am sure that a Rival or 105 bike is 2lbs heaver than a SRAM Red bike, but the disc brakes alone are only accounting for 150-350 grams of that difference. The rest is due to the fact that you're comparing mid-level groupsets (Rival and 105) to a top-of-the-line groupset (SRAM Red).

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this info, but it seems like a good comparison:
2023 Road & Gravel Groupset Weight Comparison – CCACHE

79pmooney

Oldster here. Newest bike, a 2011 ti custom inspired by the racing bikes of the '00s (1900s, not 200s).

So:
- Disc brakes Not remotely close to going there. I love the bikes I've got and they are all stoppers.
- Better quality tires- faster and more reliable Yes!! VIttoria's G+ and G2.0 - wow! I love Vittoria's priorities. Road stick number one - tires that minimize crashes. (And roll super with feel to die for.)
- Di2 now more commonplace. Not remotely close to going there.
- GPS cost and quality I've dabbled in GPS and heart monitors but find when I ignore them, batteries go and I can't get them working again. (I can easily go a year or two without. They are semi-obsolete by the time I try to fire them up again.
- power meter cost Not remotely close to going there.
- cables under tape on all levels of shimano Yeah. I was onboard as soon as I learned about aero brakes, Heck, I wanted them in my racing days, '77 & 78. Now handlebar shift cables? Not there yet.
- wide range double replacing triple Nah. Still love the triple and one tooth gaps in back for flat ground riding.
- tubeless Not remotely close to going there. I had a clincher come off the rim. Nightmare crash, then a dozen years of "what if" every fast downhill. Back to well glued tubulars! Peace of mind. I can flat safely at any speed.

Take your pick- all are going to be big improvements to those who really care about one of them.
For me?...better quality tires wins out for sure. For $45 money I can now afford you can get fast rolling 32 23-30mm tireubulars that are comfortable, reliable, and long lasting. That's pretty awesome.]

aliasfox

My two main bikes (can I call them the flagships in my fleet?) are a 2004 Bianchi and a 2019 Lynskey. Both are metal framed, endurance geometry bikes, equipped with Ultegra. The difference between these bikes, based on my experience:
- no major manufacturer makes a mid-line or high level steel road bike anymore. When I bought my Bianchi, Specialized also had an Allez steel, and I'm sure there were others out there. Nowadays, one has to rely on small or boutique manufacturers.
- This might've happened by 2009, but the skinny handlebars on the Bianchi are a lot less comfortable than the Lynskey.
- The Bianchi has rack mounts. By geometry and equipment, she's a road bike, but the ability to take on a rack means she was probably envisioned as an all-purpose machine. Now, I don't know if too many endurance road bikes have rack mounts, or if one needs to go to an adventure/gravel frame.
- The triple crank on the Bianchi is glorious - her granny gear was actually higher than the Lynskey when delivered (30x27 vs 34x34), but the tiny gaps between gears makes cruising at any speed and any grade a breeze.

Everything else has already been covered (tires, wheels, brakes, etc)

Ghazmh

I remember reading about a dropper on a road bike somewhere but was thinking of gravel bikes too.

rm -rf

Yeah, all of these are big changes.

Around 2004-2005, I got my first modern road bike. Alum frame with carbon stays. 10 speed Campagnolo Veloce.
The serious road bikes were 12-25 and 23mm tires. The lower end bikes for new riders had the easier 12-27 or 12-28 and the 25mm puncture resistant tires.

Tires and gearing!
When I switched to 25mm supple tires at 90 psi instead of 105 psi, it was an instant improvement on the bad country roads.
A few riders I knew got mountain bike rear derailleurs installed and 32 tooth cassettes. That was only for the weaker riders, we thought.
I was riding more hills, and tried out the 10 speed 13-29 Campagnolo cassette. It was outside the specs for my derailleur, but worked great.

Now, 32 or 34 lowest gear is standard, and 28mm tires are typical.
My 28mm on wide rims at 70 psi are so nice.

More feet per mile now
With these lower gears and better navigation, we are riding some fantastic country road routes. It's extremely low traffic, and lots of scenic roads. The best routes have more climbing than was typical years ago. The appropriate gearing makes these rides much better.

I've been using heat maps of popular biking roads, and getting route ideas from other riders. That has improved the route planning a lot. Covid restrictions kicked it up to another level -- we were way out in the country in 2020 and 2021.

Navigating
I started leading club rides a few years after 2005 with a cue sheet on the handlebar and a paper map in my pocket. And drawing routes online by click - click - clicking down the road around the bends! No 'snap to the road' feature.
I had to be careful to limit the number of turns and to make notes about left or right turns in the middle of a long straight road--too easy to miss the turn.

Now, just about everyone has GPS navigation, so extremely complicated routes are fine. And the ridewithgps.com route building makes refining routes and considering alternative roads very easy.

Smart phones!
Around 2009 or 2010, I was helping lead a ride via cue sheet. We rode up to a side road with the sign torn off. Is this the turn? The road didn't look good, and we weren't sure. Another rider pulled out his exotic iphone, checked the map, and verified the road name. Wow! We all had to check out the phone at the rest stop -- look at that! -- it even had a magnetic compass to orient the map. Amazing!

A few years later, we heard an unexpected rumble of thunder on an evening ride. A rider called out "the storm is way to the west -- we have time to finish". Huh, radar results while riding!

In that same time period, riders would go off the front and miss a turn, or fall back without the group noticing (so we often had a "sweeper" rider to stay with the slowest rider, and we'd wait at every turn for the sweeper.) And it was often a long wait for the rider to finally rejoin or to find his way back to the start of the ride location.

PeteHski

Yes, dropper posts have been raced on the road at World Pro level, with a major win last season on an Alpine stage with a long technical descent before the finish. But still very niche on road bikes, so I wouldn't include them on a list of most notable changes on road bikes at this point.

tFUnK

rm -rf yes! In 2009 we were manually and meticulously routing with Gmap-pedometer and making cue sheets. Now everyone just loads a ridewithgps gpx file into their head unit.

baj32161

I think it would have to be the increasing popularity of e-Bikes.

Here in Ontario I am seeing more and more of them each time I'm out and I love it. I'm all for anything that encourages less reliance on cars.

sfrider 

I think the biggest for me is smart trainers, ERG mode and online races. When it's rainy and ugly outside, or I just don't have time for an outdoor ride, I can knock out a workout like 60 min sweetspot on the trainer or jump in on a race on Zwift. In fact thursdays is race night on Zwift for me, monday is sweetspot and tuesdays whatever I feel like. On weekends during the nice 9-10 months I'll do a long PZ2 ride (5-8 hours).

Otherwise in terms of bike gear for me it's e-shifting, tubeless tires, disc brakes, affordable power meters and rear facing radars.

downtube42

This post brings up the topic of non bike technology affecting cycling, and I'd argue that has had a bigger impact on cycling than bike tech changes. GPS units, heatmaps and phone apps mean finding a route is much easier. Today I rode 60 miles in a foreign country, solo, with no plan other than getting back to my hotel before dark. I carried a smartphone and a battery pack. Ezpz. Follow the heatmap lines, find coffee and food with Google maps, and go where things look interesting. Also take pics with my phone and chat with my wife half a world away mid ride. The bike, by the way, was a rental I ordered online this morning and picked up a half hour later. I have not hooked up with local cycling groups, but that's probably something i could do with meetup or similar.

Brazosbynemo

Perfect topic. Thanks OP. I started riding in 2009. I rode an average 25 miles a day for 4 years and then had a bone spur in my neck take out the nerves that controlled my right hand. I had cervical fusion and stopped riding as my right hand was too week to shift. My wife, bless her heart, snuck my bike off to the bike shop and had electric shifters installed. They worked great and solved my shifting issues. Problem was I was more than a year off the bike and had got into other hobbies and lost interest. I got my 2009 Synapse cleaned up over the weekend thinking about riding again. I haven’t been on this forum in years and had to re-register. I came here to see what all has changed since 2009 when I got into cycling. Perfect post. Thanks.

Jrasero

In terms of bikes yeah aluminum is now relegated entry level stuff mainly or for other genres of biking since carbon has become so universally adopted. You mention tire size with 28c being the norm but that also correlates with tire clearance ballooning with aero race bikes having clearance upwards of 32c tires. Also, disc brakes have fully taken over with carbon bikes getting insanely light. Also, the idea of all road and gravel interesting with road is new and insanely prevalent. Also, aero and tubeless and whether they truly matter

goose70

Great responses, everyone. Enjoyed reading them. Since my original post, I thought about my question slightly differently. If I had gone into a comma in 2009 and woke up today (and through the marvels of modern medicine retained my bike fitness), what change would I find most notable as I walked into my LBS and tried to update my bike stuff, and would that impression change after I began riding/training again?

The first, I think, would be the more aero shapes of new road bikes. The second would be the width of tires. But after getting past those obvious, physical changes and I started training, it would definitely be smart trainers, online training and general connectivity -- That would ultimately be most impactful for me.

Calsun

Biggest change was with the brake gear shifters. Most casual bicyclists use too high a gear and change gears far less frequently to adjust for changes to the terrain. With brake shifters and index shifting, it is very easy for novice bicyclists to learn to change gears more often than in the past with the downtube friction shifters. We have much better index shift rear derailleurs today and even the cheapest outperform the very expensive Campy derailleurs of the 1970's.

I had been riding on road bikes with the downtube shifters for 35 years when I bought a new bike with the combination brake lever shifters and I found myself making many more gear changes rather than simply standing up from the saddle and muscling my way through. With indexing I never miss a shift or over shift past the intended cog.

Disc brakes were a big deal for mountain bikes but of no consequence for non- tandem road bikes in terms of performance. One of the first things a newbie needs to learn is not to seize up the front wheel when braking or they will go over the bars and land hard. Gong to disc brakes does not reduce that risk at all.

Jrasero

I actually disagree that disc brakes have no consequence for road bikes since disc brakes rid the consumer with the issues with rim brakes in that they ditch skewers for stronger and stiffer thru axles, they greatly improve stopping power with less force albeit you are right people do need to properly learn how to use disc brakes. In mud, rain, snow, and dusty conditions hydraulics are king and especially when descending when using carbon wheels discs are far superior in that they will delaminate the wheel. Actually the whole idea of using rim brakes w/ a carbon wheel is pretty crazy if you think about it. Better for internal routing, more linear, much larger tire clearance, and better modulation. Yes discs will costs more, costs more to maintain and can be finicky (disc rub), BUT once running properly it's hard imagining why you would want to pick a tech while still relevant is basically on its way out