The title of my posts sounds a little bit darker than it is, but what started 13 months ago as a new journey in my life with buying a mountainbike quickly escalated in to a full fledged cycling addiction, I've never been the person to lie on the coutch the entire day so when I needed to stop running, what I never did with so my love but more like 'I have to stay fit' and never more than 8km, cycling quickly started to grow on me and becoming a part of my life more and more.
Not long ago I wrote in one of my posts that 'some day', probably next year I would be owning a road bike as well but then suddenly... it happened 😅 so, how and why so sudden?
It's not even that I'm not enjoying my mountainbike anymore, I love it! Not long ago we bought a Zwift Ride indoor trainer, primarily for my wife to hopefully help her with her back pain but I'm the one doing the most hours on it, the attached Wahoo Kickr Core 2 has a built in power and cadence meter that provide a great way to train efficiently, assisted with all the numbers it's easier to see what you're doing and I like seeing numbers, and how and what I am doing, the (much higher) speed at the same power made me think... my range would improve a lot on a road bike in real life, in the same time on the bike and probably my comfort would be better as well, having multiple ways to position my hands compared to only one way on my mountainbike.
So, after the weekend my wife asked about my road bike plans, and I told her 'somewhere next year'...
Her response was 'Next year, you could be dead... we have the money so why wait?'
And it got me thinking, she lost her brother at 45 y\o three years ago and in life we have no guarantees, I realize I (we) are in a privileged situation to be able to first buy the Zwift / Kickr for her (and a bit for me as well) and a road bike three months later, we've always worked hard to get in this situation so now it's time to start enjoying more 🤗 but still a road bike is crazy expensive, but the seed was planted to make my wish come true sooner.
The next day, my wife sent me a link, isn't this something for you?
A beautiful Scott road bike, the Scott Speedster 10, black or white for much less than what I had in mind it would cost me to buy a brand new bike. The deal was from one of the big European players Mantel.
The bike was not in stock in any of their stores, and the only way I could test it was to order it online so it would be shipped to the store of my choice, I could then test it and decide if I wanted it or not but... the store in Utrecht is about 30km away from where I live, and the store in 'sHertogenbosch is about 35km away so if I have any issues with it, I would need to put the bike carrier on the back of my car and spend time and fuel, so I decided to call my local bike shop, it's nice to support the small stores even though I only buy and maintain my bikes there, all other items are MUCH cheaper either online, in the Mantel stores and there's a lot of really good gear on AliExpress as well.
The local bike shop needed to check whether the bike was still in stock in the warehouse in Belgium, the system told him there were only 4 of them left, all sizes were sold out except the size M I needed 😲
OK Cool, 'I only need one' I replied 🤣 He would call me back if he knew more...
20 minutes later....
The local bike shop returned my call, the Speedster 10 in Luminous White was still in stock!
It would be just under €200 more expensive to order the bike through them, which is quite a lot, so I needed a moment to think about this but then figured in the long run I would probably save more than the €200 with discount on my first maintenance jobs and small fixes would be solved at no charge, they've fixed my loose crank on the MTB as well free of charge.
I decided to order the bike and it will be delivered somewhere next week, he will later inform me when I can come and pick it up 😍
So, now the only strange thing is, I've ordered a pretty expensive bike I didn't even ride one single meter on but because it's ordered for me I can't say I don't want it anymore, strange way of doing business in my country! A superstore doesn't have it in stock as well, I mean they have a lot of bikes but they're much more expensive or of lower quality, I've seen Cube bikes in the lower price range and a lot of brands I've never heard of so I don't want that as well, my MTB is a Scott as well which is just coincidence really but at least it's one of the big names.
So, it's considered an entry level bike, which I am perfectly fine with, it's an aluminium frame with a carbon front fork, a 2 x 12 Shimano 105 groupset and it rides on Schwalbe Lugano 2 32mm tires, I know 32mm I really big for a road bike, which will give some more comfort and in the future I can always go to 28 or 30mm when I want it.
The bike weight is just over 10kg, so it's kinda heavy compared to more expensive bikes but compared to my 14.3kg MTB it's light 😆 and since we don't have any hills or mountains here, I don't think this is much of an issue - on my holiday at least for this year I will bring my MTB so I'm not limited by road only in France.
So, the next problem is... with limited space in my shed, where I'm going to store it??
It's a 2 x 2.5 meter small shed, currently with SIX bikes in it 😅 so there's no more floor space...
with some modifications, I've ordered this wall mount to store it just above both the MTB's in the shed, so what do I need more? The only thing I can think of at this point is bottle cages and a out front mount for my Garmin, I have an extra mount for my tail light and I can't order TPU inner tubes just yet because first I have to know how long the valves need to be, and I don't know the rim depth for now. 😏
