Well, you were! But willingly, as is normally the case.
Anything over about a grand is into seriously diminishing returns and often nets a bicycle
less fit for purpose than one that is cheaper.
Take aero wheels. They are fantastically expensive, short-lived, and don’t remotely live up to their makers’ performance claims. I out-roll most people I ride with despite weighing 65 kg and having box-section rims with many round spokes. Some of these people have spent three grand on their wheels alone! This doesn’t prove my wheels are faster (almost certainly they are not) but it proves that any difference is negligible for sensible definitions of negligible.
Snake oil abounds.The cycling press is bought, sycophantic, and dull-witted and last asked a good question in the early 90s.
People have more disposable income than before, and cycling is fashionable at the moment. Also fashionable is stuffing advanced electronics in everything whether it makes sense or not. Hence smart watches, smart fridges, and Di2. All of that costs wads of cash, but to make up for that it’s soon obsolete or dead.
British culture is well and truly over its bashfulness at displays of wealth. Platforms like Instagram were practically made to glorify consumerism. Showing off your possessions is the new normal.
In the Anglo-Saxon world, racing is the dominant cultural strain in cycling, and in racing marginal gains can always be notionally justified by some theoretical photo-finish that would add to your
palmarès – never mind that your
palmarès don’t extend beyond Strava.
What a time to be alive!