>>1029111>where you liveEngland
>your height/inseam/penis length5'10" (178cm) / 34" (84cm) / 6" (probably)
>type of bike you're after, failing that, type of riding you want to doRoad bike - I want to go up mountains as fast as fucking possible
>your budgetAs cheap as fucking possible
>any specific requirementsI want it to look fly as fuck
What do you think of pic related for £350 ($444 / €417)?
I've looked at the Decathlon Triban SE 500 which is the most common recommendation in this price bracket (costs £300 / $380 / €358)
But this Merlin thing has racier geometry. I'm an amateur with hundreds of miles of experience, on my dad's bikes. Right now I only ride an old Raleigh road bike from the 80s. My reasoning is that if I splash out for a brand new bike, I want it to be as close to something I could use in a sportive as possible.
I don't do proper racing, or even club riding, right now. I just do my own riding, and not very seriously at the moment, although I used to do some charity rides of between 50 to 100 miles a day.
But I want to up my bike game so I can start going for more proper rides. My current road bike is wank, especially since I took the gears off for the purposes of city commuting. Now I want to do proper riding again and I can either upgrade my current bike (derailleurs and shifters at minimum, and probably the brakes too) or splash out on a new one... which I do feel really guilty about 2bh, because I don't know if I will do enough riding to justify it, or whether I'll get bored of proper rides after a few weeks or so.
Thoughts?
Link to bike in pic btw:
https://www.merlincycles.com/merlin-performance-pr7-road-bike-2016-85148.html 