This was not about ego.\u00a0 I am in my mid-50s.\u00a0 I have no problem being passed.\u00a0 I am just happy to still be on a bike and in decent shape.\u00a0 The problem with being passed means that I was going very slowly and slowly is a big problem when pedaling 8 hours a day.\u00a0 When my wife and I pedaled around during nice days in the winter, we did about 11.5 miles per hour.\u00a0 To do a 100 mile day at that rate means about nine hours in the saddle.\u00a0 Bumping the speed up by 15% to 13 miles per hour basically means 1 hour less per day sitting on a bike.<\/p>\n
I was unsure what to do.\u00a0 Buying a new bike and finding out it did not really improve my speed would be an expensive mistake.\u00a0 Not buying a new bike and finding out I was riding a clunker would also be a painful mistake.<\/p>\n
I went to my local bike store (Landry\u2019s of Boston<\/a>) and talked to Mark V.\u00a0\u00a0 Mark was amazing!\u00a0 He said instead of buying a bike, rent one for the weekend.\u00a0 It would cost a bit less than $200 and if I bought any bike, not just the style I rented,\u00a0 he would deduct the rental cost from the new bike’s price tag.<\/p>\n This was amazing for two reasons.\u00a0 First, it would provide me with a simple way to test out if my slow speed was the bike’s fault or my own body’s, without spending a lot of money on a new bike.\u00a0 Second, this rental was a wonderful example of how behavioral economics can be applied to better run a business.<\/p>\n One key idea from behavioral economics is “Loss Aversion.”<\/a>\u00a0 Loss aversion means that losing money is much more painful psychologically than gaining.\u00a0 Whether Mark understood it or not, getting me to pay about $200 locked me into buying a bike at his bike shop because few renters (including me) wanted to endure the pain of losing the money by buying a bike at a competitor’s shop.<\/p>\n I rented a Specialized Roubaix Elite<\/a> for the weekend.\u00a0 It was a bit small, but it answered my question within 45 minutes. \u00a0 I was pedaling up a small hill, in almost the exact same place where I was blown away by the man on the fancy bike.\u00a0 I heard an \u201con your left\u201d call three-quarters of the way up the hill.\u00a0 A women on another fancy bike zoomed past.\u00a0 Now was the moment.\u00a0 On the old bike I had no chance.\u00a0 What would the new bike do?\u00a0 To make a long story short, I caught her after a 1\/2 mile chase, passed her and didn’t feel like passing out.\u00a0 At that moment I realized my old bike definitely needed to be replaced before setting out this summer.<\/p>\n A few days later Mark V. sold me a Trek Domane SL5<\/a>.\u00a0 The bike was slightly cheaper than the Specialized Roubaix Elite but had almost the same specifications.\u00a0 However, money wasn’t the the main reason I picked the Trek over the Specialized.\u00a0 Instead, it was size.\u00a0 The Trek was slightly bigger and fit my body better.<\/p>\n Does a new bike make a difference?\u00a0 After two weeks on the new bike I did my training loop at an average speed of 15 mph.\u00a0 That is a far cry from the 11.5 mph of a few months ago.\u00a0 Some of the speed came from more exercise, but much was the result of shaving almost 10 pounds of weight off my bike and having better components.<\/p>\n Before pedaling across the country I needed to figure out a major problem.\u00a0 Was I old and slow or was my bike old and slow?\u00a0 If it was me, then biking across the country in a bit over a month was going to be a huge and painful problem.\u00a0 If it was the bike, then … Continue reading Buying a Bike: A lesson in loss aversion<\/span> ![\"Mark](\"\/zagorsky\/files\/2018\/05\/DSCN3176-300x225.jpg\")