I think one of the guys in our ride group has the RC120! Really good value from Decathlon on pretty much all their bikes.
I haven’t upgraded any of the components other than the saddle and tires. This bike is my “budget bike”, despite it being the one that I ride for hundreds of KM at a time. 😆
Yeah, decathlon has really good prices on bikes. I’ve bought 4 bikes from them so far.
Hundreds of kms, you say ? Jesus, im a novice. I normally only ride 70-80km. Hows the terrain where you live ?
Yeah, I’ve got three bikes in total: a steel mountain bike set up as a beast for “everything”, and I take that when I need to go offroad or to haul stuff.
Then I’ve got a folding bike. Even though I’ve used it for really long rides (150km+), it’s become my fair weather, local bike.
The RC520 is one that I got specifically for long rides. Our terrain… well, it’s not flat! That’s for sure! The elevation gain on most longer rides can be 2000m+. But we aren’t talking mountains, either. Lots of rolling hills, especially out in the rural areas.
I didn’t know how I’d like the feel of drop bars and “brifters”, but I got used to everything pretty quickly. It’s a comfortable bike, and the gearing they went with is a little lower than a pure road bike, so climbs are “easier”. Not sure if I’ll be riding gravel with this bike, but we do have some nice rail trails around.
2000m of gain ? I’m feel depleted only thinking about doing that much uphill. I live near the Alps so theres also a lot of gain, but I only do 1200-1500m max in one ride.
I usually have a tail bag with drone/other things, about 4-5kg, so that adds to the weight.
Anyway, talking with you made me wanna go even further xD
Yeah, it can get tough depending on which direction I want to take for these long rides.
But we’re talking about those numbers when the distance is 200km+.
For example, one ride that was 240km had around 1600m of elevation. Another that was 220km has 2600m. For rides around town you might only have a few small hills here and there. But our country roads are long and hilly! Makes for some great training rides, but those hill can be punishing if you aren’t pacing right.
I remember one route I did, in an area I’ve never ridden in, where I relied on Garmin to tell me where (and how many) the hills would be. Man, it said there’d be like 4 big climbes, but in really, there were like 15 long, medium grade hills. That day was challenging, but I’m so glad I had my gravel bike and not my foldie! 😂
Btw, for workout tracking, I recommend this service: https://github.com/jovandeginste/workout-tracker.
Self-hosted, private, you can see the heatmap, and you can automatically upload new workouts.
Decathlon RC520 Gravel. I got it late summer, but put 2000km on it (not my main bike) before it got too cold to keep it out.
Nice. I have an rc120, where I changed wheels and tires to 40mm ones. I’m now looking to upgrade the groupset :)
I think one of the guys in our ride group has the RC120! Really good value from Decathlon on pretty much all their bikes.
I haven’t upgraded any of the components other than the saddle and tires. This bike is my “budget bike”, despite it being the one that I ride for hundreds of KM at a time. 😆
Yeah, decathlon has really good prices on bikes. I’ve bought 4 bikes from them so far. Hundreds of kms, you say ? Jesus, im a novice. I normally only ride 70-80km. Hows the terrain where you live ?
Yeah, I’ve got three bikes in total: a steel mountain bike set up as a beast for “everything”, and I take that when I need to go offroad or to haul stuff.
Then I’ve got a folding bike. Even though I’ve used it for really long rides (150km+), it’s become my fair weather, local bike.
The RC520 is one that I got specifically for long rides. Our terrain… well, it’s not flat! That’s for sure! The elevation gain on most longer rides can be 2000m+. But we aren’t talking mountains, either. Lots of rolling hills, especially out in the rural areas.
I didn’t know how I’d like the feel of drop bars and “brifters”, but I got used to everything pretty quickly. It’s a comfortable bike, and the gearing they went with is a little lower than a pure road bike, so climbs are “easier”. Not sure if I’ll be riding gravel with this bike, but we do have some nice rail trails around.
2000m of gain ? I’m feel depleted only thinking about doing that much uphill. I live near the Alps so theres also a lot of gain, but I only do 1200-1500m max in one ride. I usually have a tail bag with drone/other things, about 4-5kg, so that adds to the weight. Anyway, talking with you made me wanna go even further xD
Yeah, it can get tough depending on which direction I want to take for these long rides.
But we’re talking about those numbers when the distance is 200km+.
For example, one ride that was 240km had around 1600m of elevation. Another that was 220km has 2600m. For rides around town you might only have a few small hills here and there. But our country roads are long and hilly! Makes for some great training rides, but those hill can be punishing if you aren’t pacing right.
I remember one route I did, in an area I’ve never ridden in, where I relied on Garmin to tell me where (and how many) the hills would be. Man, it said there’d be like 4 big climbes, but in really, there were like 15 long, medium grade hills. That day was challenging, but I’m so glad I had my gravel bike and not my foldie! 😂
Btw, for workout tracking, I recommend this service: https://github.com/jovandeginste/workout-tracker. Self-hosted, private, you can see the heatmap, and you can automatically upload new workouts.
That looks amazing. Especially the heatmap, which I have to do manually right now.
I’m going to try that out some time this week 😀