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Comment by jgys | Hacker News Reader

> compared to driving to e.g. SoulCycle or a spin class

Radical idea: rather than choosing between a $2,000 stationary bike for your living room or burning a bunch of fossil fuels to move yourself and your 2,000+ pounds of motor vehicle to a gym to ride somebody else's stationary bike, you could just buy an ordinary bike and ride around outside. You could probably even buy a indoor trainer for your ordinary bike as well, for less than the cost of a Peloton.

I mean, you do you, I guess... I just can't comprehend the appeal of paying $2,000 for a bike that doesn't even take you anywhere. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Radical idea: Peloton's target market is the kind of person who is willing to spend $2000 on an indoor spin bike either as their primary mode of exercise or as one of many bikes they own. Especially people who want to spin during times of inclement or excessive warm weather.

The Peloton may not make much sense to people living in pleasant cycling meccas on the West Coast, but east of the Rockies the weather is a lot worse and being able to spin indoors is huge.

In particular, Peloton's target market is overwhelmingly female. You won't find it in this S1, but this alone is why you can straight up disregard everything you will read on HN today about their business model.

No, it turns out women don't buy carbon bikes, a standalone trainer, wrench a cassette on it, put the bike on, hook up a tablet somewhere, install a power meter, ... it's the ole "rsync is superior to Dropbox".

I think your rsync-dropbox analogy is a good one, but I also found your statement about how it's a gender thing to be somewhat sexist, (it almost sounds as if you're implying that rsync is for men and dropbox is for women because in general men are more inclined to do difficult things than women).

I think he's harkening more to the standard try-hard neckbeard analogy than just genders. Usually women aren't lumped into that category. I think it's nuanced, but I don't think he meant any harm when writing.

It's not prescriptive, just descriptive. Obviously women are capable of doing all of that, and many do. But 25+ years of road bike (and other weekend warrior pursuits, MTB etc.) vendors trying to target specifically women have not seen remotely the success that Peloton had in reaching them, and there a lot of non-technical reasons in there, too.

very few men would do this either

> Especially people who want to spin during times of inclement or excessive warm weather

New Yorker here. If I had the space I’d totally get one of these.

You might appreciate this twitter thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/clueheywood/status/10896997623312...

On the other hand, if you already have a decent bike a trainer or a set of rollers is a lot less than $2k...

Kinda? Maybe?

I think its a mistake to think of a spin bike as a bike. There is peddling, and you can get most of the same experience out of a turbo, HR, PowerMeter, but then you are also putting the frame and peddles through really weird force profiles as you spend time bouncing between the front and back of the bike.

I mostly ride PowerZone, for which a turbo, hr and power meter would be perfect, but if you like the ‘dance’ classes you might want to look for a more ridged machine, you really have to be able to trust that its not going to break on you.

At least in the US, trying to ride a bike outdoors in a lot of places is a good way to get yourself killed by a car. I've spent the last 5 years in NYC and SF (which are both very bike friendly). I bike rarely and pretty cautiously, but even so all of my closest calls with getting killed by a car have been on a bike.

How about the Presidio for riding? I am not a cyclist. I incurred a foot injury recently, and have been thinking of ways I can exercise without impacting my feet too much. I've thought riding a bicycle around the Presidio could be pretty nice.

As long as you stay away from the bridge and the packs of tourists, sure. But I quickly found myself wanting to over the bridge to get different/more challenging routes.

It’s not very big, is the problem, and is often full of tourists.

>> NYC and SF (which are both very bike friendly).

What? You need to visit some more cities. Just because bikes & cars co-exist in a city does not make them bike friendly.

Compared to a lot of cities NYC is doing alright in regard to cycling infrastructure. They’ve put in a lot of lanes and have plans to do more. NYC official statistics claim the number of bike trips has tripled over the last 15 years, so riders seem to be responding.

Obviously there are way more bike-friendly European cities but as far as US cities go NYC doesn’t seem that bad to me (I don’t live there, but have noticed all the new cycle paths when I visit occasionally over the years).

Copenhagen is bike friendly. Amsterdam is bike friendly. NYC and especially hilly SF are neither bike friendly. At best they are bike tolerant :)

On vacation in Copenhagen right now. OMG is it bike friendly.

I have 2 trek bikes, one carbon fiber. I love cycling at high speeds. Unfortunately because of awful drivers I can’t do this. So yes, I use the Peloton, in addition to cycling to work and around the Bay Area ( but at lower speeds ;) )

I’ve spent a fair amount of the summer cycling around european cities and you can’t get even close to kind of work out you get on a peloton. What I’m realizing is that all of the years where I assumed that because I was cycling to work that I was at least doing something was completely false.

45 mins on the peloton is a completely different thing to even 45 minutes out in the country.

Winter.

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