I'm in my 60s, have a heart problem ride offroad but only on flatish tracks. I built my first bike using cheap bits but found that the addition of butterfly handlbars suited my riding position, which is upright. On holiday in Austria, I hired a couple of mountain bikes and, even though I stayed in the nice flat bottomed valleys, I liked the wide choice of gears. I bought a Scott Scale when I got back to the UK. I had to buy some handlebars which had a rise of a couple of inches and fiddle around with the seating to get a nice comfy position and I really like this lighter bike. It is however more of an effort to on solid ground because of the wider chunkier tyres. When I started to plan for touring, I got a heavier touring bike with butterfly handlebars, good gear range, trekking type tyres. It is a more comfortable seating position but requires more effort to 'get going', because it is heavier - it has things like a dynamo, racks and so on. Once going though, it has more momentum and so I can pedal with a slower cadence - it coasts better. A route I often ride which takes me 90 mins on the Scott takes me 1 hr 10 mins on this, but, its not quite as much fun because the lighter MTB seems more responsive. My mate went so far as to take his wheels off his Whyte MTB and replace them with trekking wheels. He claims he has the best of both words but, he has to have a rucksack on his back if we need to take anything with us. That can detract from the free and easy feel of a spritley bike.
