Aniket Dhuri

 I bought my second bike 2 years ago - Mirage SLX. It was my first road bike and I was skeptical moving to a road bike. As of 09/2020, i have 500+miles on the Mirage SLX. 

Tires 

The first modification was changing the tires - Continental Gatorskin - No puncture since then.  I chose 700x25c tires to begin with since my wheel allowed 18-25c of tires. The first number denotes wheel size and the second one denotes width of tires. Smaller the width, less friction and hence faster speed. I though of moving to 23c, however a friend shared stats that most professional racing bikers use 25c for reasons in the article . 

Groupset

Groupset is combination of gear parts ( derailleur) , chain , chainset, cassette, brakes, gear levers included. There are three big companies making these groupsets - Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo. The article explains hierarchy for each company 

Compatibility of these combination parts is important when you think about replacing one or the other.

A learning here was  a X speed groupset is compatible with many of the parts across companies and across hierarchies. Which is why i chose the max speec groupset available as of now - 11 speed , R105 Shimano R7000.

Why R105?

Changing groupsets are very costly and I wanted to take these changes slowly and the reason to upgrade it was to have comfortable gear shift, build speed and cadence. So after researching i found that i couldn't add a Shimano Dura Ace ( pro cyclist) deraileur to my Shimano Claris ( or Sora on my 1st bike) and going to R105 or Ultegra is a must. Ultegra is costlier compared to R105. 

Components

Chainset