For me a large part of my interest in bikes is a real love of the engineering, there really isnt anything made by humans as elegant as a top end road bike. For the last 15 years or so I've scrimped and saved and had a series of pro level and team issue bikes, and despite me being a bit s**t, have been fast enough, at least on training runs, to kind of get away with it..
The last year or so though work has made me as unfit as I've ever been, and I kind of feel really embarrassed to take my current 812 gram framed bike out in public, lest I bump into some of the folk i used to train with.
MTBs? I'm not too bothered, as my bikes a bit retro, and MTBers are all fat and lazy (like me, now) 😳