[ImprovedSilence]

Haha. Ive never met a cyclist in any discipline who gave advice for improvement based on buying more gear unless I was in a bike shop and they were selling something. The “real” advise is always along the lines of “it never gets easier, you just go faster”, etc.. (Although the tongue in cheek joke about triathlons are its the one sport you can get better at by spending tons of money on gear..)

[0_____0]

I can be more specific. I was looking for an entry point into MTB. My experience with bikes was things that cost 100-200$ on craigslist, and initially I set a budget that would have netted me a bike-shaped object, or at least something that I would have traded up from by now. I trusted them enough to substitute their knowledge for my own, and the result is that I'm 2 years into a sport and am just now coming across aspects of my equipment that I want to change.