This past weekend my brother said he wanted to start the middle leg of his IronMan training, the Bike. When I think about the IronMan the swim scares me cause I swim like an anchor but the bike is what I would fear the most, for no reason than my rear can not handle 112 miles. But none the less we need to get Zeb turning those pedals as part of his training.
A few years ago, when I was a struggling college student I really wanted to start cycling but couldn’t afford a decent bike and on my way to work I saw a garage sale which had a road bike siting out. I immediatly pulled over and asked about it. It had flat tires, no seat, no brakes, a rusty chain, rusty sprokets, rusty handle bars, rusty….. rusty…… you get the picture. AND SHE ONLY WANTED $2. SCORE!!!
Back then I started my project to restore the bike to brand new condition. $80 later and several hours of taking it appart and scrubbing away rust I had a very nice bike. It was a little small for 6 foot guy but it did the job.
Now, several years later the bike has been sitting for a long time and bike has regrown its rust and lost all the air in its tires but its time to get it back. It’s behind a none working lawn mower and covered in spider webs but my brother and I can still see its speed. We wheel it out, clean it up and start checking how it works. We try to turn the pedals and it doesn’t turn but that won’t detour us. So we align up the chain and lube everything up. EUREKA!!! its turning. we put air in the tires and Zeb gives it a ride
It still needs some work but it gets my brother started on the middle leg of his Ironman. Good Luck Bro.
Sounds like a nostalgic start to this leg of the training. I am currently training for my first marathon – Paris. I am thinking that after that I will start triathlon. BUT I don’t have a bike (or rather its either a recumbant or a “station” bike!) AND my husband informs me that our cars (mine has two seats and his is “normal”) are not suitable for bikes. Do you have any advice?
Best of luck with the restoration,
Liz
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Liz, thanks for finding us. I hear the Paris marathon is a lot of two things: 1) fun, and 2)runners. A friend of ours who ran it said he was rubbing elbows with other runners the whole race and it was very congested, but he liked that. Good luck in your training. What made you pick the Paris marathon?
I have never heard of a recumbant bike before but I did some research. The sitting style on the recumbant bike would be much easier on the riders back. From what I can tell the the recumbant bikes would be a little heavier than normal road bikes and most of the bike shops rave their low weight carbon fiber frames.
As far as storage, I understand your dilemna. Recently I wanted to purchase some kayaks for fishing but my Nissian Altima could never lug kayaks in the trunk. So I did some research into car roof storage. Thule had a lot of creative options, which included bike racks that could fit on top of Mini Coopper. If you really want to take a bike arround with you, I would look into roof racks. Other companies had some cheaper roof racks too. Ultimately, I ended up with an inflatable kayak so maybe you can can look for an inflatable bike, just kidding.