Wednesday, May 14, 2008

I'm doing a half marathon this weekend....

...on my bike. This event is happening Sunday morning and I'm volunteering to help ride along for assistance. I've actually never been to a marathon(or half) so this will let me see if I ever really want to think about trying it some day. If anyone wants to join me for a long sloooow day in the saddle, I'll be leaving my place around 6-ish am to be out at 108th and hwy 370 by 7am.


On a side note, my latter June/early July trip with my dad out to Pennsylvania just got more exciting. Poolboy and his team of miscreants are shipping back overseas to partake in the Tour of PA. So we'll have plenty to do in the 2 weeks I'm taking vacation.

On a side-side note, the 2nd unannounced part of my great discoveries post was that I thought about getting a "do-all" bike frame and build it up with spare parts I have. I know, however, I'd end up buying extra stuff too. So I have since decided to "do-all" with stuff that I already have. My Fisher Ferrous is one sweet ride and the frame I was thinking about is in the same ballpark as the Ferrous. So with some tweaking, I think I can make it my year round commuter/gravel road rider/mtb bike. The only other biking to cover, fast road rides, will be taken care of by my current road machine, the ever trustworthy aluminum Lemond bike. So I can sell my Bianchi (which is a great bike, just too big, too heavy, and not off-roadable) and make do with what I currently have. I'm starting to make some headway on my huge debt load so that feels really good(if you want want to experience what a financial punch to the gut is like, ask me how much debt I have sometime). Any new bike purchase/racing plans would put a halt to that progress, so I must maintain course and live as simply as possible.

Good luck to all of you doing the TT this weekend. I'll be doing some overtime hours at work that morning wishing I could be meditating about bunnies and lollipops to quell the searing pain of my legs/lungs.

7 comments:

bryan said...

First annual, huh? Can't be annual until it happens next year. That detail has soured me on the whole post.

Boo.

But good luck with the bike reorganization.

dale said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dale said...

(Wish I could edit comments like posts.)

Keeping the ferrous single, maybe even go fixed for commuting/gravel/mtb?

I've just ordered Schwalbe Marathon Supremes for my commuting wheels for Mary. Swap wheels and ring, add a link or two of chain and that is all it takes to supply my road and offroad rides this year.

5/15/2008 2:39 PM

Sean said...

Stay the course, Mike! A thousand points of light!

munsoned said...

Dale, I had my Ferrous setup as a dingle at one point. I used a 34x16 gear outer for riding pavement, then used the 32x18 for the trail. The chain was just a tad too lose on the trail setup for my liking. You'd figure 2 up on the chainring and 2 down on the rear cog would use the exact same chain, but it was not so. Plus, changing back and forth in mid ride was kind of annoying.

So I'm almost thinking of gears for my setup. And putting a road bar on it. I stayed up late last night installing a road bar on the Ferrous and there's a huge difference in top tube length between road and mtb frames. With flat bars, it equals out, but putting the drop bars on my Ferrous might stretch me out too much. I might give it a little ride tonight to see. The other thing I'm doing is putting on tires that might work well for road and single track. If you think about it, no trails we have around here really warrants extremely aggressive treads, so I might be able to get away with semi-slick tires. I'm going to be experimenting with a lot of different setups on my Ferrous this year, so it may seem like I have a new bike every time you see me, but I don't. Unless I win the lottery or something. Then I'll have lots of new bikes. But I think that goes without saying.

JP said...

Mike, I think you are being a little selfish. What the hell is Sean supposed to ride when he blows into town next fall/spring? If you don't have the Bianchi, how is Sean going to mooch your road rig?

bryan said...

jp makes a good point, Mike. There's a rumor going around about Sean finding a bike he can just leave in Omaha and ride on breaks from school. I saw one in the rack at Bike Masters the other day. The chain needed a little work, but I think it would have worked.

It looked like the before picture here.