Yay!!! Got my new bike! It’s a 2018 Marin Muirwoods with a steel frame that will carry my body well, fairly fat tires (not quite mountain bike thickness, but thicker than I’ve had before ( 700Cx42 ) and very easy gears. The fat tires and easy gears are important for us heavier riders and I’ve been told the steel frame is stronger and supposedly absorbs some of the stress we put on a bike. The “gears” (might be the wrong word) is 12-36T. The 12 means (12 teeth on the smallest cog) that I won’t be able to go very fast and the 36 (teeth on the largest cog) means that I’ll pass out aerobically before my legs run out of power going up a hill. It’s more complicated than that, but if you’re a heavy rider, you’ll want that larger number to make hills easier.
Anyway, the bike fits me well. I don’t feel like I want to move this (fat)ass 10-15cm off the back of the seat, as I did on the second hand bike I tried last weekend.
Not perfect, but the frame size is right, so now I can take my time to adjust the rest… Will need to replace the stem, for example, to raise the handlebars quite a bit.
First ride was an eye opener
I’ll be honest, I had secretly hoped to cycle to work on Monday (Friday today), but that’s not going to happen. My first ride was 2.5kms on a flat route and I was tired and my legs slightly burning by the end of that… I’ve got a long journey to fitness ahead of me 🙂 Work is 8.5kms from home with a good few rollings hills in the mix, so it’ll take a while to do that.
I know my heart rate is not particularly high so it looks like I didn’t work hard, but trust me, I felt overall tired and while I could probably have doubled that distance today, if I did I would not have been able to ride tomorrow.
Anyway, baby steps and this is it… I’ve started!
FYI, my weight this morning was 144kgs, 2.5 lighter than on Saturday.
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