My husband and I have been throwing around the idea of purchasing a bike for the past couple months. As most of you should know by now, Wes is an extremely fast runner. He is so fast that there is no way in hell (excuse my language) that I will ever be able to run WITH him because I just can’t move that fast.
Many times he has expressed to me how lonely it gets out on the training runs and boring. I remember this very well from my marathon days of how long and boring running 20 miles alone can get.
Saturday night as we were out looking around we finally took the leap and bought a bike.
We ended up picking up a Nishiki men’s bike. We knew nothing about purchasing a bike going into this, so we had to rely on the help of the nice man at Dick’s Sporting Goods for most everything. I went in looking to purchase a women’s bike but they didn’t have the right one in my size and he told me several times it didn’t really matter.
I know there are many bikes out there that cost a lot of money. We knew the main purpose of buying a bike was to be able to keep Wes company on his long runs and help him out sometimes when he is doing pace work. It is also going to be an easy and relaxing way for me to add a bit more cardio into my weekly routine. Since these were the main reasons we were looking to purchase the bike we went in knowing we didn’t want to spend more than $300.
Just from our small amount of time looking here are the main things I learned when looking to purchase a bike:
1. Know what your use for the bike will be. (Road bike, trails, or some of both).
2. Know what you are looking to spend. This helped us so we could tell the guy helping us so he didn’t show us bikes we knew we couldn’t afford.
3. Ask for help.
4. Test out the bikes. I had 2 in mind but after testing them out it was an easy decision.