I will be participating in the MiamiMan 1/2 Ironman this November and am having troubles making a difficult decision…so I am crowd sourcing for thoughts.
I currently ride and train with a Trek road bike with clip on aero bars. Shipping each way to Miami is $100+, so I have looked into renting a bike. My original plan was to rent a road bike and bring all my accessories but I am tempted (dumbfully so) to rent a tri bike. Here are some numbers:
Ship my bike- $200+
Rent aluminum road bike $120
Rent carbon road bike $160
Rent Quintana Roo Caliente or Seduza tri bike-$300
So here are my questions:
Can a tri bike be set up with a more “relaxed” geometry similar to a road bike with clip ons?
Am I being completely ignorant and setting myself up for a grand failure by chaning bikes and possibly geometry?
Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated!
If your race time is one of the most important things and closely behind that are comfort and familiarity of your own bike, then accept that the shipping costs are just another portion of race fees. If you ride different bikes, then rent. If you ship your bike, always be prepared that something may happen to prevent it from arriving on time or even at all. In that case, you will either rent or barrow a bike to race or go back home without racing at all. Own my races across the 50 states I barrowed once, planned rentals once, and rented on necessity at three races. Also, three other times I had to go to my back-up race bike since the primary race bike could not arrive in time or was lost in transit somewhere. On the planned rental I brought pedals, clip-on, and seat. Definitely bring a set of allen wrenches too. If your own bike is going to give you more speed and comfort than $80, the ship. If the $300 rental is going to make you go faster, then you need to buy a new bike! Good luck.
Don’t know what size you but saw this on spinlister for only 150.
You’d need a quick sizing but you’ll adapt quick and it will be faster. I just borrowed a bike for an IM with 1-2 rides beforehand and worked out.
Why enter a race if you can’t afford to get the bike there ?
I’d pay to take my bike there. At least you know you are comfy on that bike over the distance. Riding a strange bike - even if it’s supposedly a faster bike is a gamble. You may hate it.
The $200 is surely small change compared to the total cost of your race with travel and lodgings and entry and training costs. Don’t spoil the race for the sake of it.
Have you been able to train on the tri bike that you’re going to rent? If not, rent the same road bike that you’re training on. With your half IM in less than a month, you don’t want surprises on race day, especially when it comes to riding a bike, and a tri one at that, that you have no experience on. If you do it again next year, knock yourself out and rent a tri bike after you’ve had a chance to either get one or rent one and train on it.
If you want to get tri bike aero on a road bike, you could just move the sit forward and down a bit and use aero bars. But, unless you’ve been training in this set up, don’t change it now with your race so close. If your current set up is working and you have no nagging body issues, hold what you got! Your off season is when you should experiment with bike fit and gear.
I was in a similar situation as you on the shipping my bike versus renting. But this is not an issue now that I had to postpone the event to next year. Once I looked at the time and cost of packing/unpacking my bike and shipping it both ways, renting was going to be the best option, especially since I was going to rent the same brand, model and size of the bike I currently ride. I even thought about renting a tri bike because I was going to do a half IM. But after talking to the bike shop where I was going to rent, they advised against it once they learned that I have no experience right now riding a tri bike. To do that for the first time in a race, and one where the bike course has A LOT of turns, would be setting myself up for a subpar race, and potentially a wreck. He said rent the bike that you’ve been using in training. That would be my advice - use for this race what’s been working in training, then use the off season to tweak things, or get your own tri bike.
