Still trying to come up for a bike for my buddy to race on. Anybody have any ideas on a cheap road bike or a good deal on a used?
I did my first four tris on a $500 Giant MTB. I still ride it on trails it it rides like a dream. If Giant’s entry level road bikes are anything like my MTB, I’d recommend that in a second.
not a bad deal. i think you can get them for about $1,000.
Lots of good used deals on ebay just as long as you’re sure of his size. Ebay is probably your best place to shop. Hard to beat a Giant OCR3 as an entry level road bike. Felt also makes some good entry level road bikes.
Check out the Schwinn Fast Back. I bought this as my first real road bike, still use it in crits. It’s a great bike for the money, you get stealth speed cause no one expects you to be fast on a Schwinn…
Had a talk with my biddy today, he defined “cheap” more clearly for me. This is what we are currently looking at:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=7298&item=3671639778&rd=1
Sorry to have bothered anybody with this. Forgot how little a college student can make and live.
A lot of those older bikes with the nice lugged steel frames ride nicer than new aluminium bikes IMO. I raced my first two years on my old 12 sp. Your buddy can later pick up a cheap front aero wheel of ebay and a pair of CH Aero covers and it will be a decent bike with state of the art wheel aerodynamics at a low cost. To start all he needs is a set of aero bars.
I have a daughter in college and I realize how frugal college students have to be. On the other hand there was a college student I know who really wanted to try a triathlon. Some equipment snob told him to forget about it because he couldn’t possibly be competitive unless he had a $3000. bike. He was very disappointed and almost gave up the idea. Fortunately I helped set him up on an older road bike as I’ve described and now he’s really enjoying doing local tris and is quite fast.
I hope you find something decent. I’m sure you will.