doobrie said:so going on that any recommendations?
I would be inclined to get a reasonable quality steel rigid MTB. In a year or so you will be
sufficiently improved in fitness that you'll be looking for a better bike, and that one can become a
hack for shopping or maybe leisure rides on riverside paths where you don't want to take a nice
skinny-tyred tourer. Something like the Dawes Saratoga, maybe.
The Edinburgh Bicycle Co-Operative make some good value bikes, but I would be inclined to stick with
a local bike shop because being - ahem
- generously built I would strongly recommend you get a cassette type rear hub rather than the
screw-on block which is almost universal on low-end bikes; you stand a fair chance of bending
an axle on the first pothole (I will now be told this is needless caution, but I've bent
axles on bikes with blocks and never on bikes with cassettes, and my wife bent an axle very
quickly towing the trail-a-bike but hasn't bent the new Deore LX axle even though Peter's now
much bigger).
Also, get them to retension the wheels by hand. Machine built wheels are notoriously weak.
I would actually be much happier with a tidy second-hand bike with these two mods than with a new
one in your circumstances. There's not much can go wrong with a steel bike as a result of
mistreatment that won't be pretty obvious to a close inspection, and if you buy from a shop (for the
reasons above) you should be fine. As long as it's a decent shop.
Guy
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