The worst £62 I ever spent.......

This story goes back a few years. I'd not long finished Ironman Austria and was in the peak of fitness but a bit short of cash....

Buccleuch, an Edinburgh property developer were organising their annual challenge at the Buccleuch Estate near Dumfries. I'd entered a team. I pulled together a top squad with 3 excellent althletes and me. As time marched on thoughts turned to my mountain bike. I had a very old specialised with no suspension, terrible brakes and a limited selection of gears.

Time was running out. I'd not long before spent nearly £1000 on my Trek road bike and I didn't think another investment of that scale would be approved by Moonwalker aka the banker. So I turned to the source of many a bargain and many a con - ebay. I scoured the mountain bikes occasionally bidding but always missing out, my budget was very limited. Then genius, look at the cheaper new bikes that have all the kit. After some research albeit limited and through tinted glasses I found a chinese manufactured 27 speed bike that claimed to retail at £300. It was the answer - there was still time to get it delivered and built in advance of the race. I bid on one and missed it. Bid on a second and missed it. Bid on a third and held my nerve to win the high tension steel beasty. If it was high tension I was in a state of very high tension. I couldn't believe it had disc brakes and everything including delivery for £62! A bargain.

Two days later the door bell rang. I knew it was the bike. You could taste the excitment in the air. My first nervous twitch started when the delivery man asked if I'd give him a hand lifting the parcel.....can't be that heavy I thought....

We slid it into the kitchen and I ripped the box apart to get the first sight of my racing steed. It was in bits. There was an A4 sheet of instructions and that was it so I started to rebuild the 6,000 penny bike. It was fairly straightforward apart from breaking the rear disc brake mechanism. I wiped the sweat off my brow and took my first look at the finished bike - it looked great. All the bits had fitted, at a push and apart from the 5 or 6 bits left in the kitchen I thought I was on to a winner.

The day of the race was a stunner. My bike looked shinier and more sparkly than all the other bikes in the line up for pre-race safety check. I was nervous of the check as I'd build it myself but I figured the marshall would put right any of the things I'd done wrong. He checked it and then looked at me, looked back at the bike and passed it as road worthy, just. The frame was out of alignment and very cheap he advised with one back stay longer than the other. He thought it might last the day but didn't give any guarantees....

The race was a nightmare. I was fit, very fit but the bike weighed an absolute tonne. We arrived at a point where we had to cross a ravine and the marshall lifting the bikes was amazed at the weigh of my steed.

At the end of the race both the bike and I were knackered. Things began falling off fairly early in the day and the cheap gears failed to respond to the rough terrain. The further into the race the fewer gears worked making the trip even less enjoyable.

I took the bike home and broke it up for spares for my other bikes deciding to re-build the Specialised with the bits I could steal off the donkey. I still have some spare parts so if the Fit One is after a Chinese crank I'm sure that he'll find one available in my shed!

I think we finished in a reasonable position despite the bike. As Lance would say 'It's not about the bike'.....