My New (Homemade) Bike Stand

I made my own bike stand a couple weeks ago. I have been wanting a bike stand like this for a while, and now that I am doing quite a bit of my own bike maintenance, I not only wanted one but actually needed one. They are pretty expensive to buy, but not too bad at all if you are willing to go to the hardware store and make it yourself. I looked up a few different ways to make your own, and I went with the set of parts and directions that seemed the most solid and didn't need any serious tools.

The bike stand is mostly just galvanized steel pipes of various lengths with galvanized steel elbows and other connectors. I was able to make it really sturdy, and am confident it will last forever and serve me well in all my biking maintenance endeavors.

My goal is to eventually be able to do all of my own repairs and maintenance. The most recent tool I bought was a spoke wrench. I had also bought a few extra spokes at the bike shop in anticipation of the next time a spoke broke on my bike. I am glad I did, because this seems to happen to me quite a bit -- probably just because I put so many miles on my bike every week. By reading and wathing various informational instructions on the Internet, I was successfully able to change out and put in a new spoke. That meant a saved trip to the bike shop that day and I won't ever have to take my bike in for that ever again.

Progress: Weeks 5-6

I heard an inspiring quote attributed to William Faulkner this week:

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." This week I will be aiming to do something I haven't done before: run 30 miles while still biking into work each day. Wish me luck!

Anyways, here is my progress for weeks 5 and 6 of 2012:

Week 5: Ran 26 miles, biked 171 miles.

Week 6: Ran 28 miles, biked 166 miles.

2012 totals so far (as of 2/11/12): Ran 130.5 miles, biked 957 miles.


*As I mentioned above, this week I will be aiming to run a total of 30 miles. This is a lot, especially for someone who is also biking a minimum of 150 miles a week. To reach this goal I will need to be determined and driven but very cautious and disciplined at the same time. It is easy to injure yourself doing running and biking (both primarily lower body exercises) on the same days, but since I bike into work everyday I don't really have a choice. One of these days I will start hitting up the lap pool again and start racking up the swimming miles as well. For now, I am focusing on running though.