IM France – Traveling with your bike

First of all, I’ll rent a traveling box from Dornellas: $45 per week for the box, Packing = $30, Assembly=$30. 

Most people that I’ve spoken so far are planning to take some time off after the Ironman and travel around Europe. I’m no exception. The problem is what to do with the bike. I don’t really want to travel around Europe with a huge bike case… so here are a few options I’m considering:

Storage – Store the bike after the event and pick it up before flying home. Here are a few places: 

• Nice Airport: you can store a bike at Nice airport for 4.5 € per normal luggage per day or 7.5 € per luggage with special format per day (I suppose the bike is “special format”). However, the website mentions that you need to show an airline ticket, so if you’re not flying directly to Nice, it might be a problem.

• NEWAY Bouticycle – I emailed them regarding assemble (100€), packing after the race (45€) and a week storage (free for the ironman).
  23bis av Auguste Vérola
  06200 Nice
  04 92 29 10 03 
  info@neway-nice.com

Shipping – Ship the bike back to a friend in Canada after the race. Although I haven’t checked this option yet, I would think it would be more expensive.

I’ll keep researching this subject and updating this posting. If anyone has found a better alternative, please let me know!

Air Fare: when considering which airline to chose, I looked at the fare and extra cost for the bike. There is website that has a list of a bunch of airlines and bike charges: http://www.ibike.org/encouragement/travel/bagregs.htm

Airline	Ticket	Bike	Total (2 people 1 bike)	Star Alliance
British Airways	$  1,312.97	$            –	$           2,625.94	No
Air France	$  1,126.00	$  484.17	$           2,736.17	No
Lufthansa	$  1,239.60	$  321.37	$           2,800.57	Yes
Swiss	$  1,410.40	$  321.37	$           3,142.17	No
US Air	$  1,595.40	$            –	$           3,190.79	No
Air Canada	$  1,857.00	$     50.00	$           3,764.00	Yes
Austrian	$  2,195.48	$     48.42	$           4,439.38	No

 

 

 

Ironman Training

I’ve been training for triathlons for two years now. Before that, I was jogging about 5 km 3 times a week, and an eventual 8 km on the weekend’s was considered my “long run”. I’m now on my forth week into my Ironman plan, which is the recovery week… I went swimming in the morning, about 3 km, then I met with with Carlos and Bruno for a quick run, 1 hour!

Carlos and I were bragging about the fact that it was such a easy day, and we would actually have half Sunday to do something else! Who would think that? I finished the week close to 11 hours of training, which is a short week! Einstein had it right, it is all relative. 

I also left my bike at the shop for installing my new cassette (Shimano Ultegra 12-27). Every Saturday I ride the Ironman France course, and every time I hit the 21 km mark, I promise myself I would buy the new cassette. Seriously,  if I was at the course I would definitely get off the bike and push it… but can’t really do that on the Computrainer! Next Saturday I’ll try with the new cassette, hopefully it will be a little bit easier. This is probably the only change I’ll make to my bike.

I know that a lot of people use road bikes for the IM France, as you will either be climbing a big hill or going down one. One can have more control on a road bike, specially on a technical downhill, and it might be more comfortable when not on aerobar position too… But lets face it, I only have one bike, and I have no plans to buy a road bike, so tri-bike it is! 🙂