Coventry Eagle

Up until two weeks ago, Training was going well, with a steady 7 to 8 hours per week. I’d even completed a couple of races, running the Royal Parks Half  at the beginning of November (1:29:30), and then last Sunday, the Kingston 10k (40:36). In both events I just didn’t have the speed endurance that I hoped and had to back off a bit when my Achilles got quite twitchy and sore. But it was good to do a couple of old fashioned foot races.

There’s a lot of lurgy going round and work stuff has meant that training has been sporadic and while I’ve tried to get my main sessions done in the morning, when I’ve been working late or being a dad taxi at gone 11pm, it’s made a 5:30am start all but impossible. It’s just one of those things and so far out from Copenhagen, I’m not too worried.

One thing I have done is sort myself out a new (old) bike. I love my Van Nic and use it for everything, including winter commuting which tends to trash all the transmission components.  So I had been looking for a cheap road bike to use as my commute bike, whenI was given this.

 






It’s an old steel frame Coventry Eagle road bike, probably from the late 70s or early 80s.  It looked in a bit of a sorry state and I assumed that it would be seized, rusty and a pretty hard job to get up and running. As it turned out, while it was covered in a lot of oil, dust and grim, it was actually in pretty good nick.

So I spent a couple of weeks stripping it down, cleaning all the parts, regreasing and reassembling.

I have to say, I’m really chuffed with how it’s turned out. Very vintage!