First Bike, Short Girl

[GeoCam]

Jenny,

I have looked around at small bikes a LOT because I am just barely 5' tall, and I recently bought a new bike for my 4'8" daughter. I have one suggestion for you. We found that my daughter (who is shorter than you, but very leggy and has a similar inseam) could ride a Giant FCR Women's in size XXXSmall. The FCR is a flat bar road bike as that is what she wanted, but they also make the OCR in women's sizes that has drop bars. For 2008, they no longer have the XXXS size (has 650's). I'm not sure if they made that size in 2007. I started calling around and a couple of Giant dealers still had or could get 2006 bikes in 3XS for around $500. Actually, I really scored as I found her one on eBay that was a 2006 FCR 2 ($700 MSRP and a step up from the entry level FCR 3). The bike was like new with less than 10 miles on it, and I got it for less than $300, plus shipping. It is very pretty, light and fast! Compared to her cheap mountain bike, she is in heaven.

One more thing - if you look up the bike's geometry in the archives at Giant's website, don't be put off by the standover measurement. They measure standover 12" in front of the seat tube, not in the center of the sloping top tube. On such a small bike, 12" is about 2/3 of the way up the sloped top tube. Thus, it says something like 27" standover for my daughter's bike and that is quite misleading. She can straddle the top bar with a bit of clearance with no problem.

First post! Yipee! I have decided to stop lurking now that I have found the perfect (ladies) forum where I feel comfortable enough to converse with you all.

I am also vertically challenged. At 4'11.5'' I'm finding it increasingly challenging to find a bicycle that is in my price range ($500-600) and fits. My inseam is 27''. In order to have 2 inches of stand over clearance I'm going to have to find the smallest bike out there. I test rode the Trek 1.2, 43cm 650c and even that was a bit too big for me Wish me luck! And ... any suggestions???

Thanks,

Jenny