My New Ride

Yesterday I brought home this...


(NM)


My "biggest" purchase for the upcoming triathlon. As far as pedigree goes, it's not all too great. It's a GMC Denali. But since I've got a paramedic budget to work with and the price was great, it will do. I also got a nifty little computer that tells me how fast I'm going and how far I've gone, along with a few other random bits of info. So after I got it home and set up, I went to a local trail and did a test run with it.

A few years ago I had tried to get back into riding on a mountain bike. But it was more a comedy of errors than a ride. The gears weren't adjusted right and the seat was an assult to my backside. I think I rode it down our hill, walked it back up, and promptly returned it.

I was a bit fearful about how this one would work out, as the seat is still mighty small and wedgie-ish. In fact, I had narrowed my choices down to this one, or a Schwinn hybrid touring bike that had a much wider and more comfy seat on it. But I felt like I was sitting almost straight up and down on that one, and if I'm going to race, even against myself, then I wanted to be a bit more aero. (or aerodynamically efficient... I'm learning to talk the tri talk too. You've been warned)

The test ride went a lot better than I thought, and a bit worse. I wasn't all that uncomfortable. Although the words of one of the doctors I work with kept ringing in my ears. He's an avid biker and said that he had heard someone once answer the question of how to prepare to ride on the little seats this way. "for the first few weeks, lay a 2 x 4 across a couple of sawhorses and sit on it for five or six hours. Then to really get the feel of a racing seat, turn the 2 x 4 on its side and sit on it that way")

Yes, my posterior chafed a bit and is sore today. But I managed the five miles without getting too winded. But that's where the bad news comes in. I did the 5 miles in 23:08 according to my spiffy little bike computer. That puts a 15 mile ride in around 1:10.00 or so. If my swim time is around 12 minutes that takes me up to 1:22.00. Add in the transitions and fatigue and we're looking at something around 1:30. My run time is around an hour right now. That puts me WAY over my 2 hour goal!

Well. I have a little over seven weeks left to train. I can get those times down. I'm going to have to! Time for a swim now. And a beautiful day to do it in!

More Later