Saturday, March 26, 2005

Another fine ride!

I was thinking about running a local 10K today, but the extra sleep was a fantastic alternative!

The weather was just barely nice enough (45 degrees and threatening to rain) for another lovely spin today along the W&OD Trail on Buttercup. Exhilarating! We only went 10.7 miles and averaged 12.8 mph, but we did it without any significant catastrophes. :)

When I started out the bike computer wasn't working, and I discovered that I had put the front tire on backwards. I want to get odometer credit for every mile, so I stopped and flipped it around. I was quite relieved that it was the only screwup I found after loosening or changing or adjusting just about every single part of the entire bike during my bike maintenance class!

I'm discovering my dreadful lack of hip flexibility is a bit of a problem. Remember swinging your leg wide over your bike saddle to hop on or off? Well, yeah, for me that's just a memory too. I have to do this dreadfully awkward tip-the-bike and step over thing. Another thing to work on, because that's sure going to look really really stupid in the triathlon transition zones when I trip myself on the rear-mounted water cages and go flying on my face in front of everyone.

I worked on keeping my cadence above 80, which kept me WAY down into the low gears on the way out, which is slightly uphill heading upstream along Four Mile Run. I worked a little on my rusty bike handling skills, banking around corners and slow walkers on the trail. Down into granny gear for a couple of steep hills, trying to stay down in the aerobars and in the saddle until the final most difficult part of the climb. I can tell this is going to be a long process.

My biggest limiting factor right now seems to be crotch endurance. No colossal abrasions this time, thank heavens. I wore my Trek bike shorts which have more padding than the tri shorts, plus I had the new Quintana Roo seat cover. I still think I may have to swap out the saddle for a girl model with cutouts, though, which I hate to do because it did come with quite a nice tri-saddle. I did have to stop once (I picked a field far from prying eyes) and reach down into the front of the shorts and rearrange things. I felt so macho. At least I don't feel like I need a crotchectomy today, but I just may after 56 miles on June 12.

I was also able to reach down, grab the water bottle, and take a swig fairly readily, which is a bit of a trick with the spout pointing towards my elbow. I only swerved slightly, and squirted myself accidentally in the face only a little bit. Good to practice with water and not Gatorade.

On the shopping list: cool new sunglasses that are wraparound but yet have a little ventilation (sweaty eyes make it hard to see); and a new helmet that a) has room for a ponytail without forcing my neck into an unnatural position; and b) coordinates with Buttercup's neon yellow-with-red-accents paint scheme.

3 comments:

Linda said...

I got on my bike for the first real ride yesterday and got the crotch treatment too! Gotta hate that.

Anonymous said...

I've heard great things about that trail. I'm going to have to try it sometime soon.

Anonymous said...

I did that with my front tire last summer and it took me DAYS to figure out what I'd done. The front tire rattled funny, too, and I couldn't figure out why, since I had the nuts tightened up as much as I could get them :P

I got a gel split seat late last summer and it is a god-send!