My Bike-Affair!

Event: Bike
Total mileage: 18.8 miles
Ave speed: 13.2 mph
Max speed: 19.5 mph

Today I biked to work for the first time since the triathlon (which I still have to blog about). I need to/want to take my mountain bike in for a tune-up, and the road bike...well, we were having difficulties in our relationship. The problem? Well, first we were having derailer tension problems, then I was thinking it was too small for me, then the toe cage straps were on upside down... But I woke up early today. I started putting away laundry, and thought, this is stupid, do this later and bike to work! It's a beautiful day! So I rethreaded my cage straps and hit the road.

Yes, this bike isn't fitting me right, I concluded. How so? Like my center of gravity was too high, like I felt cramped behind the bars but uncomfortably thrust over them, like the angle in my knees wasn't quite right. And then a miracle happened--it is father's day!--and only my first 3 appointments were booked so I got out of work early--on a beautiful Sunday day when I had my bike--what joy! So I road down to Turin in Evanston and inquired for assistance with sizing my bicycle.

Mark helped me. I love Mark. He was patient and knowledgeable, and he smiled at my not-so-funny-Mary-style-jokes. He spent an hour and a half with me and his conclusion was that I didn't need another bike, but that I should ride this one, at least for this season. Incredible! I was so ready to be talked into buying a new bike, and said as much, so... Mark at Turin in Evanston is great.

Mark used a bunch of tools to measure my body. My inseam is shorter than the tool so we had to improvise that one. :) My arms are the same length. My torso is abnormally long for my legs, but this of course I already knew. Which means that I'm NOT a good candidate for a Women Specific Design bicycle because those are tailored to women with longer legs and shorter torsos. So it's a good thing I didn't win that Trek contest (I didn't, by the way. I finally found out).

He locked my bike into some contraption that allowed me to pedal. He adjusted that seat height, I had it set on the high end of acceptable. He measured my knee angle, and used a plumb line to figure out if my patella as over the pedal. He adjusted the angle and front-to-back of my seat. But the biggest adjustment was his suggestion of the removal of the handlebar extension that Deb, the women from whom I bought the bike, had had installed.

The problem with the handlebar extension was that it raised the handlebars above the level of the seat AND brought the handlebars back as the bar is on an angle. NOT GOOD. Because I needed them further away, and having them higher up was doing funky things to my mechanics. So for $10 the guys in the shop took them out. So much better! Then he watched me pedal and gave me advice on mechanics:

-Flatten the low back, as if I'm almost sticking my butt out.
-Support with the low back and core, not the shoulders and arms

Okay, so this bike fits me okay. It's on the small side, I'd probably perfer to stretch out a bit more, but it shouldn't cause me any injury. The main reason I want a different bike is that I'd like one with bigger wheels (so I can go faster, because fast is fun). The problem with my body is that I need 28" tube clearance or 48"/71-72cm frame, but I need 60cm in the horizontal direction and typically frames are made with the same measurements up-down and front-back. So I have a bike now with smaller wheels (which allows for the crotch clearance) and with the 10cm handlebar neck it's roughly 60cm horizontal. But...

Specialized makes bikes that have an angled horizontal bar, allowing for short leg-gers like me to straddle it, AND frames long enough to fit my long torso. After discussing with Mark my recent Triathlon, my biking history, and where I was thinking about going with this, his recommendation was to ride this bike this season (with the adjustments we made), then maybe next season consider getting a Tri or Multisport bike--with the bigger wheels! A "Multisport" bike is by Specialized that is basically a road bike with aero bars, which makes it more comfortable for long rides AND more maneuverable and easier to handle than a Tri bike. Tri bikes have a different geometry that put the rider more forward over the frame, supposedly putting more of the load on the hamstrings and less on the quads.

Mark and I walked around the shop and he told me lots of stuff about the geometry of different frames and the trends from one brand to another. It was awesome! He wasn't selling me anything! And he was super nice! (Unlike those Johnny Sprocket snotfaced-assholes). For the record, the guy who worked on my bike was super nice too. They weren't scornful in the way that so many Chicago-hipster-bicycle-shop-workers are.

So...basically, I'm ready to buy some shoes with clips and to get riding!!

First Lake Michigan Swim!

I've been meaning to sit down and write for awhile now. I started a blog about the Triathlon, but that's as far as it got... I guess I've been busy, though I thought I had simplified my life so I'm a bit confused about that. I have a way of falling into busy habits.

But I have to start somewhere!

Today was the first day Eric and I went swimming in the lake this summer. It was AWESOME. Swimming laps at a pool??? B-o-r-i-n-g! Swimming in open water??? Incredible.

I love the unpredictable-ness of water in it's natural state. Sometimes you turn your head to breathe and there is a wave there. Sometimes you ride up the crest of a wave and kind of slam down on the other side. I LOVE IT. There are cold pockets and warm pockets of water.

The lake was pretty calm today. There were waves, but they were gentle. The water temperature? CHICAGO SHORE...72CHICAGO CRIB...60 The visibility was incredible! We could see the ground the entire length of our swim. We swam 1 mile-ish from the Oak Street Beach. We saw minnows(!) which was fun. And I can see how swimming in open water would be so much more fun if there were pretty fish to look at.

I'm totally telling this story backwards...but I'm rusty. The other day I returned the wetsuit I had purchased prior to the Triathlon that had ended up being too large. Today I went to Fleet Feet and rented a Women's Medium-Small Ironman Triathlon. It felt perhaps a little snug in the crotch to neck measurement, but I think that is fine. IT IS SO MUCH FUN to swim in a wet suits (that fits). The added buoyancy is just...fun! And the coldness of the water? No big deal!

So:

Location: Oak Street Beach, Lake Michigan
Distance: 1 mile-ish
Time: No idea.
Water temp: CHICAGO SHORE...72CHICAGO CRIB...60 Not sure. I'm going to have to figure out the best sorce of information.
Visibility: We could see the bottom the whole time.
Wave action: Gentle waves. No big deal.
Buddy: Eric

Wildlife: Minnows

People: LOTS of people. LOTS of kids. At the beach. Only a couple other actually people swimming. Eric was disappointed by the lack of "hotties," I told him we could ride next time and go looking for them afterwards...maybe the "hotties" are up by the volleyball courts. There was a fire truck near the shore, some safety training going on, perhaps?

Post swim food: Take out from Garlic Chili Thai. I had the Lad Nar with tofu. FANTASTIC. They serve the fried noodles separately. Awesome. I'm ordering the same thing next time. No doubt. We ate on Eric's roof and my upper back got burned by the sun, but not too badly.

Perhaps tomorrow or Sunday I'll write a short blog about our first sprint day. It was awesome! And totally deserves a blog!!!! (it kicked Matt's ass, that's why).

My First Triathlon!

Blogging is a funny thing. I started with one purpose in mind (to hypothesize about all-weather runners, or something), which morphed into another (describing the weather and philosophizing about life on a winter running path, basically), which started morphing into something else...But I'm not sure what. Now that the weather has been pleasant I have been less inspired to write. I need to find another angle. I'm disappointed that I haven't written in the last month or so. It would be nice to have a record leading up to.......

MY FIRST TRIATHLON!!!


That's right! Eric and I did the Batavia Triathlon today!!! It was awesome. I'm in love. (Of course, I'm always in love with something.....)

The event broke down like this:



Friday night. I think I got 6 hours of sleep. 8 would have been nice, but the sun woke me up and I had some nervous energy.

Saturday. Ate a bagel with vegan cream cheese, I worked (4 massages), had an apple for lunch (not the best idea, probably), bought appropraite sunglasses (thank goodness!) and a water bottle, dinner at Dharma Garden, saw Lucy Kaplansky at the Old Town School (I love her!). I slept over at Eric's. I think we went to sleep at about 12:30am.


Sunday.

3:00-3:10am Wake up

3:30am Load up Eric's bike and head out of town

4:30am Pick up Eric's Tri Packet

5:00am Unload from car, walk over the chipping and marking station with bikes and trigear. Here we got our ankle straps with chips, had our shoulders marked with our race numbers, and the back of our calves marked with our AGES! It's rather interesting to be able to look around and see everyone's age. It reenforces in my mind the idea that age last little to do with the number. But more on that later.

5:30am-ish After "setting up our transition stations" (this is the jargon term for laying out your shit so that when you get back from the swim, you don't have to be searching through your backpack for your sunglasses), we went to the bathroom. This was fun. There's a long long long-ass line, but if you're a girl, you just skip the line and go into the women's bathroom (of course) where not only is there NO line, but there's an abundance of empty stalls! How fun! I wonder if some stars shifted in my astrological reading or something, because lately everywhere I go the men have the long line and I have no bathroom line (Shellac show, Propagandhi show...and apparently Triathlons too!). After I utilized the ladies room, I stood in line with Eric a bit...and right behind us was Mark McNeill! He is one of my favorite massage teachers and massage therapists of all time and he's an all around great laid-back guy. He's done quite a few tris and marathons and such at an elite level and it was great to see him. He really talked up this event.

I pretty much talked to everyone I was around, telling them this was my first time, and about how I was nervous, etc. And everyone was super nice, giving me words of encouragement, and asking me afterwards how everything was... Anyhow, I'm getting ahead.

So Eric's line was really really long. He said that all the urinals were open too, everyone was heading for the stalls. "Gotta get the shit out." Important stuff to think about for these sorts of events.

The big question of the hour for us was "to wetsuit or not to wetsuit." The water was definitely tolerable, but we had wetsuits, and it wasn't warm per se. So we decided to suit up.

5:55am. Back at the Transition zone. And....the Transition zone was closing. I had all these silly thoughts of not being in the right place at the right time. How silly! Of course with 500 people milling about, there's going to be someone telling them what to do!

And then everyone got in a long line roughly in numerical ordered, and every 5 seconds someone ran into the water. Two laps around (400m) the "facility" and out to the transition zone...Okay, now I'm finally trying to finish this blog in now Nov 2007...oh, dear. I was wearing a wet suit that was two big. I had bought that one at a scuba shop. It was a unisex shop (bad idea for someone with my build!). I returned it and bought an Ironman suit from Fleet Feet (a running/tri store), which proceeded to fit me very nicely for the remainder of the summer.

We changed into biking clothes. Went for a 13 mile bike ride, then ran 4 miles. What I wasn't prepared for, was how rubbery my legs would feel for the first 2 miles...

Anyhow, after finishing two more triathlons after this one, I know this one was really great. As awkward as the swim course was, the people were wonderfully friendly. The run course was very pleasant, along the river. The post-race deal was great too. There were some PT-type people there who were stretching people for free, everyone got a free beer with a tag on their bib, there was music...and it just had a joyous feeling to it! Yay!

And this is a very anti-climatic blog post. I apologize if you've read this whole thing. But perhaps that says something. For years (like, since I was a little kid watching my dad swim triathlons with binoculars) I wanted to do them. For (how many years?) I've been intimidated by them. But now? Not so much. Now I think, if I can do them, anyone can do them. How silly, right? In the end, they're not a big deal. You go out and do a little swimming, you put on some biking shoes and doing a little biking, you put on your running shoes....and, well, that's the hardest part, those first 2 miles of running. But everyone is feeling it then so it's okay. So you do a little run. You feel great, for a bit. Then you (I mean I) feel really cranky until I've had my nap...

:)