I just dropped a serious amount of cash on some new wheels and a saddle for my bicycle! I’m considering it an early birthday present to myself. It makes me feel a little better about the purchase.
Why did I buy new wheels? Well, let’s back up for a re-cap on the weekend.
Saturday we moved Eric’s parents, which went really well. It rained off an on throughout the day, but let up just long enough to get everything out one house and in the other. I’d consider it a pretty successful move (mostly because it wasn’t my stuff moving, which is always more stressful than just helping with a move)!
Sunday Eric and I woke up early after camping out on the floor of his parent’s old home with the dogs and headed up to Greenville, OH for the Annie Oakley Ride. I hate to admit this, because I feel guilty, but we didn’t pay for the ride and just followed the road markings they had painted to know where we were going. We didn’t eat any of their food they had at the rest stops and we only filled up our water bottles once with their water. I still feel bad! But no worries, karma seemed to come back and bite us in the but. Let’s just say that I am committed to registering for all future rides I partake in.
Eric and I did the first 45 miles without getting off our bikes. I considered that my training ride for the day. It was a great ride! We averaged about 15.1 miles per hour. Hills were scarce and the temps. were soooo much better than last year (see previous post)! The only complaint is that the wind was pretty strong again and the smell of cow poop is in abundance in this area! The ride was 62 miles, so I knew I wanted to take the last 20-ish miles at a relatively slow pace. Well, after taking our one break of the day at the 45 mile point and getting back on the road, we took a wrong turn. I think there are a few rides that take place in the area we were at and we started following some other ride’s markings. Oops! We had ridden about 10 miles when we realized we were riding south when we wanted to be going west. At this point, we had no idea where we were, but decided to go west in hopes of running in to a particular highway we had driven up on. About 3 miles after heading west, I heard a pop and my rear wheel started to feel funny. I pulled over only to find that another one of my spokes had broken!!! It’s been just a little over a month since my last one broke. So annoying! At this point I was in a very foul mood. My rear tire was rubbing on the brake pretty bad, we were lost, and I was tired. We called Eric’s dad to give us directions and it turned out we were only about 10 miles away from where we started earlier that day. So we rode slowly back at about an 11 mph pace and eventually (after making another call to Eric’s dad) found our way back. What was supposed to be a 62 mile ride ended up being a 65 mile ride and a bad attitude on my part. I told Eric afterwards that I was about –this- close to throwing my bike off the side of the road and giving it a swift kick. I knew he’d think I was really crazy, so I held back on that temptation.
Here’s Eric racking up the bikes after the ride.
And me with my complaining face on…
Why do helmets have to look so awful on me???
So yes, the broken spoke prompted the new wheel set. I took my bike in to the shop this morning and was informed by the shop mechanic that they have had issues with my bicycle tires in the past. I guess they used to sell the same brand and the company does not seem to put much effort in to making a quality wheel set. So, I upgraded my wheels. I want to reduce the chance of having any sort of wheel problems during my Half Ironman, and I’m just not comfortable keeping the original wheels. Lucky for me, the store had a set of wheels that were originally on a tri-bike but the person who bought the bike didn’t want the wheels and sold them back to the store. The store gave me almost a 20% discount on them. I won’t divulge the price of the wheels, but let’s just say I’ve given that bike shop a good amount of $$ this summer. Cycling is an expensive sport…especially when you put in the mileage that I have been doing this summer. But now I have some fancy schmancy wheels and I’m super excited to try them out tomorrow!
Today I got back on track with my official training program. I hit the pool for a long swim, which involved:
6 x 500 (odds at RPE 3, events at RPE 5)
I wasn’t really timing each 500, but casually looking at the clock to gauge how fast I was going. I know I finished all of them at 8 minutes or under and rested for a minute or so between each one. I finished the whole workout in just under an hour. Not too shabby!
This week is going to be a tough one. The mileage and hours are picking up in my training program, it’s my birthday on Wednesday, and I have to work Thursday and Friday. Balancing work and training is going to be interesting. I am super lucky that I get my summers off because it gives me a lot of flexibility in my training, but the long hours are coming up and I’m going to have to make some decisions about how to best get all my training in so I am prepared for race day! We’ll see how it works out.
Other than all of that, things are starting to get back to normal around here. I am rather tired due to not sleeping well on vacation and not getting much sleep this weekend. I had to force myself out of bed this morning. It seems Keifer is a little tired as well…
Ohh! And yes, my camera has started to work, which is great because I did not want to purchase a new one! It seems to have dried out and is functioning properly, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it lasts. And I’ll make sure to be more careful next time I’m climbing up huge rocks to look out over the mountains! :)
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