I am a novice at this whole tri thing and have never rode my bike on asphalt. I have a mountain bike and hence have always rode on trails.
This is what my set up looks like:
Yes, a mountain bike with a trailer and a 30 pound princess. When I do my workouts at home, I pull Kayla in the trailer, and we hit the trail on 3406 and ride west toward Cedar Park, or we go to the Brushy Creek Trail. She loves it!
Apparently, mountain biking and road biking are not created equally. I had no idea how much harder it is to ride a mountain bike than a road bike. So out on the Veloway, it is a paved track about 3 miles long, and everyone kept passing me even though I was pedaling really hard. Part of this is admittedly me not really knowing how to shift that well, but part of it is the heavy bike, the tires, etc.. So I rode about 12 miles and was worn out. I got passed by my teammates several times! I know some of them rode at least 6 or 9 miles further than I did in the same amount of time.
This is me and my coach Marco coming up this really steep hill
After we rode, I was able to run a mile in 10 minutes, so I wasn't as tired as I thought I would be, but I was really discouraged. I called Calvin and told him I think I should switch events to the Sprint distance because there's no way I was gonna be able to ride 40K on this bike and then still be able run a 10K --- AND finish within the allotted time.
Well by the time I got home from practice, he had picked out a road bike for me, we went and got fitted at Bicycle Sport Shops, but I ended up getting this one:
It is really nice for a first road bike. I opted to not spend the extra $$ and get a tri bike because I wanted to do a couple races and see if I actually like the sport. Ha! So far I'm loving it.
From what I understand I can't ride this one on the same granite trail that I ride my mountain bike on, so I haven't figured out where in Round Rock I can ride. If you know of a place, let me know :)
No comments:
Post a Comment