Road Tires for Reagan

I'm a total idiot who forgot that my Dad got me a gift card to my LBS last Christmas. I forgot about it until just recently.

See, the intended purpose of the gift card was to buy some aero bars. But my LBS didn't really have what I was looking for, so I bought them online.

Hence the forgotten-about gift card.

What does this mean?

Merry Christmas to me! I bought Reagan some road tires!



It was a fabulously easier process than I thought it would be. They were picked out and installed within 10 minutes. The cost on the other hand... that was a tad on the shocking side. I decided to go with some thicker, higher-quality tires in hopes that they'll last a good while.

So today, I hooked Reagan up to the trainer and took her for a spin.



Holy cow! The difference in how quiet my trainer is now, compared to before, is unbelievable.

Yay! I just might have to use it more often.

Road Tires for Reagan?

This is something I've been battling with for a long time.... whether or not to put road tires on my bike, Reagan.

See, my bike is not a road bike nor a triathlon bike. She's a cyclocross bike. (If you don't know what cyclocross is, check it out. It's a crazy sport!)

Ooooo... Ahhhh....


But that means she came equipped with some rather unique tires. The width lands somewhere between a road tire and a hybrid tire, and amount of tread is somewhere between a hybrid tire and a mountain bike tire.

So why haven't I just bought the dang road tires yet?!

Because I'm nervous.

Everyone's seen the triathlete stuck on the side of a road during a race because they blew a flat and don't know how to change it. Well, that would be me.

I have no problem with blowing a flat during training rides, because I could just call Ryan to come pick me up. But during a race? I would die with sadness. I'm way too competitive to be okay with a DNF.

So what does everyone else think? Has anyone had any good experiences with road tires? How about learning to change them... is it really as hard as it seems?

TGIF Photo Friday

I Googled it.

Question: Googled what?

Answer: "How to use clipless pedals"

That's right. I didn't know what I was doing. I naively assumed it would be easy and self-explanatory. But when I arrived home after Reagan's tune-up, I was baffled.

I sat on the ground trying to force my shoe onto the clip. It just didn't look like it would ever fit.

So what did I learn from my Googling? The only way to get your shoes onto your pedals is to put them on your feet.

Hmm... seemed simple enough.



So Reagan and I hung out in the garage for a few minutes... clipping in and clipping out. Clipping in and out. In and out.

I was surprised to find out that it's harder to clip in than to clip out. Despite the horror stories, out seems to be the easy part.

So we went for a mini test-run.



(My lovely boy, Ryan, was there to document the whole thing.)



Clip in. Clip out. Clip in. Clip out.

Obvious question: Did I fall?

Surprising answer: No.

Truthful answer: Almost. I unclipped my right foot with every intention on leaning to the right. But gravity had other plans, and pulled me left. With my left foot still clipped in, my life flashed before my eyes (actually, all I could think was, I hope Ryan is getting a photo of this!). But he DIDN'T get a photo... because at the very last moment, my left foot magically unclipped and I saved myself from a concrete face-plant. WOO!



And that's the story of my extremely uneventful first time using clipless pedals.



A few days later, I went for a nice 10-mile bike ride to REALLY test them out.

Verdict? Crossing busy streets now scares me more than usual. With my inability to clip-in on command, I often find myself flailing and riding too slow in front of speeding vehicles (plus, during a street-crossing attempt yesterday, my chain fell off!).

Also, my feet got sweaty. Gross, I know. I took a mental note to wear socks next time.

And speaking of my feet, I found that after about 7 miles, my toes starting getting numb. Not sure what's causing that... maybe the vibrations from my shoes? Who knows.

But overall, I'm thrilled about all this. I feel more powerful going up hills (although, it also hurts a little more... I'm using muscles that I didn't know I had). I can't wait to ride more and see how this impacts my overall abilities.

Sick in Cincinnati

Wow, it's been 9 days since I've posted anything.

I just got back from my college roommate's bridal shower in Cincinnati. I can't believe I'm getting to that age where my friends are getting married. Crazy!

What I learned from this weekend is that I need to throw a fake bridal shower. My roommate hit the kitchen appliance-lottery (there is such a thing, right?).



But on sadder news, I am officially ill. I hate getting sick in the summer, cause I feel like I'm missing out on all this nice weather. Stupid cold! So my training has been non-existent for the past 3 days, and I'm totally okay with that.

Reagan is ready to be picked up from her tune-up, but the bike shop is closed today. I'll pick her up tomorrow, and if I feel up to it, I'll give my clipless pedals a test-run. So stay tuned... I'll post photos, of course!

A Big Week for Reagan

On Friday, I took Reagan to the local bike shop. She's been dying for a tune-up, and I don't know enough about bike maintenance to do it myself.

But I had secret motives behind this trip.

With only 5 weeks til my next triathlon, I knew it was now or never... to try out my clipless pedals.

(I'll wait for the applause to die down.)

So I asked the bike shop guys to give her a good tune-up, and reattach her god-given pedals (which I replaced with straps when I bought her last summer).

Then I went shoe shopping. I was sad to learn that triathlon shoes won't work with Reagan's pedals. Booo. So I tried on some regular cycling shoes. The sales-guy seemed to be pushing me towards a shoe with more tread on the bottom (possibly a mountain bike shoe?). He thought it would help me run easier in and out of transition.

My thought is... don't most triathletes just leave their shoes on their bike and run transition barefoot? If that's the case, tread wouldn't matter. So I asked to look at a road shoe instead.

I left the store with these...



Here they are at my house...





(Note the pink ribbon inside... 10% of proceeds go to the Susan G. Komen foundation.)




So I'm REALLY excited to try these out. Only problem now is... I don't have a bike! Reagan won't be done with her tune-up until NEXT weekend. Gurrr.

Hurry up, week! I'm sure everyone here wants to hear about my awesome first try (I WILL fall).

I've Still Got It

With only 4 days til the race, I figured out my training plan...

Tuesday: Swim 1/4 mile
Wednesday: Bike 13.8 miles
Thursday: Run 3.5 miles
Friday: Off
Saturday: Swim 1/4 mile, Bike 13.8 miles, Run 3.5 miles

Great plan, eh?

So I got to work on it, and squeezed in a little time at the Y this morning. What I dislike about our pool? They only have 2 lap lanes, which means I will almost ALWAYS have to share. What I love about our pool? How WARM it is! One of the main things that kept me out of the pool last year is no longer a concern. I don't have to "ease" my way in or take an ice-cold shower beforehand. The water temperature is somewhere in the 80s which is just perfect.

I had two options this morning... sharing a lane with an older gentleman who seemed to be a pretty good swimmer... or share a WIDER lane with a 6 year old boy who was learning how to swim for the first time.

That little boy and I were a great pair. His slow swimming and wall-clinging meant I hardly even knew he was there.

Ryan bought me knew goggles for my birthday (my old ones were falling apart and you couldn't see anything through them). They worked wonderfully... no leaking, no fogging, etc.

I swam 1/4 mile (18 laps) in 10 minutes, without stopping. I was surprised at how good I did considering this was only my second time in the pool in months. It seems to me if I actually WORKED at my swimming, I might not be half bad. But come on... who wants to work at things?!

________________________________

I took my bike to the LBS today to have it checked out.

Bike Guy: "Well, it may be something wrong with the derailleur, but--not to sound insulting--it may be an EDUCATION problem."

Oh.

I think he just called me stupid.

But he's probably right. I know HOW to change my gears, but I don't know WHEN to change them or WHY to change them or HOW to change them (oh... scratch that first part). So it may just be that I'm mis-using my bike. Poor Reagan.

Bike Guy: "Why is the back wheel skewer different than the front one?"

I told him it was from my trainer (the instructions that came with my trainer said it was perfectly find to ride with it in, so I just never replaced my old one).

Bike Guy: "Well, it's VERY loose." (fiddles with it... SNAP!) "Oh... um... it just broke."

Wow. Awesome.

He felt aweful for what he'd done, so he ran to the back and grabbed a new one for my bike.

He then took it for a spin around the store and tightened some bolts and things. He returned my bike to me and informed me that EVERYTHING had been loose on it. He said I definitely need a tune up... but that their store had a week-long waiting list for said tune up. He assured me it would make it through the weekend just fine.

Phew.

________________________________

Speaking of the weekend, I'm nervous about this lake swim. I've never done any out-and-back swim like this. The swim course at my first tri was out-and-back, but it ran parallel to the shoreline. It was shallow enough to walk at any point in the swim.

So when you're doing a lake swim... how deep does it get? I'd actually prefer it to be deeper so that all the seaweed and fishies can stay far away from me.

I had a triathlon-dream the other night that the swim-portion was in a rushing river... and we had to swim UP stream! At least this will be nothing like that.

Anyone got any swimming tips?

My Productive Weekend and Why I'm Never Eating Fried Chicken Again

I baked chocolate chip cookies yesterday. They turned out a little burnt, but overall delicious.



Today, I rearranged my apartment. I can't say I like it anymore than I liked it yesterday, but it's nice to just change things up now and again. Plus, my dining table is much closer to my TV, which makes it far more likely I'll use it.

I also took Reagan into the shop today. About a month ago, I was going along and a squirrel tried to commit suicide... death by bike tire. I "slammed" on my brakes, and one of them made a little pop sound. After that, it didn't work quite right.

So I finally got a free day to take Reagan into my local bike shop, Shosie's Cyclery. And I'd like to say they are awesome.

Shop Owner: "Oh, yeah... that's no problem. It looks like the cable slipped. I can fix that right up."



"Oh... your tires are really low. Lemme fill those up while we're at it."

"You know, this bag in the front here is really meant for underneath the seat. I can move your reflector so it fits."

"It appears one of the spokes on the chain gear is bent. I'll just fix that real quick."



"Your brakes are a little crooked. I can adjust that."



... And on it went. Where I was expecting to have to leave Reagan overnight and pay for that one brake problem, I got 5 times the service completely free and super fast.

The owner even gave me some tire advice for my triathlons.

And that's why I'm totally loving them. So, if you live in or are visiting the Stateline, go to Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. Shosie's Cyclery. That should just about do it.

When I got home, I was supposed to go run, but Reagan just looked so good and her tires were all filled and waiting. Plus, I just can't resist those puppy eyes of hers. So I took her for a spin. The "spin" was supposed to be long, but about 2 minutes into our ride, I thought, Man, I am the stupidest person alive for riding my bike without gloves on. I don't remember the last time I rode my bike in cold(er) weather, so I was not expecting my hands to completely freeze at 15 mph.

____________________________________

My evening has been spent cooking myself dinner. I'm not the greatest cook, which is why I don't do it that often (plus, I don't like to clean up afterwards).

So, before I had even washed my chocolate chip cookie dishes,



I was making oven-fried chicken.

This was a more daunting task than I had anticipated. First off, I couldn't find any skinless chicken legs, so I bought the skinned kind and figured it wouldn't be that hard to skin them.




... Boy was I wrong. Who knew a seemingly simple task could be so gross and smelly?! (Yes, smelly. It kinda smelled like a wet dog. Blehhh).



Halfway through one of the legs, my hand was bleeding. Oh my God, I cut myself!

Oh wait... that's not ME bleeding, it's the chicken. MY DINNER IS BLEEDING. This just totally turned me off to chicken. Even if I manage to make this, will I even want to eat it?!

I never seemed able to get the skin completely off the leg, so I would pull it down as far as possible and just cut off the extra. Oh well, I tried.

The biggest problem, however, didn't come about until the chicken had been in the oven for 15 minutes.



A) My kitchen started to fill with smoke. Apparently you canNOT replace parchment paper with wax paper. Woops.



B) My chicken legs were burning and looking funky.



I could NOT figure out what I did wrong... until I reread the recipe. That's when I realized you cannot replace buttermilk with powdered buttermilk (at least not when you're making a buttermilk marinade).

So I threw out my legs.

And every bad chef knows that at this point in the cooking process... you give up and order pizza.



Next time I cook something, maybe I'll just skip over the "effort" and "mess" parts and go straight to the delicious cheesy ending.

PS: My lovely boyfriend points out that powdered buttermilk can be made into liquid buttermilk simply by adding water (it even says so on the box!). This makes me an even BIGGER idiot!

...I was marinading chicken legs in POWDER.

Fall is Officially Here

Actually... maybe fall has already come and gone? Because it's starting to feel a lot more like winter right now (our meteorologist was talking about a chance of SNOW this weekend).

Either way, I am so NOT prepared.

Things I need to do to get ready for the changing seasons...

-Clean my Bike

Poor Reagan hasn't even been taken for a ride since my last triathlon (almost a month ago!). In fact, she's still in TWO PIECES in my living room. Poor girl. So, I need to put her back together and give her a good cleaning (I gave her some pretty decent romps through mud puddles over the summer months). If anyone has any tips for cleaning your bike, those would be helpful... especially if they DON'T involve going out and buying special bike-cleaning supplies.

-Remove the Bike Rack from my Car

It also hasn't been used in in a while, so I'm not sure why it's still there (other than the fact that it was the recent home to a spider... so I had to wait for the spider to die before I would even go near it).

-Pretend that I Don't Still have this Horrible Suntan



-Rearrange my Wardrobe

Nothing is worse than looking for a sweater or a pair of boots and coming face-to-face with a tanktop and a pair of flipflops. That's just utterly depressing. So those items must be hidden from plain view so I can pretend that the wonderful season of Summer never existed.

-Start Doing Clipless Pedal Research

My lovely Reagan is currently outfitted with a pair of insets...



She came with clipless pedals, but I was too nervous (and broke) to try them (and buy special shoes). But with my first year of triathloning behind me (YES, that's a word), it's time to start thinking about riding like a big girl. Upgrading my pedals will be like taking the figurative training wheels off. I know this doesn't need to be done immediately, but I have all winter to do my research and figure it all out.

-Rearrange my Living Room

While it's still early, winter IS coming, and that means Christmas is coming (yayyyy!). I have a tree, but my apartment is pretty tightly packed, so some rearranging needs to be done before I can squeeze it in there. This is kind of what my dining/living room looks like now...



Nice, isn't it? hehe. My apartment building has floor-to-ceiling windows on every floor, and most tenants leave their blinds up permanently. I can't wait to see all the apartments lit up during the holiday season.



The last thing I need to do to ring in the new season?

-Celebrate the Migrating of the Geese



Devil birds.

Birds, Boats, and Biking

Yesterday was day one of Sprint training. It was the most beautiful and perfect summer day. I hope that the rest of summer is this gorgeo... wait... summer is over? Oh. Well then I guess it was a good way to say goodbye. Funny thing is, yesterday was the FIRST time we had hit 90 degrees ALL year. Odd that it took so long.

Either way, I'm not one to be scared of the heat. So Reagan and I went on a nice ride around town.



I absolutely love training on weekends and holidays, because everyone is out enjoying the weather and their families. The river had tons of boats on it. Since the bike path runs parallel to the river, it's fun to race the boats on your bike.







Everything was going as planned, until I ran across a suprise next to the path.



It was a hawk... eating a snake. Awesome.

In the picture below, you can see the snake coming out of the left side of the hawk's mouth.



I was able to inch a little bit closer and get some better photos of the bird. He saw me there, but refused to move until his dinner was finished.





Overall, the ride went well.

Distance: 13.7 miles
Time: 1 hour exactly
Maximum Speed: 24.5 mph
Average Speed: 13.6 mph
Calories Burned: 495.3
Fat Burned: 59.1

By TOTAL coincidence, I biked the sprint race distance. Who knew? But what suprised me more was how long it took me. I guess I had forgotten just how far 13.7 miles is... and the fact that I need to run 3 miles AFTER that. Oh boy.

I believe I have more work ahead of me than I originally thought. I will go for a run today.

Today Was Better

I actually got a full night's sleep last night. THANK YOU, CONSTRUCTION MEN!

So I was up and ready to go for a bike ride. I wanted something different, so I headed out in a new direction and went down some new streets.

And I'm excited to report that the Brady Bunch has been found! Apparently they live just down the street from me...

Here is a shot from the house's glory days...



Alright... alright... so it doesn't look THAT much like it. But that's only because there isn't a campy family of 8 dressed in the latest polyester fashions living there.



... NO family is that happy.

So I kept riding along. I crossed the river to the bike path and that's when I saw it off in the distance...



Oh yes... that's it... the Brady Bunch house AGAIN. Apparently I had been looking at the wrong side earlier:



You canNOT deny that there is a STRONG resemblence:



Except that they lived in sunny california and I live in gloomy Illinois.

Ok, ENOUGH about the Brady Bunch.

I went further than I had originally planned on biking. The original route:



...But I just can't resist scenery like this:



By far my favorite stretch of the bike path.



There was an apartment surprise when I got back... a mirror in the lobby.

Hello, Reagan!



Overall, it was a good long ride. I got to spin out my legs which were still sore from my sprint interval 2 days ago (stupid me (stupid shins)).

Distance: 11.624 miles
Maximum Speed: 22.1 mph
Average Speed: 13.5 mph
Calories Burned: 418.4
Fat Burned: 49.6
Time Riding: 51 minutes 37 seconds
Total Time Out: 54 minutes 19 seconds

On an exciting note, my wetsuit rental arrived!



Yeah... yeah... that's the face I plan to make on race day to scare my competitors. GURRRRRRR.