Unleashing the (new) beast

I finally set my new bike loose on the roads last night, after keeping it chained to the trainer for nearly a month. This is my experience of my first real ride on my first tri-bike…

I took off from my house a little before 5, hoping to get 2h15mins of easy riding in before dark. The plan was to head through Indian Hill (the rich neighborhood) and straight to the Little Miami bike trail. It’s basically a straight shot down one road that winds a bit and has 2 decent climbs over 6 miles. Since I was breaking in the tri-bike, I wanted to bypass the hills as quickly as possible and get to the trail, which is flat and smooth and has no car traffic. With it still being chilly, the bike/runner traffic was limited as well. It would be a perfect place to get comfortable with my position while actually having to steer the bike. The high for the day was a sunny 50 degrees, but it was in the mid 40’s for most of the ride.

I made it all of a ½ mile before I had to stop the first time. My CPU wasn’t reading properly, so I had to readjust my sensors…no big deal. After adjusting, I exited the neighborhood and hit the real roads, the ones with traffic. This was a little nerve-wrecking at first since my handling was definitely not as solid as on my road bike. I was riding the base bar, but with my aero positioning, my seat has my weight shifted higher, making the bike more twitchy. I kept my gearing on the low end of the big ring and just sat and spun my way through the hills as easily as possible. I finally made the long descent down Galbraith to the bike trail. My back was a little sore, I’m guessing from not being used to riding the base bar for that long. It took about 20 minutes to get to the trail. After standing and stretching out a bit, it was time for the “real” ride to begin.

I got down in my aero-tuck easily enough, but wasn’t really getting into a rhythm. There are a decent amount of roads crossing the trail through here, so I had to stop and go a lot…continuously sitting and crouching. Since this was a somewhat long ride, I started to focus in on nutrition once on the path…alternating between water and the Infinit 70.3 mix I created, at regular intervals. I had also brought a fruit bar, but ended up opting not to use it in the end. Finally, once I got past downtown Loveland at about 10 miles into the ride, everything started clicking. I was feeling comfortable, getting good, smooth leg turnover, and the pace picked up with it. I cruised along until I hit the turnaround point and then repeated the process on my way back to Loveland. I’d say for that 18-20 mile stretch I was probably around a 21mph average and didn’t feel like I was pushing at all. It was a great feeling to be slicing through the air so effectively. I rode a similar route on my road bike in similar conditions last week, and was about 2mph slower through this stretch with what seemed like a little more effort then. Of course, that’s all very non-scientific estimations, but I can safely conclude I was able to ride faster, easier.

The return was going great until I got past Loveland. The last 10 miles were a little scary at times, and very cold throughout. By that point, the sun had gone out of direct sight, and I felt like I was in a race with the oncoming dusk. Unfortunately, dusk had a few tricks up its sleeve, like turning down the temperature. I don’t have proper cycling gloves and thought I could get away w/o them this ride. I also don’t have shoe covers, but I’ve experienced the toe-freezing before. The hand-freezing was a new and wild experience. By the time I turned off the trail and back onto the roads to hit the hills back home, both my hands were numb and were less responsive than normal. I sat up as often as I could while spinning through the hills and tried to tuck a hand away out of the wind-flow…there wasn’t really anywhere to go though. I also would repeatedly open/close them to drive some blood-flow their direction, and basically to make sure I could still move them. Of course, I was on roads again and with the daylight fading had to be more alert to traffic and making sure I kept visible.

I struggled with these conditions until I got about 3 miles from home, then everything warmed up a bit. I’m not sure if it was the increasing nervousness driving my HR up, being in a more urban environment, or just a slight weather change that caused me to warm up. Either way, it was a relief and one less thing to worry about. Now I just had to make sure I could be seen by the increasing traffic in the last couple miles.

All told, the ride was 40.55miles in 2:15:00 (~18mph avg). I mapped it on mapmyride and it gave ~1130 feet of ascent/descent. Overall, I loved my first real ride on the tri-bike…this just steps up my anticipation for the race season to the next level…and my anticipation for some warmer weather…please