“It’s like riding a bike” kept going through my head. Another early morning, but this time I had more fear of the workout. Today was my first day on the new bike.
Now, I’m a 39 year old man, who’s been riding bike for a really long time. I’m one who recalls riding no handed across the entire town of Tioga, ND to the pool with Jason Larson! Granted it may have only been a fraction of the distance I’ll be doing next summer, but hey, I was ten!
Why did I have so much worry about the biking? Well, you see, when I decided to commit to this and get a nice road bike, I didn’t realize that it wouldn’t come with pedals. This meant I needed to either buy a normal set of pedals and eventually switch to clip in pedals and buy shoes or just bite the bullet now and learn with clips from the get go. I chose the latter.
Everyone I have spoken with about riding with clips had said “you will fall” and “it’s not a matter of if, but when.” I decided to take the advice of my brother in law, Paul, and ride around in the grass first a few nights ago. No falls.
Now, back to the morning biking fitness test. I walked out the door at 6am, put on my clip-in biking shoes (there’s probably a more formal term for them that I’ll learn about later), strap up my helmet, and grab my bike.
I had a brand new 2023 Trek Domane AL 2 with Disc brakes. I had the guys at the store put on a little road kit bag that has a spare tube, CO2, and a nozzle adapter. I was able to fit my money clip in there, but not my phone. “Now what?” I thought. What am I going to do WHEN I fall? I decided to brace it and take off anyway.
The workout itself was another fitness test, but on the bike. A nice 12 minute warmup to start, some interval tests, and then a cool down. It seemed too easy. IT WAS! In learning from my mistakes from the day before, I decided to go into my Garmin and select the actual training workout, not just a biking workout. When I got through with the internal testing, I pushed a button to see what was next. It turns out that the button I pushed was the Skip button. What did I skip, you ask? Just a 20min active workout. Only half of what I should have done.
I’m two days in and I’ve already been learning how out of practice I am with my training. I have faith that I’ll hit it out of the park with tomorrow’s workout (it’s already a rest day).
I’ll end this blog with other little details I was able to takeaway. I need a larger pair of padded biking shorts. The pair I have tends to show off my bottom region to those behind me. I also need to find a better biking shirt. Mine kept riding up my back and armpits.
Tomorrow is rest and then we’ll see how bad my knees are with the running test on Friday.
PS: I redid my bike workout in the evening after the kids were sleeping. I chose the indoor bike as I don’t have proper lighting for the Trek yet.
