Days Thirty-nine and Forty - The Bike, Oh Yes, The Bike

Yesterday was an easy day. Did some upper body work and stretching, but I spent the rest of the day with Cass, and my son, Erik, who dropped by for a couple of days. He's on a team that's going to the Halifax Hoop Up in a couple of weeks. Cass and I watched shooting hoops with a couple of this friends at the park last night. He was awesome. I swear he wrote a few new rules of gravity.

I also picked up the bike (a Felt F10) yesterday from Savage's Bike Center (http://www.sbcoutlet.com/). Matt gave me a few pointers and I took it out for a few spins around the downtown area.

One of the things I appreciated was Matt's honesty. He told me I'd hate it at first. And, yep, that was my first reaction. Something like: "What the...? I'm not flying like the wind. This doesn't feel right. My legs aren't fitting on this right."

But after after a few adjustments, it started to feel better and better.

I took it out on the circuit this morning for a 10K run just to get used to it. It's a beauty to behold and a beauty to ride. All the feelings of alien-ness and awkwardness melted away, and the bike felt like something my legs had always been missing. It didn't try to stop when I came into the hills. I could peddle as fast as I wanted going down the hills without out-peddling the peddles. It tracked like laser. It cornered like light bouncing off a mirror. Once I got used to them, the gears moved smootly and precisely.

I shaved five minutes off my best time on a single lap.

I took it out again later in the evening and shaved off another minute. No, I'm still not going to win this triathlon, but sure as hell don't have any more doubts about finishing.

And I got a few great ideas for the bike part of the virtual triathlon in the novel.