My Road Bike

When I started competing in triathlons three years ago, I bought a road bike, a Felt F80 model. I’ve had good luck with the bike. My only accidents occurred when I failed to unclip my foot, which happened twice on my five hundred mile bike trip from Columbus, Ohio to Skaneateles, New York. I have matching scars on my elbows as a reminder.

I wanted to have my bike fit checked out before the Tuscaloosa race and I also wanted to check out tri bikes. My plan has been to upgrade to a tri bike for the next racing season. My coach, Craig Strong, recommended that I visit with Mark Payares who runs Start2Finish Studio in Glencoe, Illinois. Start2Finish sells custom and stock bikes from DeRosa™, Guru™ and Elite™ and offers custom fitting using Retul™ 3-D motion capture software. Mark is a licensed physical therapist so he can enhance the fitting process by evaluating an athlete’s strength and flexibility limitations.

My plan was to have Mark check out the set up on my road bike and give me some idea of what kind of tri bike I might want to consider for the future. I knew that most entry level tri bikes cost over two thousand dollars. In my real world business Leonard S. Joy LLC I get paid once a year and not until December, and so far this year I’ve made $120 from my writing, so the prudent thing would be to wait on any big-ticket purchases.

But Mark had this really pretty red bike, a Guru Tri bike, that had been very slightly used and while it retailed for $2,400, Mark offered it to me for $1,200. So I abandoned all fiscal responsibility and bought it. It looked like it was really fast and I had dreams of taking it to Tuscaloosa and racing through that course in 22 mph. Well actually my dreams were more like 24 mph. It’s easy to dream.

Tomorrow: Getting fitted

Workout: Tuesday – Bike 60 minutes; Wednesday: Bike 90 minutes; Run 60 minutes;

Weight: 186.7