Bikes and Break Throughs

A lot of new things have been going on the past few days!

Like this bad boy (or girl - name has yet to be determined). I spent 6 hours in the car on Sunday driving to Mansfield to purchase this fabuloso road bike. It was a long time in the car alone, but a stop for breakfast with Dana at the Northstar Cafe in Columbus (the Big Burrito had been occupying my dreams for weeks!), and a somewhat good (somewhat weird) audio book helped the time fly by. Ed taught me more about the bike than humanly possible in an hour in his basement - fit, training, maintenance. I am so grateful to be able to have this bike and to have an amazing MS 150 team to ask questions and encourage me along the way. I am also extremely overwhelmed. To go with the fabuloso new bike, I ordered these shoes.

Marc has already declared he will be recording me the first time on the bike with the shoes. I'm sure that will get replayed a million times. It makes me laugh just thinking about it.  I might wrap myself in bubble wrap the first few times. I am terrified of falling, but know this is what makes my bike a Big Girl bike. I am excited, overwhelmed, nervous and down right scared all at the same time. The shoes should come in March 16 which is exactly one month before my first real tri. I hope the good ole Cincinnati weather cooperates enough to help me learn to ride my bike before the race.

I think I need to go breathe into a paper bag now.

Sometimes things just work out so well it amazes me. The bike is one example. Also, I went to try on shoes and the girl that ended up helping me runs with the same running group I do, belongs to the same tri club as I do, is an Iron(wo)man athlete, and a master's swim coach at Lifetime. She was so helpful and so encouraging. So I bought the shoes. :) Maybe if I start hanging around her, her swimming ability will just rub off on me.

In other not so exciting news...I was swimming today and all the sudden I couldn't remember how many laps I had done. Before I knew it I was flipping to go back the other way...and my thoughts the whole time were not "what the heck am I doing, I am not good at this, why can't I breathe, this sucks, can I stop yet, or I hope the other swimmers aren't laughing at me". I was just swimming. Maybe not so graciously or quickly, but I had found a rhythm. This felt like a major break through to me. I admit that some most of the laps were breast stroke, but I did more freestyle than I had any other time. I swam for more consecutive minutes than I ever have before. I declare this a victory.

p.s. eventually I will work on my photography skills, sorry for the bad pics. It is on my to do list. Unfortunately that list is a million miles long. If only there were more hours in a day...