Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Don't Buy a Bike after 4 hours of Sleep...

Right now I am still working nearly 40 hours at Starbucks every week.  When I tell people this they sometimes are jealous of the coffee that I must be drinking on my shifts.  To be quite honest, I don't drink as much as you might think.  I try to save the extreme caffeine days for when I really need a boost so I try to limit myself to 1-2 total shots of coffee a day and fill in the tiredness with sleep! Novel concept right?!



Well, let me tell you what happened when I went to pick up my bike that I spent about 2.5 months getting the fit right.  Everything was seemingly perfect on the new P2 Cervelo and I just needed to test ride it outside before I actually purchased it.  The day I went to test ride it- was after 3 days of working from 4AM- 12:30 PM shifts- and I had been going to bed a little later than normal (and training still).  Needless to say I was a little dazed.  I took the bike out for a spin and could swear that the shifters were reversed from what I was used to.  I told my friend and bike shop tech the issue and he wasn't surprised at all.   Since I used to ride a really old Aussie designed tri bike he was pretty sure that my old bike probably had shifters that matched what I was telling him.  He would just go ahead and re-wire the cables to switch the shifting direction.  I was thinking to myself... Awesome! And bought the bike.

Well this is my new bike.  See anything weird on it?



Right... my first thoughts were those too.  Holy moly my shifters are completely upright and reversed!  I'm an idiot!  I knew it right away but was too ashamed to tell my friend who had spent hours flipping it for me.  So... I did this to my bike for Christmas.




Since then, I have played more with my bike and the positioning.  I went back into the shop to actually get a rebate on the bike that I never thought I could get ($1000!!!) and at the same time apologized profusely to my friend and told him that I would need the shifters re-done because I was delirious when I asked him the first time and we both got a good laugh out of it (thank goodness!).  When I find the time (which is practically never), I'll bring it back to get it re-done.  For now, I like to think of it as good training.  No one should get too set in their ways, right?

In other news, I hired a coach last week too!  WHOA!  I know... That's actually huge news!  It all started with a facebook message out of the blue from a friend of mine in college recommending a friend of his as a coach.  I never take those messages seriously.  But facebook doesn't have a delete button for messages.  Weird.  So a few days later I went back to it and looked into it.  Something about this coach caught my attention.  The promptness of his reply and the enthusiasm of his attitude was astounding.



I'm super duper excited to get training with him.   Already, in the first interview it was amazing how much we both had similar ideas in workouts.  I didn't have to sit on the phone explaining why I wasn't completely sold on one thing or another.  He understood. I'm sure you will hear more about it when the training ensues... however, for now- I'm just looking forward to the butt-kicking and variety.  It's exactly what I need at this point and the inspiration that I am looking for to continue my training towards Ironman CdA.   For now though, I am continuing with North Shore bike trips and running trips on the weekend to maintain my fitness... they have been quite serene and chilly (laugh it up! 62 degrees with wind is chilly to start when you are used to mid 80s!!).