Party Games

I gave my bike a little TLC on Saturday morning. One of my teammates put together a video on how to clean your chain and cassette inspired me to clean my ride up. After that I loaded my bike in the car and went down to Bow to look for a new seat and some aerobars. Specialized has this gel pad thing that you can sit on to measure your sit bones. Sit on the gel pad, raise your feet up, wait 20 seconds and see where your sit bones made an indentation. From there we determined that I would need at 155 width saddle…the widest saddle Specialized makes. Hmmm, so I have wide sit bones…does that mean I have good child bearing hips..?? Haha! I wound up getting a Specialized Ariel saddle since it is supposed to be a good combination of performance and comfort. If it doesn’t work out I will be able to return it though.From there it was on to the aerobars. I went for the Jammer GT from Profile Design. I figured I’d feel pretty stable with this shape, plus the width is adjustable so I can play around with it to get it comfortable.
The guys at Bow put my new accessories on for me, but then I still had the matter of the bike fit.

Saturday night was our team Christmas party. Coach’s husband could help me out with my bike fit, so she told me to bring my bike with me to the party. It could be kind of like a party game! He took the original measurements for my bike, then set me up on a wind trainer to check angles. He wound up lowering my seat height, sliding my seat forward slightly, and also made a few tweaks to the aerobars. Once I start riding outside again I may find I need a few more tweaks to the bars. But I guess you don’t really get a feel for it on a trainer. The interesting thing is, my seat was lowered to the exact same height from my original fitting. Apparently the guy who tweaked my bike after I got my pedals put on was wrong… I did a short 37 minute ride on the trainer today and it felt pretty good. Hopefully it will be just as comfortable at spin class on Tuesday night!

The party was a lot of fun. I had a good time getting to know some more of my teammates. I got a few good ideas for bike routes around here from a teammate. Coach also put together a video of the team at various races last year…Great White North, Ironman Canada… It has gotten me so excited for this year! Can’t wait!