Thursday, December 30, 2010

First Ride

"Kurt" arrived yesterday! After we got him settled there was a great deal of discussion about where he was going to sleep. Turns out he ended up in the garage, precisely where I said he should go to from the start.

Kurt is not a puppy (a puppy would get first rate indoor accommodations at our house). Kurt is what I've named my new bike trainer. I jokingly refer to him as my "new boyfriend" since I expect to be spending a lot of time with him!

The trainer was easy to set up, although I'm going to have to get another skewer because the one that came with it is too short to accommodate my mountain bike (anyone else have this problem?). Other than that, it was operational in about 20 minutes.

It is absolute HEAVEN to be active again! I enjoyed hunting up my bike shoes, recharging my Garmin and my iPod, and pulling the water bottle out from the back of the cupboard. I've still got a lot of prep work to do, like:
  • Setting up the cadence sensor that I bought last spring (I never used it because I was so busy trying to get in a first season of training that I didn't have time to evaluate stuff like that anyway).
  • Figuring out how to use my Garmin for the cadence and heart rate zones that I will need for these workouts.
  • Getting a couple of workout variations, since I will be riding 4x per week for the next few weeks (there is a good one in the January issue of Triathlete magazine).
  • Finding some good music in my iTunes library and making new playlists for the bike.

This morning I took my first ride. It was just a 30-minute test ride, since I didn't have any kind of workout in mind (nor really any clue as to what makes a good workout on the trainer). I started out easy, then did a couple of faster intervals, went through all my gears to make sure everything was in good working order, then finished with some easy spinning at the end.

My first "official" workout will be on Saturday morning. I'm starting the new year off with the 60-for-60 cardio challenge my "Be Fit Club" kicked off last year - 60 minutes of cardio a day for 60 days straight.

The first couple of weeks will be swim and bike only.

Can't wait to get the running started again.

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