FYI: Electrical Tape is Awesome!

Tomarrow is my last major race of the season, and as I look back upon my first season of duathlon and triathlon, I thought about the #1 trick or tool that made this racing season easier:

Electrical Tape!

It was first used to shore up the race # that goes onto your bicycle. My first race of the season, a duathlon, they gave us flexi ties to shore the card to the bike's top tube. Needless to say it flopped in the wind and was practically destroyed when hitting my inner thigh from pedaling. I noticed one of my competitors threw away the flexi ties and just used electrical tape to firmly attach the card to the bike. I took a note to use that approach later on in the season.

At my first triathlon of the season, I brought the electrical tape, but I was given one of those race stickers that folds over the top of the tube to attach. I thought who needs electrical tape! Well between sweat, water from my bottles, and wind, it started to detach and again rub the inside of my legs (and created some nasty chafeage). For my next races I used electrical tape to reinforce the edges of the sticker to prevent seperation.

Then at my last triathlon, one my race belt's bungie attachment to the race # ripped the hole in the race #, so the race # was dangling by only one bungie attachment. Again, the race # was flopping in the wind hitting my leg while I ran. So for tomorrow, I reinforced the two holes in the race # and repoked new holes for the bungies to attach to.

Finally, other places that I have used electrical tape to shore up loose parts are around the velcro attachments to my aero bottle on my TT bars to prevent slippage, and used a piece each to attach the end of a Gu to the bike's frame (all you have to do is pull and the tab comes right off).

Didn't mean for this post to go so long, but I figured I would share the #1 tool trick that I learned from this season.