Razorxp & KC Mentor team RFP CLOSED (Page 21)

Wow, I'll repeat what someone said pages ago, if you miss a day with this group...tons to read.  Great advice from all! Keep it coming.

Tim-Thanks for explaining the Virtual partner, so it shows your cummulative "banked" time...so awesome!  I will try that tomorrow with my run.

Kevin-Now who is the show off! Beaches for me, but Greece and Italy for you.  lol Glad you are back safely.

Mary-Congrats on your fast bike pace. 18.9 is great! You go girl!

Peter-Great swim, remembering to breathe and not panic is a good thing, or so they tell me...

Keith-Congrats on your new bike! Enjoy your ride Friday and have fun kicking butt with your newly gained speed!

Heather-Sorry you are not feeling well.  Tim? Did you send her a virtual virus? lol

Charlie-I'll take some of your rain.  It is already getting freakin' hot here.

JenD-Glad to know your second OWS went better, inspiration for me.

As for me, I have my first Sprint Tri coming up soon, May 8.  I now wake up and realize I have been dreaming about the race, transitions, swimming etc. So if I have the same dream twice, does that count as doing a Olympic distance? lol

Off to bike for an hour, then go to the daughter's band concert. 

Great brick workout this morning.  Averaged over 18mph throught he wind, then a good 2 mile run in 15 mins.  I rode the course that we use for our local sprint, so I am excited to blow last year's times out of the water.

Heading out to a track meet tonight.  Hopefully the wind /rain/ storms will stay away for a few more hours.

Finished reading "Born to Run".  While it intrigues me a little to try out the Vibram Five Fingers, I was more taken with the message of those long distance runners smiling the whole way and enjoying the run.  I have tried to make that a focus this week.  Keeping in mind that I enjoy this, and even though IM training is becoming a part time job, i am going to keep enjoying it.

I would highly recommend friending Scott on Facebook as he has a never ending supply of daily quotes and comments that will help if you are looking for some inspiration. 

So I got my last hard run in this afternoon at lunch as I ran 4 miles at 9:00/mile race pace.  Legs were a little tight but I chalk that up to not running much the past two weeks.  Overall I felt good and think I am ready for the race.  I am gonna do an easy 20 minute run on Thursday and 15 minute easy on Friday.  I am actualyl looking forward to this being over so I can focus on triathlon again.

Speaking of which I am finally finished with my bike.  I have managed to take a $200 bike off of Craigs list and turn into at least a $250 triathlon bike -haha  Here is what I did to it on my crash course bike mechanics lesson this winter:

Installed time trial handle bars with aero bars, installed bar end shifters, replaced old bottom bracket with new sealed BB cartridge, replaced bike seat post with Profile Design Fast Forward Seat, installed new adjustable stem and did an overall clean and grease.

(Tims-bike1.jpg)

Hi everyone!  Glad to hear everyone had a great Easter weekend and kept up with all the training.  I had a 10K on Saturday and then an easy 1:30 spin on Sunday.  My first ride outdoors.  Went on the lakefront path, which was a little chilly...winds were rough coming back but I got the feeling back in my toes halfway home. Ha!

I was supposed to do some interval work on the bike this am but the hotel gym only had 2 recumbents (sp?) so I just did an interval run instead.  Gotta watch the Hawks tonight so I got my workout in early!

Jen - I'm with you on the swimming.  I really suck at it.  I think I just need more time in the pool and hopefully I'll get better.  My trouble is with the breathing.  I'll do a couple laps and then feel like I can't get in enough air so I'll stop in the middle of the pool to catch my breath.  Luckily I've only been swimming either by myself or with my training group.  I'd like to start swimming more, and with a masters group, but a little nervous since I'm pretty slow.  But I try to remember to "just keep swimming..." 

KC - so glad to hear your mom is out of the hospital!

Coach - the 405 is great so far.  I'll have to check out the virtual partner that tmoran was raving about.  The bezel function is ok so far.  I've only used it in a few workouts.  I work as a software consultant, hence the reason for all the travel.  It should die down after this week b/c we hit a major milestone yesterday getting the design document signed off by the directors.  I can do the system configuration and development from home 

So I've been thinking about getting a new bike too.  I'm currently on a Trek 1.2.  Nothing fancy.  I got it not knowing whether or not biking/racing would be something that I would stick with.  Now that I'm hooked, I'm looking at upgrading to a nicer ride.  I'm torn between the following so any advice would be helpful. 

1) Look 566 with Ultegra groupset

2) Look 586 with Ultegra groupset

3) Look 586 with 105 groupset

There's about a $300 difference between 2 & 3.  And I'd prefer the 586 only b/c it's slightly more geared towards racing.  I'm opting against a tri bike only b/c I do road racing as well so the road bike with aeros would be more versatile for me.  I did read comments on not being an optimal racing position (aero on road bike).  Maybe someday I'll splurge and get a tri bike too!

Anywho, gotta run and get some coffee before my next meeting.  Oh, btw, a friend of mine won a sweepstakes put on by Lava magazine.  She won an all expensive paid trip (4 nights, roundtrip airfare) AND entry into the inaugural Pays D'Aix.  You can read her story here:  http://lavamagazine.com/features/lava-talks-we-have-a-winner#axzz1KeGwgJUS  How friggin cool is that?  Talk about motivation to pick up your training!

Have a great day everyone!

sarah

Virtual virus, lol! 

Thanks, Deb.  I'm so sorry to hear about your brother.  Stories like yours definitely affirms the donation.  Honestly though, I'd bet all of you would do the same given the opportunity. So it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.  Anyway, thanks for sharing.

Here I go!  I'm going to try to post my bike pic!  Rode it to the next house over and can't beleive how easy it is to pedal compared to my other one!

 Didn't work!   I'll try again later.

Try number 2.

It won't let me do it!  Says the picture is to big, and I don't know how to reduce the resolution... 

Hey Team.

I hope everyone had a great day.

Karen - I am pumped for you, a race on May 8th - Awesome

Tim - good luck this weekend. Nice to hear you are confident & feeling good. Fantastic work on the Bike - how the hell did you figure out how to do all that stuff. It looks great. Are you for hire? LOL

Sarah - Thanks and good luck with the possible bike purschase, it sounds like you know what you are doing. Congrats on working things out to spend more time at home working. That is great.

Jen - you are right, we have some great swimmer in here.

Coach - you are the reason I am not ready to join a Masters swim program yet - you are way to good for me LOL. Just kidding, I am going to look at doing it for sure.

Keith - looking foward to the Bike pics.

Have a great night everyone.

KC 

Keith, you are going to probably have to shrink the size of the picture - has to be 100 kb or smaller.

It worked!

(100_0432.jpg)

NICE Ride!!!!! And you will do great this weekend!

My only advice is the buy the bike you think you will want in the future if you can financially, I made the mistake of buying a bike that I settled for and ended up with that bike then 1 year later bought the bike I actually wanted.   Also ride as many bikes as you can to see what one fits you the best.  For the group sets at our level they say there is not much difference.  My Kuota has 105/ultegra and my cervelo is all DA, to be honest I don't see one bit of difference.

If your looking for a road/tri bike I believe the p2c is UCI race legal without aero bars.

Real funny!! LOL  I can't wait to race you for some full contact swimming for that comment!! :-)

OK - but we are playing golf after so I have a chance to get you back on the course - only we are playing non-contact golf!

+1    

Keith - nice bike.

Tim - you're going to kick A$$. Cant wait to hear how it goes.

KC - lots of great videos on You Tube for doing all the work you could imagine on your bike.  I also bugged the crap out the guy at my LBS.  The biggest motivation was that there was NO WAY my wife would let me drop serious money on a bike so I had to make due with what i had.  Just shopped around on Ebay and Amazon.  At least this year I will not be embarrassed to show up with my bike - haha

Nice bike build Tim!  You rock.

Nice bike Keith.

Ditto on coach's remarks.  Ride the bikes, fall in love with one and buy it.  The components aren't that much diffferent.  DA is just chromed Ultegra for ALOT more money.  Ultegra and 105 the difference is weight, a few ounces.  Properly tuned 105s are just as good, but if you have the money Ultegra is nice.  I have bikes with DA (bike build from eBay got cheap), Ultegra (favorite), 105s (work just fine), and SRAM force/Red (on my TT bike and just great.)  The key is maintenance.  Keep things clean and oiled and adjusted properly (adjusting shifters is really simple).

Easy bike week, normal swim, running 8 tonight with the club.