left.right.repeat group -closed - Full of a bunch of winners...YEAH! (Page 210)

Hello everyone! I feel honored to join the "cool kids" group here on BT. I am a 34 year old school teacher from upstate NY. I made a bet with myself that I would run the Boilermaker 15k before I had a baby. Well, I ran the race on July 9 and my baby was born on July 27!!! Now I need a new goal for next year.  I just bought an old Trek off of a local rider and have started training/dropping weight for next season.

 John

Ok John, I am confused?  "You" had a baby and now you need a new goal?  Don't you think that the fact that you had a baby is good enough goal for any man?  I personally think its pretty awesome!!!!

Ok, I had to do it, you know everyone expected a smart @$$ comment, now you have it.

More seriously, welcome to our madness!

Hired my coach for next years Ironman, Louisville again, going for the sub 13 time.  We are meeting Tuesday night to iron out my races for next year and plan out my off season training plans.  My wife and I just got the man cave ready for the winter biking plan.  Actually very excited to get ready for IMLOU!

Also, I expect everyone that hasn't done it, to go to my albums and click on "ironman trophy", look at my grandson's pictures and tell me how good he looks, especially you Ruskie!

Billy

John, Welcome!  You can ignore Billy, he evidently ran short on some of his medicine this week

Billy, already checked out the pics, very cute!  Congrats again. 

With family here its been hard to get workouts in but managed.  Back to it this week.  A local trainer and our local Fleet feet started a new Sprint Tri and its one month before NOLA.  Was looking for a good warm up race but the usual one is 2.5 hrs away and this one is less than one hour away. 

Later.

Hi everyone - hope y'all had a nice Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday!

As I said I would, I've been checking in on the discussion thread every so often. Have been particularly interested in the goings on of our recent VillageIron People. Well done B-man and Amy - you are both amazing examples to us all!

Nice to see new members joining LRR!

Bryan sent me a FB message asking about my racing plans in 2012. I sent a response saying not sure but I committed to him and I am repeating that commitment to y'all that I WILL do at least one tri in 2012. After almost completely neglecting all swim, bike, run activities for the past year I am back into a bit of a groove - able to run without the calf pain I'd been experiencing for 5k. While not yet set in, winter is fast approaching so my bike is in the basement ready to be placed on the trainer and I will be starting back to the pool soon.

In other news, I have been taking piping lessons (as in bagpiping!) for a little over a year and after some good progress I seemed to plateau and got frustrated but I have recently made a bit of a breakthrough and so I have renewed hope that in 6-12 months I will be capable enough to play with the entry level pipe band here in Fredericton. No doubt there will be some members of the LRR collective who will wish to offer snide comments (funny how the pipes stir strong emotional response!) - bring it on, I can take it

And while I'm on the subject - don't forget that Wednesday is the Feast of St. Andrews, patron saint of Scotland and the Scottish diaspora. I will be proudly wearing my kilt that day! Hope those of you with scottish anscestry will be observing the day and for those who are not scottish - perhaps salute us with a wee dram of whisky!

Oh Bryan...add another finish line. I did a 5 mile turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. 53 minutes. Not bad for not having run in a year!!!!

PETE!!!!!!! Miss seeing your posts. Ill sip whiskey anytime too You will do a tri next year. FOR SURE OR WE WILL HAUNT  you!!!!

Freddy!!! Glad to hear you back at it.  Actually there are a couple of tunes that sound great on bag pipes so if you could record Amazing Grace I would love it.

Mav - congrats on the 5 miler!!!!

Lena - sorry, I just could not resist responding (yep, Gary has an opinion on everything).  Granted I have not done a full IM just the swim and the bike on an IM but I did it on a 1998 QR Tequilo (the bike portion of course!).   For $3K-4K you can get yourself one heck of a bike (even better used) but I would suggest buying a Cervelo P2C, QR Lucero or CD0.1 or similar, etc slightly used and use the left over money to buy better wheels or a PowerTap, etc.  I think you deserve a better bike, just spend wisely and get all of the bling!

I bought my Seduza used for $1K and would not hesitate to do an IM on it (which I will do once the kids leave the nest).

Wait a minute Gary, you "wouldn't hesitate to do and Ironman on it"?  I signed up for Louisville last night, what are you waiting for?

Your friend, Billy

Billy, would love to but committed to the missus that I would hold off on that until the kids were a little more on their own.  So probably a couple of years out at least.  I figure when my son starts driving (2.5 yrs out) I can start the required training.  Until then 70.3 is as far as I go unless I do another relay.

Yeah, I know but sometimes I have to remind myself.  I have Kona recorded and everytime I watch it I want to do a full. 

Lena - my sorry was more a joke than anything.  You can get a great bike for ~$2k and use the extra cash for the bling.  When new models come out you can usually pick up last years models at good prices.  Used works great if you know your size for that brand of bike, expect to have to take it in to the LBS for a tune-up but you will come out way ahead. 

Bike question? Ok, here's my answer.  Why buy new when used will do?  I use this in buying cars, boats, bikes, women......No, wait, thats another thread.  Bought my Kuoto off craigs list.  Paid about 1/3 what a new bike would have cost.  I did kind of know what size I was looking for and so do you.  Just don't buy the first thing you look at, just because.  Shop around and look at several.  You already said you were loking for a couple of years out before your ironman.  I have added some stuff to my bike and repaired some stuff as well, but bet that would have been the same with a brand new off the rack bike as well.

They say that the median income for an ironman triathlete is 160,000.00.  Those are the ones that can afford the newest and greatest bikes, but, it still all comes down to the one most important thing........are you ready for it.........here it comes.....  THE MOTOR.  Ihave passed a lot of 5000 dollar bikes in my tri's and have been passed by some pretty inexpensive bikes as well. 

So, I say all of that to actually say this, If you want to by a new bike, and are willing to save up for 3 years to get one, great do it, if you want a good bike and still have some cash in your hand for the bling (which you are still going to want to buy with a new bike), find a good used bike and smoke someone on their new Specilized Shieve.

On another note, I met with my new coach last night, very excited about Louisville!

Billy Out!

Woohoo!!! SC7 was on my list when bike shopping.  Sweet bike.

Lena - the bikes I was looking at before I bought my Seduza was: QR Seduza, QR CD0.1, SC7 and the P2C. For two reasons, I knew they would fit me and I had LBS' nearby that sold them so I knew (assumed) there were trained mechanics nearby.

I looked at a couple of great used bikes before switching to new bike.  The bike is such a screamer of a deal. It is offered used on ebay and craigslist and BT, within a couple of dead presidents of new price on sale.  When it came up on sale at my LBS I was hooked in.  But I've been looking at bikes for about six months. 

When I'm looking at used versus new I need to ask does the used bike fit?  Beyond has it be crashed.  Which is important dealing with Carbon.  You need to know, have there been modifications to the bike to make it fit the previous owner that are going to make it harder to adjust it to fit me?  One bike I was looking at had the steer tube cut off after removing spacers to lower the bars.  That made it really hard to raise the bars up without replacing the forks.  Another had cut the areo bar extensions.  That was really hard to figure out because the he had done a really good job with bar tape hiding the modification.  Just could not make the extensions fit my hands.  I have an expectation on what profile design T2 bars feel like and these just felt wrong.  Now extensions are easy to replace but how many things are you willing to replace to make the bike fit.

Bottom line - there are several really nice bikes in the low 2k range.  Find one that excites you and fits because you're going to be spending a lot of time together.   I would recommend you put the SC7 WSP on your list of bike to look at.

Cheers.