Brian's group - FULL (Page 3)

You are going to fall ... but no need to injure yourself while doing it.  If you find that you are not going to be able to unclip and will fall, remember to act like a turtle and keep your arms + legs in and bend your back.

Keep your hands on the handle bars with elbows bent (as well as your knees).  As you hit the pavement, try to continue a "roll" with your bike, that is clinched between your legs, coming up off the ground.

Lastly, laugh and smile to yourself as you will have joined the club that has more members than it can count.

Oooh, that is funny.

The last time I fell it was after I passed a friend on my brand new, shinny tri-bike out in the middle of no-where.  I had just adjusted the springs in the clips as they were too loose.

Well, at that point they were too tight b/c when I came to a stop sign I couldn't unclip for the life of me.

It took my friend forever to catch up the last 100 yds as he was dying with laughter.

My clipless falls have luckily been while not moving.  Most recently happended last year at a rest stop during a century ride with lots of witnesses. I unclipped one foot to put on the ground but then somehow I lost my balance and then fell over the other side. What's worse was that I scrached my new bike that I only had for a couple of weeks. I've seen it happen to the most seasoned cyclists in my tri club - it's a very big non-discriminatory club!

Good pace line tips. I was lucky enough to ride with a newbie group for a year where we learned all of those things. It's amazing how much faster you can go when being pulled along by someone else in front.

My suggestions:
1) Weekly mini-goals to help with our training. One of mine for this week is to be sure that I eat more protein. Post goal on Monday and then have a mid-week check in.
2) Weekly check-in to update the group on how things are going. Just a summary of stuff like the good, bad, ugly of training, time management, eating/weight loss, misc life's trials and tribulations... It may help us get to know and encourage eachother better.
3) Mini-challenges. There are all the many BT challenges over a month. Maybe we can set a weekly swim goal and have a friendly little competition to see who achieves their goal. 

Way to focus on T2 times ... easiest way to shave time off the board is T1 and T2.  If you are already focused on this, then I bet your t-times are already pretty good.

I've heard the urban legend about how a triathlete coming into T2 pulled their feet out of their shoes and got their toe severed by getting it caught in the wheel/chopped by a bladed spoke ... while I doubt the veracity of the story, I do think about that when I am tempting to try this.

Truth of the matter, though, is that I do not think that you gain that much time by being able to ride in barefoot - and goodness knows there are other things I can do to shave :10-:30 seconds off my transition times.

The key for me to improve my t-times is to minimize the amount of "stuff" in the transition area - bare essentials only (none of the "well, it'd be nice to have if I need it ...". 

If you look at the pros, their transition areas are bare to the bone. If you look at some of the AG'ers, it looks like a garage sale.

I was officiating a race last year when I had to stop someone from entering the transition area with a tow-along carrier full of junk for their transition area: a cooler, chair, big pan of water, duffel bag and so forth. 

We also routinely have to go through the transition area and ask folks to tidy-up/scale down the real estate they have staked out. There is a finite amount of space for everyone and when someone takes up too much space, it is at the detriment of another athlete.

As someone once told me: Less in the transition area = more time on the course

Great idea - let's start that Monday

Each of us should already be checking the other's logs - but may not have left a note/"inspire" to them know that we had dropped by ... please leave a note each time to let them know that you're rooting for them!

Another good one ... perhaps a two week challenge and we take turns picking the challenge.  Who wants to go first?  We'll start it on Monday ...

They also use elastic bands to rig up their shoes so that they can ride barefoot out of T1. Real triathlte bike shoes have straps that fold out to the outside so that they won't get caught in the bike wheel when they are loosened.

I was told by numerous triathletes in my club that it's safer to mount and dismount properly outside of a chaotic transition area where there will be many people coming and going (yep, both ways when the race has different distances and duathlons). The time saved by doing the barefoot thing is mere seconds. Unless you can do it in your sleep and under total control, then I wouldn't worry about it this early in your tri career. I imagine that it would take a whole lot of practice - time that I'd rather be training. I've seen mishaps occur as a newbie was having a hard time just getting up to speed and was swerving all over the place, into the paths of other cyclists, even elite cyclists doing their running dismount. Not pretty.

WU: warmup
MS: main set
CD: cooldown

Kim:

Yeah, another Kool Aid drinker  HR trainee . 

Here is a link to the first article about determining your HR zone: http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/cms/article-detail.asp?articleid=405 ... take a look and then let's discuss the questions here or in Triathlon Talk.

I got the CycleOps Fluid2 trainer off of e-Bay at the begining of the off-season ... there are a couple on there now for $215.00 delivered.

Bicycle wheels are generally 700's or 650's ... unless you are talking about a mountain bike wheel (if so, then we'd have to check).  Can you cut and paste the reference to the wheel size?  Not sure that the size of the wheel is a factor in that most trainers have a knob or some other mechanism in the back that either brings forward or lowers the rear unit fly-wheel from the tire.

If the trainer can accomodate both 24" and 26" sized rims, then one would think that the adjustable part of the fly wheel would accomodate the middling size.

Just to be sure, you might want to talk to your LBS about that prior to plunking down the Benjamins.

If your mountain bike has the typical knobby tires, then you will also want to have the tire changed to "slicks" (which are essentially the same tires but without the dirt grabbing knobs). Slicks typically cost >$15.00 (I've seen them at PerformanceBike.com for >$8.00 ea.)

All of that said, you might want to think about putting that $$$ towards a road bike.  You can get a decent road bike for ~$500.00 as bike stores are looking to clear out last year's models. (If you can find a 2005 model, so much the better - so long that it is even cheaper!) 

Don't get me wrong, you can use your mountain bike for triathlons (I did my first one on a heavy GT Avalanche 1.0) ... but you will enjoy riding your road bike training over the longer distances so much more. 

Note: also check Craigslist.com and do a search under "trainer" ... perhaps you can pick up a cheaper used one?