Resurecting the Wheels

Shifing Gears

Before moving to Seattle in Jan. 1998, I was really into mountain biking in the desert of Arizona. After moving to the Seattle area, I mountain biked a few times but pretty much gave it up short of riding to work occasionally. I sold my mountain bike around a year later and haven’t really ridden since.

By about 2003 I started getting the itch to start riding again and by 2004 I was shopping for bikes. Here in the Seattle area, particularly where I live in Redmond, road bikes reign supreme. I really had no interest in road riding before. It seems so bla..just sit and spin. Certainly not as exciting as the constant changing terrain of mountain biking, which I still love, but I’m just not crazy about doing it out here in the Pacific Northwest. That’s another story though. For various reasons I decided to get a road bike anyway. Mostly I think I will have more ride opportunities and there is certainly no shortage of organized rides in this area. It started to sound pretty fun.

Resurecting the Wheels

I shopped for quite a while and settled on a 2004 Giant TCR Composite 2 . Several factors influenced my decision. First, I love composites. I worked for a short time in the composites industry in another life so I know what they are capable of. Another reason is that I’m a tech junkie and a composite bikes impress me. I thought about whether I needed this much bike. I could have gotten something much less expensive but I just didn’t want to be able to blame the bike for my poor performance. I seriously considered the next model up mostly because it had composite cranks but I prefer yellow over blue, and I love how these spokes are laced. The blue one had more traditionally spoked wheels even though they are better. Another reason I chose this particular one is that the bike shop had my size (important!) and the one they had at the time was a special edition ONCE frame which had a matte finish. I love matte finish. To top it all off, it was on end-of-the-year clearance all for $1800 out the door. All last year I was shopping it was tagged for $1995 + tax so it was a sweet deal.

So far, I’ve only been riding to work and back which is only about 11 miles round trip. The first day…ugh! My butt really hurt and I struggled. I could not believe how out of shape I was. But by the second ride, I was amazed how quickly your body adjusts and it was so much easier.

I’ve always had clipless pedals on my mountain bikes and this bike came with Time Impact pedals. I still had my old moutain bike shoes but the cleats are totally incompatible. I needed get a new pair of shoes that are road specific. I tried on every shoe in the store and walked out with some Shimano SH-R151 shoes. A secure fit was the most important thing I was looking for. These have a carbon sole so that is pretty nice and makes them nice and stiff.

King of the Hill

So the reason that was inspired to write this entry is today I hit a small milestone. Every time I ride I try to hit some kind of milestone whether it be higher top speed, higher average speed etc. So, there is this hill on 40th street that starts on 140th Ave NE and completes at 148th Ave NE. Now being out of shape I could not make it up this hill without stopping! The first day, I walked half of it which is really hard in road shoes! Well, today I made it all the way to the top without stopping. In fact, I made the entire ride to work without stopping while also hitting the highest average speed to date. It doesn’t sound like much but I was pretty irritated with myself that I could not climb this hill. Every ride that hill would challenge me and laugh at me every time I was defeated. Well, hill, put that in your pipe and smoke it.