Shipping a bicycle that’s worth $5-10K can be a bit nerve-wracking. While companies like TriBike Transport can ship your bike for you to many events, that only works when you’re going to an event that TriBike ships to. If you’re going to an event that isn’t covered, or you’re not going to an event–just traveling, then you have to deal with the cost and regulations of shipping with the airlines. That can be expensive and a hassle (whereas TriBike Transport is just expensive), but if you’re shipping your bike with Delta Airlines it can get even worse. Check out the video.

Delta’s website states that “your bike must be packaged in a cardboard or canvas container”. I guess James’ mistake was to ignore Delta’s bike shipping advice and pack his bike in a heavy-duty, specialized container made for shipping bikes on airplanes. If his bike had been in cardboard or canvas I’m sure it would have been just fine.

I got my tri-bike last week, a Quintana Roo Seduza. The same as on that page except that mine is a 2009…wait, no, it must be a 2010 because I paid the same price as what’s on that webpage…either that, or they were charging the same price for a 2009 as a 2010, or they discounted the price of the 2009 model over the weekend right after I bought mine…hmm, will have to look into that.

Anyway, I took it out for the first time on Saturday. Ok, that sentence doesn’t quite explain things. When I say “I took it out” what I mean is that I took it out four times. The first three times, I felt something wasn’t right and turned around and went back home to make adjustments to the seat height, position, etc. Finally it felt pretty good, so I kept on riding.

A few observations for those who are used to road bikes and who are transitioning to a tri-bike for the first time:

1. Tri-bikes are unstable, compared to a road bike. On my road bike I’m very comfortable riding without hands while I get my drink from the cage behind my behind, drinking, and putting the bottle back. Not so on this tri-bike. I never felt confident enough to take more than one hand off the handlebars.

2. I couldn’t see! When in the aero position, I could life my head high enough to get a complete look at the road, but only for a few seconds before my neck couldn’t take it anymore. Plus my non-aero helmet was getting in the way of my vision, and my non-biking sunglasses were slipping down on my nose and also obscuring my vision. I was never comfortable, but there was a position I could at least hold for a while, but it only allowed me to see 15-20 feet in front of me, which is kind of scary when you’re going 40 mph down a hill. In other words, the right helmet and the right glasses make a difference.

3. The shifters are in the middle. This hasn’t been too bad to get used to, but it is hard to use the shifters if you’re not in the aero position.

4. Your shoulders are going to hurt. The aero position on a tri-bike is very different from the aero position on a road bike with clip-ons. It felt completely wrong to me, and I had to call Te Koi to get verification that I was indeed not riding a bike that was completely improperly fit to to me.

5. The saddle. Being in the aero position means you’re on the saddle in a different way than on a road bike, and I felt it. Whew.

I’ve got less than two weeks before the Boise half-Ironman in which to get used to the bike and make sure everything is in working order. Should be fun times.

I guess you know a bike company is doing something right when they’re all sold out of the bike you want by April. The snow has just melted, and the Scott tri-bike I had my eyes on (a 56″ Plasma 20) is all sold out. Not just at PowerTri, through whom I was going to get it, but at Scott. The Plasma 10′s in 56″ are all gone too. Guess I should have moved a little faster.

Well hot dang, it’s 32 degrees outside right now. At this same time a few days ago it was above 60 degrees. Perhaps we’ll see another few days of warmth before the full winter sets in, but based on the 10-day forecast I’m not counting on it. Between the cold and the darker mornings, I figured it was time to get a good biking jacket that would not only keep me warm, but make me a bit more visible as well.

I didn’t bike outside through the last winter, but I did during the winter before that. When it was in the low 30s I would wear the following:

• Waterproof/windproof biking tights (can’t remember the brand offhand)
• Biking shorts
• Specialized toe covers
• Thick socks
• Nike polyester turtleneck long sleeve shirt
• Specialized biking windbreaker (all black with some small reflective areas, no insulation)
• Gloves
• Face/head thing that only exposed my eyes–no insulation, just a windbreaker

Although this outfit had virtually no insulation, I stayed warm enough to do 2-3 hour long rides in 33-38 degree weather. I don’t like biking in sub-freezing weather mostly because I’m afraid of ice on the roads, especially a thin layer of ice dust that might be invisible to the eye but be slippery just the same.

The problem with the above outfit was that it was virtually all black, even accounting for the reflective areas on the windbreaker. It just isn’t the safest outfit to wear in low-light conditions, such as early winter mornings.

I had seen people biking with bright yellow fluorescent clothing on, so when I saw the Louis Garneau Gemini 2 Cycling Jacket at PowerTri (not on the website at the moment, but it’s in the retail store and you can call them to order it) I thought that was it. After trying it on I was sold. The jacket fits me perfectly (a little tight, but I’m losing a few lbs per month at the moment so I’ll shrink into it), and the best thing is that as you bend forward into an aero position on your bike the jacket doesn’t hamper you or get bunched up anywhere. The elbows and shoulders flex and stretch such that you almost don’t feel it at all.

One note: The yellow on the jacket is indeed fluorescent yellow although it doesn’t look like it on the image that Amazon.com has.

The other nice thing about the jacket is that it does have some insulation. Although I said I was plenty warm in my windbreaker with a polyester undershirt, I only mean that I could maintain my body temperature above the range of going into hypothermia, and that nothing went numb. But whenever I would get home my chest and stomach would be bright red from the cold, and if you touched my skin it felt like ice. I myself didn’t feel cold, but my skin was definitely being exposed to a lot of cold. The Louis Garneau jacket has insulation so I’m hoping to avoid some of that cold exposure. Maybe only after using it through this winter will I know what I was missing out on.

The other nice thing is that the jacket appears to breathe really well, which is great because of course you don’t want to get a ton of sweat buildup in your clothing when the temperatures are close to freezing.

The one area of improvement I have noticed is that there isn’t much yellow or white on the back of the jacket. There’s quite a bit more than on my all-black Specialized windbreaker, but it would be nice to have more yellow on the back, perhaps with some more reflective strips or something to make the rider more visible.

Did anybody else read The Three Investigators book series when they were a kid?

Anyway, my right knee has been clicking when I ride my bike. Or maybe it’s popping. Whatever you want to call it, it makes a noise and feels weird, but it doesn’t hurt. Just the same, it’s the type of thing I worry about, because it certainly isn’t normal and seems like it could be a bad thing.

My memory could be faulty, but I don’t think it’s ever happened before. Ok, my memory is coming back quickly, actually I think it has happened before. But if I remember correctly, it would click 2-3 times when I started biking, and then would go away for the rest of the ride. And it wouldn’t always happen when I biked, just occasionally. But now it happens virtually ever time I bike, and it’s not just as the beginning, but happens several times during each ride. I’ll be riding along and all of a sudden my right knee will start popping/clicking as it reaches the top of the rotation and I start pressing down.

I’ve experimented a few times, and although I haven’t been as scientifically observant as I could be (don’t blame me, it’s the ADD), I think the degree to which I allow my knee to stray away from the bike affects it. That is, if I keep my knee tucked close to the bike frame throughout the rotation, it seems to pop less, although it still does sometimes. If I let my knee get lazy and stray away from the bike it pops more. If so, this seems to be a good thing since my knee should be close to the frame, but since it still happens occasionally regardless of my knee’s horizontal position, I would still like to figure out what’s going on.

Once again, there is absolutely no pain. I wouldn’t even say it’s uncomfortable. It’s only concerning, because it’s hard for me to believe I could be making so much noise and feel such a powerful pop in my knee and have it not be a bad thing for it to be happening repeatedly.

I found this answer on Trifuel.com to a similar query:

The most likely cause of these symptoms is ‘snapping’ of your hamstrings tendon. There are several which run to the lateral (outside) and medial (inside) aspects of the knee. Occasionally these will snap over the tibia medially or the fibula laterally and cause a mechanical snap. Usually this is not painful but can be annoying. If it occurs over many repetitions it can cause inflammation over the tendon fat pads behind the knee. Often if you “rotate’ your knee slightly, ie turn the foot in or out the feeling will go away. Stretching helps.

I have wondered if my saddle was too low, but I adjusted it upwards and that didn’t fix it. But perhaps a slight adjustment of my shoe would do the trick. Perhaps more experimentation is in order…or, let’s call the physical therapist…one sec…

Ok, here’s what Jonathan at Orrock-Mendenhall in Lehi had to say–the bottom line was there’s no urgent need for me to check myself into immediate care. He said I should make sure my knee cap is nice and loose, meaning I should be doing plenty of quad and IT band stretches. He said to keep an eye on it and if it doesn’t improve over time, then I should come in and have it checked out so that they can see where my muscles/ligaments/tendons/etc. are tight and what may be causing it. So I’m going to keep on doing and expect different results in the future. Insanity? I think not.

The last week has been full of instances in which reality misbehaves. First, I lost the keys to my roof rack for my bike–I think I left them on the roof of the car after unlocking my bike, forgot to lock it, and then drove off leaving the keys somewhere on the road in the Sandy/Draper area of Utah. Then the swim for the Daybreak triathlon was canceled, after all my preparation and my excitement to see what I could do (the swim is the only portion you can really compare from one triathlon to the next since the “course” doesn’t change much). Then I got a nice blister that turned into raw meat during the triathlon, even though I’ve never had a blister before from triathlon–ever. Yesterday, I went to the gym and was supposed to do a swim-bike brick, but after my swim I realized I had forgotten my bike helmet, meaning I had to drive home and then bike, which meant I wouldn’t get to do my stretching in the hot tub at the gym since I didn’t want to drive back there again. Then, as I was driving away from the gym and turning onto the street I heard a bump, and a bang, and another bump, and I had visions of my brand-new, carbon-fiber road bike falling off the roof of my car into the road and getting run over by one of the many construction trucks driving around that area. Thankfully it wasn’t that bad, it was just my Polar bottle I had left on the roof rolling off and then getting run over by the rear wheel of my car. No big deal, except that I loved that bottle. It’s insulated so my drink stays cold. It’s only $12.99 for another one at Canyon Bicycles (I need to get two after losing my other one two years ago on a bike ride), but I’ve got more pressing needs. Maybe I should set up one of those Paypal donation pages so people can donate to the Buy Josh Two New Polar Bottles Fund. There’s a free idea for someone–develop a Facebook app that allows people to quickly and easily set up a donation form and share it with friends on Facebook. The processing would all be handled through the app, so the person setting up the form wouldn’t need to set up a merchant account or Paypal account or anything.

Anyway, all of that was just leading up to today. Here was today’s workout assignment:

Steady, moderate effort
Type: Bike
Planned duration: 1:15
Planned distance: 0.0 miles
Ride on a flat to gently rolling course. Get at least 50% of ride time in 2 zone. Avoid 3-5 zones. Keep the 2-zone effort steady and continuous.

Workout #2: No zone 3 or above.
Type: Run
Planned duration: 0:30
Planned distance: 0.0 miles
Heart rate zone 1-2 on gently rolling course. NO zone 3. Walk hills, if necessary, to hold heart rate down.
Brick workout, fast transitions. Will br a tough workout, take in a couple hundred calories on the bike and don’t go out too hard on the bike.

As I mentioned, I like to stretch in the hot tub at the gym plus there’s a nice, flat running trail by the gym and where I live is a bit hilly, so even though I didn’t need to go to the gym, per se, since I could ride and run around my house, I drove there with my bike to ride and run around the gym area, then stretch, then shower and come home.

I was a mile into my ride when I heard something tic-tic-ticking on my front tire. I saw something light-colored whizzing around the wheel, so I quickly stopped. Sure enough, it was one of those thorns. I don’t know what plant or tree these thorns come from, but I’ve sure had a lot of them stuck in my shoes over the years, and if you happen to step on one with bare feet–boy howdy, they hurt.

I pulled out the thorn and then listened for the telltale blast of air telling me I was on my way to a flat tire. But I didn’t hear any air and couldn’t feel any coming from where the thorn was. The tire felt just as firm as ever, so I concluded I had thwarted the thorn’s attempt to get me. I was a thorn in the thorn’s side, which happened to have stuck in the side of my tire, rather than the middle, otherwise I would have been stuck with a flat for sure. Well, lucky me.

I went on my merry way, and about a mile later heard the sound of a flat tire rolling under a bike rim. Oh no! It did get me after all! But wait, my front tire looked fine. I looked at my back tire and sure enough, it was totally flat. Argh. And stuck in it was a big thorn. Apparently the thorn had caught up with me and took its revenge.

Now, the thing is…I hadn’t changed a bike tire in over two years. You see, the first day I ever rode my first road bike I got two flats…or maybe it was the first week. Anyway, very early on I got two flat, and then I never got a flat ever again until today. So I wasn’t exactly up on my tire-changing techniques. And it was the rear tire, which means getting my hands all dirty from the gears and such. Nevertheless, I dug in with gusto, thinking about how much more calm and controlled I was than Normann Stadler in Kona ’05.

Now wait…do I tuck the tube into the tire, or into the rim? Shouldn’t I have more than one of these red plastic thingies? Am I supposed to inflate the tire a little to help me get it in position and prevent pinches? Seems like somebody told me that once…ok, let’s inflate it a little. Ah, my trusty new Co2 inflater-thingy. Let’s put it on the stem of the new tube…nothing. How’s this thing work? My last one had a trigger on it…how do I activate this one? Did I not screw the Co2 cartridge on it hard enough? Maybe it’s screwed on too hard, let’s loosen it a little…no wait, I’m losing the air from it now, screw it back in! Ok, there’s no air going into the tire…maybe there’s dirt in the Co2 thingy…it was facing up before on my carbon wing, maybe some mud got in it or something. Let’s dig in it with an Allen wrench…yeah, there is some dirt in there, although no much. Would that really prevent all the pressure from the Co2 cartridge from getting out? Maybe…hmmm, I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should walk up to that gas station, but I don’t think the air there will fit on the long stem of this bike tube. Well, I probably should take this Co2 cartridge off the thingy…ok, all the air’s gone. Hey, I can press part of this Co2 adapter thingy…ah! That’s how it works!

Now that I had wasted one of my two threaded Co2 cartridges (retail price $3.45 apiece) I knew how the dispenser, or whatever you call that thing, worked and I could inflate my tire. I did so, put my tire back on, and started riding again.

I reached my halfway point of 35 minutes or so, and started back towards the gym. As I came down a winding side street, I heard a “whoosh!” sound and suddenly my front tire went flat. Argh! I had another spare tube, but no more Co2 cartridges!

I started walking down the road, in my bike shoes, but realized I was probably a mile or more away from the nearest gas station. I was in a residential area, with nothing around but houses. Should I knock on a door and ask if they have a bike pump? Would their pump fit the stem of my tube? I didn’t think so, unless they were a biker. I decided to call Te Koi. I knew he was at work, but hey, work can always be blown off to help a friend in need, right?

It was a bit more iffy than that, but Te Koi agreed to bring me a Co2 cartridge to fill up my other spare. I decided to get my new tube in so that I could quickly fill up and get going once he got there. I decided to examine my tire some more, and as I did I noticed there were a lot of thorns broken off and embedded in my tire. I started picking them out, and picked out well over 10 thorns. I then decided to check my back tire. I didn’t find so many there, but I did find one that was pretty well buried, and since the tire was inflated, it was harder to get the thorn out since I couldn’t bend or maneuver the tire to expose the end of the thorn so that I could grab it with my fingernails.

I thought that maybe I could press right next to the thorn with the point of my Phillips-head screwdriver and expose the end so I could grab it. As I pressed next to the head of the thorn, I heard the squeak of rubber against metal. The squeak that meant the rubber was adjusting in size…this wasn’t good. Did I just flatten my back tire too? I pushed on the tire and it was firm. Ok, maybe I imagined that noise. Maybe it was a bird, or a car driving by.

A woman with a kid in the car and a bike rack on the roof of her VW Passat wagon stopped. “Do you need a ride?”

“Nice try lady, I’m married, and you’ve got a kid. What kind of shenanigans are you trying to pull?” was what I should have answered back, but I just said “Thanks so much for stopping, but my friend is on the way.”

Te Koi arrived, and I felt the back tire again. Totally flat. Argh. At that point I knew I wasn’t going to be doing any more riding today. It was 45 minutes before I was on my run. I had only ridden for 45 minutes instead of 1:15, and my transition from bike to run had taken about an hour.

So, it’s been a challenging few days, in minor ways. But even though these are relatively minor things, it’s easy to get down about them. I was really pretty bummed about that triathlon swim being canceled. But at some point so many things happen that I just have to take a step back and laugh at the chaos. Sometimes the “endurance” part of an endurance sport like triathlon isn’t the swim, bike, and run themselves, but everything else you have to do just to be able to swim, bike, and run.

Thanks to Te Koi for taking time off work to get me back to my workout. I’m not sure who I would have been able to call next.

Nobody is born doing triathlons, and so most of us remember hearing someone say “I’m going to do a brick tomorrow” and thinking “Wha…?” But of course we’re too embarrassed to ask “What’s a brick?” and so we go on the Internets and use the Google to try and figure it out. Well, here you are, and here’s what it is.

A brick, in triathlon termage, is when you do two disciplines in your training, back to back. In other words, you ride your bike, then you jump off and do a run immediately afterward. That’s a brick. If you jump out of the swimming pool and onto your bike, then that would also be a brick workout. But most commonly, when someone says they are doing a brick they mean they’re going to do a bike-run combo workout.

Generally when you do a brick you want to transition as quickly as possible from your bike to your run, because that’s what you’re be doing in the real event, and we’re trying to simulate that. I bike out of my garage, and so I’ll leave my running shoes where I park my bike in the garage so that I can quickly take off my bike-specific gear, put my running shoes on, and be back outside running with minimal downtime. If you take 10 minutes to transition from your bike to your run then you’re missing out on the immensely pleasurable feeling of taking off running while your legs are still hurting and wobbly from the bike ride. I used to leave my running shoes outside so I could just dump my bike on the lawn and be off running real quick, but since getting my new carbon frame bike I don’t think I’ll be “dumping” my bike anywhere, especially not anywhere outside.

Why is it called a brick?

Shawn Hardy says it’s because your legs feel like bricks when you start running right after the bike workout. Rhonda Cohen says the same thing, so I think that means it’s a fact. Good enough fact checking for the New York Times, anyway, right?

It’s true, when you get off that bike and get to running, your legs will feel like lead, jelly, bricks, or whatever other metaphor you want to come up with. Suffice it to say they won’t feel like moving. But don’t worry, that feeling usually goes away after a minute or two of running, and then you’ll feel fine. Unless you overdid it on the bike, in which case it will just get worse and worse until you vomit, everything turns black, and you wake up with an IV in your arm and somebody telling you you’re out of the race. Ok, that probably won’t happen during your training. If this happens while you’re training then you’ll just lie on the side of the road until you wake up with somebody fiddling in your pockets looking for your wallet.

Well, I just got back from my first real bike ride in a year. The new bike is really, really nice. It’s a road bike, not a tri bike (I’ll be getting that next year). It’s a carbon frame, and really solid and quiet. Quite the nice ride.

Due to this mornings shenanigans with getting the bike all ready to go, I didn’t leave until around noon, and so the ride was in 95-100 degree weather the whole way and although I was only supposed to go out for one hour per my coach’s instructions I ended up going a little far and my ride ended up being 1:47. I drank four 20 oz bottles and had two Gus, so I was definitely losing liquids, but I felt great the whole way, despite my legs and nether regions being a bit soft. Can’t wait to toughen up a little and start doing longer rides.

Why all the bike gear reviews all of a sudden? Because I just got my bike the other day and I’m putting all the accessories on it. I’ll post a photo of it all once I’m done, but right now I’m trying to get out on a bike ride!

One of the accessories I just put on is the Xlab Tire Bag. Fortunately, this was pretty easy to figure out compared to the Xlab Carbon Wing and the Xlab Mini Top Bag (ok, I guess the Mini Top Bag wasn’t that bad either). So I don’t have any sort of diatribe to launch into, nor any suggestions as of yet for how to make it or the installation instructions better. It’s a pretty simple bag. What I like about it is that it’s big. I can fit two spare tubes and some tools in the one large pocket and I still have room to spare. Then, on the bottom is another smaller pocket I can put stuff in. It really is pretty roomy, and of course it has all been tested in a wind tunnel along with the Carbon Wing so even though it’s as large as it is, I’m confident I’m still minimizing drag over any other option (other than not having it at all, perhaps). Not that drag from bike accessories is my main problem, seeing as how I’m still 30 lbs from my target weight. You want to talk about drag and my gut is the first thing we should be talking about.

But on that front I’ve got good news as well, which is that I was under 210 lbs today for the first time in…well, a long time. A very long time.

There’s not  much to say about the Xlab Mini Top Bag, I mean, it’s a little nylon bag with a zipper, right? But I think I did find out a little trick about getting it secure on your bike. Ok, maybe it’s not a trick, I mean, I think this is the way it’s supposed to work, but it was a little tricky getting it to work, especially since the Xlab website doesn’t have any sort of instructions on how it fits on things. I think it’s fairly straightforward if you’re putting it on a saddle, but a little tricky if you’re putting it on an Xlab Carbon Wing, as I just did.

The Xlab Mini Top Bag has three velcro straps on it. Two are mirror images, and are on either side of the bag. I assume that if you’re attaching these to a saddle these go around the metal bars underneath the saddle, whatever those are called. Then there’s a third strap that goes around your bike stem.

However, when you’re attaching this to a Carbon Wing, the two straps on the sides don’t do anything (as near as I can tell), which leaves only the third strap (now on the bottom of the bag since you tilt it so the zipper is pointing upwards) for securing the bag to anything. If you don’t have an Xlab Tire Bag, you might be able to thread this strap through the strap slots on the Carbon Wing. However, the Xlab Tire Bag has a place on the top (three places, actually) that you can slip straps through. In my situation, there is a strap going through the middle area of the Xlab Tire Bag which is then threaded through the Carbon Wing, thus holding the Tire Bag to the Carbon Wing. I then threaded half of the velcro strap from the Mini Top Bag through the rearmost area of the Tire Bag, but if you’re doing this yourself at this point you’ll start thinking “Wait, how do I attach the other half of the velcro strap?” because the entire half of the strap is pretty much under the area you’re threading it through. It’s a little hard to explain in words, but if you’re doing this you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Here’s what you do. By the way, the Tire Bag should be totally unattached to the Carbon Wing at this point. You’re going to attach the Mini Top Bag to the Tire Bag, and then attach it all as one piece to the Carbon Wing, which is already attached to your bike at this point. So you attach the base of the half of the velcro strap from the Mini Top Bag to the top of the other half that’s already threaded through the area on the top of the Tire Bag, then attach as much of the velcro as you can, sticking your finger under the area of the Tire Bag to do so. This will mean the strap gets doubled up backwards, but it’s ok. Just keep jamming your finger in there and more and more of the velcro will attach. Once you’ve done as much as you can, some of the strap will still be doubled back. At this point, pull on the Mini Top Bag to pull the strap through the area to the other side that you were jamming your finger in, and you should be able to pull the entire connected strap through, and then you can attach the last bit of velcro and you’re good to go. Now you can stick the Mini Top Bag up through the bottom of the Carbon Wing, thread the strap through the Carbon Wing and the other area of the Tire Bag, and finish attaching it all.

The one problem here that I can see is that it kind of seems like a one way process. That is, I have no idea how to unattach these bags from each other. But hopefully I’ll never need to or it won’t be that hard when I try. I guess scissors or a razor blade would do the trick in an emergency.