Learning to ride again...

After this weeks race I decided I really needed to have Shamu checked out. I figured it was either me that has been so horrible or Shamu. Thank goodness, after a brief inspection we discovered it was him!

A few months ago I got a new seat on Shamu. Back then I decided that it wouldn't be too hard to fit the sit onto the bike and make some adjustments to make it a good fit. I thought, who needs to see a bike fitter for a seat change?? Well, apparently that was a mistake.

The seat ended up being a HUGE 4cm (which may not sound like a lot but it is a HUGE difference) way to far forward and 1cm to low. It never dawned on me when I changed the seat that I may need to adjust the tri bars, instead I just moved the seat forward. Brilliant!! This mess up has cost me a significant amount of power and speed.

I can't imagine what a difference it may have made in my florida 70.3 race, my training and even the last race. To give you an example, after my adjustment this week my average speed on the trainer went from 17mph to 19mph with less effort.

I am looking forward to learning to ride again and getting some of that strength and power back!

On a bad note, my it band is still not good. I did not have any soreness at all from the race this week, but have definitely had itb pain. I saw a pt that basically said there is no real reason for my pain because my itb is not really tight. I am assuming (which we know what they say about assuming) that the pain began because of the HUGE knot I had in my quad after my florida race. That caused my itb to be inflammed and it has yet to get rid of the inflammation. I was told I can bike, ellip and even stairs...so we will see if it get's better soon.

On Sept 12th Pedro and I are going to do a half ironman as a relay. I am going to do the swim and bike and he is going to do the 13.1 mile run. Since he hasn't run much it is, in my mind, pretty brave to think that the run will be fine. But he wanted to do it as a relay and I thought it would be fun. Our team name is the Speedy Gorilla's. I'll keep you updated on his progress...right now I am "speedy" and he is "gorilla!" Hopefully, by race time we will both be speedy! I told him we better do well!