May 22nd, 2008 The First Official Day of Training

Today is my first official day of training for "El Tour de Tucson" century ride. The ride is November 22nd, so I have 6 months to get ready. Since I have never really done anything with a bike besides short rides with my family on my mountain bike, I needed some stuff... say like a road bike. Frank found me this bike which is a GIANT. It has 27 speeds. The first time I took it out, I jacked up the gears and chains. I am also not used to clip peddles, but rather the cage peddles. So, I got got new shoes. Normally I am excited to get new shoes. Not this time. As you can tell from the picture, they have no tread. They have a small black hook in the middle. This hook attaches to the peddle of the bike so your feet can not come off the peddles when you going up hill, down, etc. The only way you unattach the shoe is to slide your heel so it becomes unattached. Frank put the clipless peddles on the spin bike so I can practice. Something else I learned from the clip shoes, do not walk on tile with them. Yes, I slipped and as I was going down, I slid down the corner of the wall as I was trying to catch myself. Woo Hoo, my first injury.
You will notice the lovely shorts next to the shoes. Somehow I am not feeling good in these shorts. They have padding in the butt so you don't hurt so much during your ride. When I wear them, I feel like I have a load in my pants. Frank says it will get better.
We have coaches starting to help us get motivated. So we did a heart rate monitor test. Heather and Jan met me there. I have to say, they did better than I did. Heather did really, really well. We rode stationary bikes for about 30 minutes and had to bump up our heart rates from 100 to 170. Yeah, I wasn't happy during this. But, I now have my max heart rate to train with. The picture is after the test. We are looking forward to our "after" picture when this ride is over. My arms look huge...UGH!

I have my first team ride on Saturday. We are going 10 miles through Corrales. I hope I can make it. I plan to do a 1 hour spin ride tonight. Grey's Anatomy is on. I will just distract myself with that.
XOXO