Long time no blog

Been too busy riding to blog!  Seriously!  

First things first.  Big shout out to the wonderful folks who sent us our first donations!  We are a tenth of the way toward reaching our goal!  As my favorite talking bike likes to say, cancer is the biggest douchebag of all.  We can help fight it.  

I'm going to try to back off the exclamation marks from here on out...but not the ellipsis... ...

We (Greg and I, not the royal we) went to an introductory spinning class at O2 Modern Fitness last Saturday.  Spinning is indoor cycling.  An instructor helps you set your cadence and resistance and keeps you from slacking off.  Sweating and fun were maximized to the extreme.  I LOVED it.  I could focus on my cadence and my breath, relaxing the shoulders, tightening my core, etc. without worrying about getting run over or left behind.

AND I already saw an improvement during our second group ride on Sunday.  The other ladies had nothing on me.  No sickness.  I attacked those baby hills like the infants that they were.  Greg and I actually finished the ride first by a good ten minutes.  Somehow we got separated right before the turn around point.  I thought he had gotten lost, and he thought I had a flat tire.  We both headed back to look for each other, met up, and kept going.  Leaving everyone else in the dust.  Oh and Greg's frankenstein bike rocked.

We get a week free at the O2 the spinning gym to try out their other classes.  I've gone to three others and really enjoyed getting my rear kicked in all of them.  

Jen out

Bike Mods

Hi there,

It's Greg again, and I'm here to tell you that Frankenstein's monster has come to life. Now I can shift from the handlebars; I have a new (albeit low-end) compact crankset so I can handle hills better; and I have dual pivot brakes so I can hopefully come to a stop. Behold:

First group ride

As you may know.  I've been dealing with an outer ear infection since Wednesday...not fun.  And Greg's been in Phoenix since Thursday so I haven't even been coddled.  But I wasn't going to let those two bummers stop me from going on my first BTE group ride today!

This is me at 6:30 in the morning.  A little nervous.  A little doped up on Tylenol.  A little pink.

I need better cycling clothes.  Anyway, our fearless leader is named Mac.  He owns Sabino Cycles, and started out as a biology major in undergrad.  He switched to business after intro chemistry.  I told him we lose a lot of good biologists that way.  Everyone was super nice and peppy.  Here's an example.  I told one woman that I'd never done any hill climbing before and that I don't know what I'm going to do on the tour.  She said, "You're gonna have fun, that's what you're going to do!"  Like I said, really nice.

I bought cycling gloves because I thought that would make me look pro.  Rode less than a mile and decided they were terrible.  Bummer right?  I also think my seat is too far forward and that I'm putting too much weight on my arms.

We rode out to Saguaro East and back.  The last two miles of loopy baby hills started to take their toll on  me.  I started to wonder if yogurt was the best pre-ride breakfast. (If you have good pre-ride breakfast ideas, I want to hear em. I already have bananas on the list.) While we were resting at Saguaro the same woman handed me a granola bar.  I tried to eat it but was feeling pretty queazy.

I'm going to stop there...if you want to hear what happened next, ask my Mom.  Lets just say those guys were champs, and I got over my queasiness!  Another woman gave me chocolate milk.  Note to self: bring lots of tasty snacks to share next time.

The ride back was beautiful and fast.  Can't wait to get back out there.

Has anyone donated to BTE yet?  As soon as you do I'll start a $$$ counter right next to my crash and burn counter!

Rillito River bike path

Happy Labor Day everyone!

We went on a 13 mile ride up to the Rillito River bike path and back.

The improved bike lane on Mountain Ave. was awesome.  We were practically flying.  It felt like when you put flippers on in the pool.  I'm also finding bike riding to be really good for my ego.  Right after topping out at 25 mph (that's fast for me), I tip over like a noob at the next stop light on account of my new pedals.  Here's what you do:  hop up, tell your hubby you're all right, and then smile really big so the cars across the street know you are in on the joke.

Bike Mods to Come

Greg here,

My 1983 Nishiki Cresta has a very sweet double butted Tange No. 2 chromoly frame, but old school friction shifting components. In fact, the guy I bought the bike from had converted it to a single speed. He could not find the original Suntour Cyclone Mk II components so I was given an assortment of Shimano parts. Right now I have it shifting smoothly but I really miss indexed shifting with "brifters" (where the brake lever and shifters are combined so you can shift without taking you hands away).

This old Nishiki touring bike is replacing an aluminum Specialized that was a little too big for me. Fortunately, the Specialized has a Shimano 105 groupset in acceptable condition. I'm having this group switched over to the Nishiki later this week. It's going to be a brand new bike. Here's a before photo:

Season 11 kick-off event and expo

Jen here again.  I promise I'll get Greg to post eventually....

We went to the BTE season 11 kick-off event last night and had a great time.  I felt more than a little guilty as I skipped the veggie hors d'oeuvres and went straight for a cookie.  You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make her drink.

The coolest vender there was O2 Modern Fitness, a spinning indoor cycling studio.  They have stationary trainers, so we can bring our own bikes to their classes, which is pretty neat.  I'm going to try and talk Greg into going to an intro spinning class on Saturday.  One table over from O2 was the Mount Lemmon Marathon, the self-proclaimed "toughest road marathon in the world."  I smiled and tried to look sincere when I took the guy's flier.  Sounds like fun right...yeah no, not in a million years.

After that there was a vender raffle, and Greg and I both won!  Duplicate prizes! What are the odds, huh?  We both got tiny women's athletic shirts from Pike Athletics (Ellen, one of these shirts has your name on it) AND complementary "Strength and Conditioning Sessions" AND complementary "Functional Movement Screens."  I don't know what those are, but they sound expensive.  Kinda looking forward to that...kinda not.  


I won an extra prize too!  Guess what it was.  Free entry to the Mount Lemmon Marathon!  Yay!  I gave that away.  My legs and lungs were burning just holding the certificate.


All in all a good experience.  My friend Crystal has been doing BTE for years now and she said, "nothing is more motivating that struggling to keep up with 70 year old cancer survivors."  I would have to agree with her on that.  There were some pretty inspiring people in the audience.  Looking forward to getting to know some of them better. 

Oh Snap! New Stuff!

Jen here.

Someone's got new shoes and pedals...me!  That's right, I'm going clipless.

Clipless pedals are a bit of a misnomer, because, while you do technically clip into the bike pedal, you do so without the aid of toe-clips...an earlier invention.  Hence the name...clipless.

Introducing my super cool new cycling shoes.  I was thinking I'd go with a mountain bike shoe because they can be easier to walk in.  In the end, I went with these streamlined Scattante roadies.  They won in the comfort and dainty-ness departments.

The cleat attaches to the bottom of the shoe and engages the pedal while riding. This allows for more pedaling power.  I picked out the Speedplay Frogs because I saw them referred to as clipless pedals for dummies.  That's the scary part about clipless pedals.  If you don't disengage the pedals when you come to a stop...you'll fall over.

See how they can hold you in place?

Shall I start a counter to track how many times I fall?