Watching people crash on time trial bikes is just about as much fun as you can have without hauling a keg and a fifth of scotch to your local sprint triathlon. I enjoyed the aero carnage so much that I humored myself by going to a ride hosted by a local shop with a reputation for being Triathlon central. In my defense, I was going to meet up with a racing buddy there but was running on Cyclist Time (CT) and as such was about 7 minutes late. I rode out to the hill loop hoping to find at least someone familiar, but what I saw nearly made my eyes bleed. Dozens upon dozens of triathletes had piled onto these roads. Riders with plastic Gatorade and Evian bottles jammed into their malformed bottle cages. Others made the sensible decision to ride without any water bottles or alternate source of hydration. Clip-on aerobars and full TT setups were riding side by side in the bike lane, climbing the hills in their aero-est of positions. Worse of all was the wheel choices. And by "choices", I actually mean "choice" because triathletes' decision-making processes are driven via hive mind. I saw so many pairs of Zipp 404's that I nearly passed out. I understand they're good wheels. I even understand that they're made to withstand plenty of abuse from rider's with nearly twice the wattage output and from roads far more vicious than those of suburban hell. But why do they train on them? They're too flashy, don't necessarily help you train any better, and make you look a little silly when you're beaten on your $2000 training wheels by a bewildered cyclist who's just looking for some escape from Triathlon Bizarro World. Needless to say, I did a few laps there in search of my friend but came up empty-handed, left, and will now proceed to drink myself into oblivion so that I will never remember what happened on this horrible day.
Speaking of looking funny on bikes:
Ben+on+Lance%27s+TT+Bike+Before+Stage+4 -- powered by http://www.livestrong.com
1 comments:
Three posts in three days? Glad you're back. Especially since one of my favorite bloggers just called it quits this morning. No more freight-train riding or hitchiking stories from Carrot Quinn (http://carrotquinn.wordpress.com/). At least this Idiot is back.
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