the first time...

Sunday morning:

As I heard the day was going to be sunny & 60 degrees I was referred by several good friends of an organized St. Pats Day bike ride put on by the Wheeling Wheelmen which starts and ends at Wauconda High School, a very far, far northwest suburb of Chicagoland. They had three options of riding distances which were 16, 20 or 36 miles so I choose the 36 mile routine as it was a perfect day for my first outdoor bike ride of 2009 and a perfect place to test ride the new Ridley Dean to get used to it since my first outdoor 10 mile Time Trial bike race is on April 5th 2009. I put the last fine tuning tweaks on the Dean on Saturday evening so I’d be ready to drive up there very early Sunday morning.

I arrived just before the 8am course openings as you ride the marked loops whenever you arrive. I paid my ten dollar entry fee, geared up with fluids & equipment/clothing then un-loaded the Ridley Dean from the car. With the course map in my pocket I headed out on the 16 mile loop solo taking my time getting used to the bike and waiting for the county roads to start the proper warm-up. I hooked up with another rider for the 1st forty minutes of the ride then I decided I needed to see what this bike could do and boy it didn’t let me down. Off I went testing its abilities which were absolutely spectacular…the difference between the Cannondale and the Ridley is like night & day…no comparison in any category. I rode the whole 16 mile loop with a big smile on my face and as we finished that loop at the HS I quickly changed out fluid bottles and consumed some CliffBar shots while next to my car.

Two minutes later I set-off on the other 20 mile loop as I focused on consistent bike pace training thru the rolling hills of northern Illinois with getting in some more time in the aero TT bars to train my body to this position on the new bike. With about ten miles to go while I was tucked in the aero TT position my 5oz EFS gel bottle fell out of my jersey pocket but I had another package of CliffBar shots as back-up. At about 7 miles from the end the seat holder bolt came loose maybe because of the HydroTail two 24oz bottle holders off the back of the saddle rails. No fret as I rode the rest of the way back seating in the saddle doing a balancing act. Then the third charm was I must have pinched my back tire tube about five miles from the finish. It was a very slow air leak so I lowered my speed and took care of all these little things that happened to me during this training day…but still when I pulled up along side my car I had the biggest "grinchest" of grins on my face from an awesome first day outdoors on this great new TT/Tri bike :-) it was everything and more than I expected from it!

Since this was a recovery/base building ride it took me 2:03.22 to cover the 36 miles per the Garmin 305 stat’s; my average HR was at 126bpm with a max coming in at 149bpm. Average speed was at 17.8mph with a max HR coming during a tester blast aero-bar section of 30.7mph.

One thing I did notice is the quicker you ride this bike the smoother it feels…it was a great ride!

b