New toys

This sport is expensive. For some reason I've been on a buying spree lately and in the last month have purchased a pair of (used) PowerCranks, a wheel with a wireless PowerTap (again used), and decided to sign up with a coach for the '09 season. I'm not sure what exactly overcame me... normally, I am quite conservative and frugal financially, but for some reason, I've splurged recently.

Having already done the damage, now I'm excited to use the new toys! It will be interesting... I'm not going to put the PowerCranks on my bike for about another month because I am signed up to ride the Tour de Tahoe next month and there is no way I can do that on the PowerCranks. So, I will do that ride with the club/team (Team Revolutions) and then put the cranks on and see what happens. My plan is to do just a few minutes everyday on the trainer to get used to it. And I have time this off-season to do it. Then, hopefully, I'll get to the point where I can do at least a little bit of riding out on the roads (or the canal or bike trail). In the meantime, I plan to put the PowerTap on my ride and get some good baseline data on some of my usual rides. I will probably even do one of the local time trials which run for the next several weeks to get a good established set of "pre-PowerCranks" numbers. Then, I'm going to spend my whole off-season, if everything goes according to plan, getting used to the cranks and smoothing out my pedal stroke. We'll see what happens...

And to top it all off, I am going to hire a coach this season to help me work towards my goals. In addition to the PowerCranking, I plan to work with him on my swimming and try to turn myself into a halfway decent swimmer. We'll probably do just the bike trainer and swimming for several months and skip the normal fall running races. That will bum me out a bit, but hey, there are 3 sports to work on!!! When I did my first Ironman, I just followed a basic plan and modified it for my needs. This time around, I want somebody to help me figure out how to get the most out of my limited training time.

Should be an interesting off-season.