Friday, March 13, 2009

This weekend: Solvang Century!

I know I’ve been super lame and haven’t been writing much lately. Just so much busyness and I wish I could say with training but sadly the last two weeks have been not so great training-wise (especially now that I have a couple of runs to prep for!). Que sera, sera. Life happens and you have to just roll with it. There’s no point in being upset over things I can’t control.

SO here it is Friday already! This is a short post because Carmen and I are taking off at 1 p.m. to drive down to Solvang for the Solvang Century. YES! Been looking forward to this for weeks. We finally got to ride outdoors last Sunday and did an incredible 75 miles in glorious sun. It felt amazing and I felt SO happy just to be there, on my bike. During those four hours, there was NOWHERE else in the world I wanted to be than riding my bike through Sonoma County vineyards with friends on a sunny day seeing all sorts of other friends along the way who were also out riding. It was heavenly and I was so grateful for the weather finally cooperating.

The other cool thing that happened this week was that I got a re-fit on my tri bike from Rand Libberton at Aria Velo. This was more of a ‘mini-fit’ because he had helped my friend Pat get fit to my bike when I was going to let Pat borrow it for IM AZ last year when his bike kind of broke at the last minute. So Rand was just making sure that things were back to how they should be.

BUT I learned about what a ‘real’ fit involves there – first of all, it’s a 4-HOUR SESSION. Wow! I was so impressed with the detail that’s involved, from discussing what type of riding you want to do with your bike to getting you set up with 3-D points so he can evaluate every aspect of your positioning. His set-up is super high-tech and I just couldn’t get over the level of details he gets to in determining a proper bike fit. What’s more, he keeps all of your ‘numbers’ so that when you’re out looking at new bikes he can pull them up and say ‘yeah, I don’t know about that model, you might be 3 cm too short for it,’ etc.

Why do I write about this? Because for all the time and money we spend on our bikes, this could be the best $350 you’ve ever spent. I’m SO excited now to book a full appointment with him, especially as I’m looking at new road bikes this year. I think it will help big time. If you’re local, go check out Aria Velo. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

That’s it for today. Hope everybody has a great weekend of training and good luck to any event-goers! I promise to post pictures of our ride next week!

6 comments:

D said...

Sorry, I couldn't make it past the part about riding outside. Boooo.

jameson said...

have fun... you guys should have some great weather!

I 100% agree on professional fits... worth the $$$.

rocketpants said...

Have fun this weekend! The weather is beautiful!

Ottem16 said...

Hey good luck tomorrow in Solvang. Sounds like it will be a gorgeous ride!

PunkRockRunner said...

Can't wait to hear about the ride. We had nothing but wind on our ride today to Livermore but no rain (I'll take dry and windy over rain). Have a safe and fun ride!

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

By some strange twist of fate I'm in Santa Barbara this weekend and am so sad that this darn surgery has sidelined my biking or I'd be at least attempting the half century!

Hope you had a FABULOUS day - it was a little chilly.