Our wheels are rolling!

Today was our first road ride on the bikes!  We got up nice and early (which Nick was thrilled about) and went to an empty office park with Cayla and Merideth.  There were a lot of other cyclists out and very few cars- so it was perfect for our first ride.  We learned that we have to pump up our tires before EACH ride.  Oops!  We don't even have a tire pump yet haha.  The weather was perfect, so I felt really lucky.  I was actually cold before we started.  I wore my brand new jersey so kindly provided to me as a gift from Mari and Candace, my cousins that hooked me up with my first cycling gear!  Nick was LOVING his bicycle shorts (sarcasm of course).  I discovered during spin classes that cycle shorts are a must!  Nick wasn't convinced, but I dragged him to TrySports and we used one of their groupons to buy some shorts.  He spend half an hour in the dressing room trying things on.  It was funny, but finally he figured out the way they are supposed to fit and picked a pair out.  We were both a little blown away by how expensive the shorts are!  He kept saying this morning that he felt like he could "ship my pants" in the "diaper like" shorts haha!

Our ride turned out to be amazing!  We learned the rules of the road, like calling out, "bike left" if another group comes up on your side to pass or "car back" if a car is coming up ahead.  My favorite is that you yell "runner up" if there is a runner coming toward you.  The majority of the people out on the loop were walking, not running, so I felt like we were being too generous calling them runners haha.  We did the loop 5 times, so 10 miles.  It had a moderate hill on the back and a run of sprinklers to mist us so it was a pretty easy route!  It was a perfect way to get used to my gears, balance, breaking, etc.  We thought we were going to make it without a busted tire....but no...

As we were chatting at the end and getting ready to rack our bikes, we heard a loud release of air.  I thought our coach had let the air out of her tires, but no- it turns out Nick's back tire tube spontaneously busted.  :-(    We loaded the bikes anyways and went to Starbucks for a celebratory latte and breakfast.  It was great to be done with our workout by 9:30!

On our way home we decided to pop into Performance Bike and get a tire pump.  Clearly we were going to need it now!  We also bought some lights- headlights and rearlights to allow us to night ride!  I really want to ride our bikes to dinner one night.  The guys at performance bike were AWESOME.  They helped us figure out how Nick's tube busted and taught me how to use my gears.  No one has ever really explained gears to me...even though it's sort of understood.  I didn't realize I was "cross gearing".  This is apparently a NO NO.  The guy was showing me how to not do this and some other customer leaned over to his kid and said, "See that?  That's something you NEVER do." haha.  Glad my boo boo helped some kid learn.

Overall it was an AWESOME day!  And because of that...I think we are going to end up switching races.  Nick had a blast.  We are so excited about doing tri's and keeping ourselves healthy and in shape over the years.  Right now we are planning on doing 24 Hours of Booty, and switching from our Sprint Triathlon at the end of Sept and doing the OLYMPIC Tri in D.C. before that.  We are feeling pretty pumped.  It's not a final decision, but the rest of our team is doing DC, so if we are free that weekend and think we can fundraise enough for it, we are going to do an OLYMPIC TRIATHLON! woohoo!

Thanks for keeping up with us.  Remember that we are starting this for a cause- raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society!!!

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