New Bike & Training

I bought a new road bike right around a month ago. I have a nice mountain bike which is great for riding trails, dirt roads, etc. but it isn't really designed for high speed travel on roads and paved trails. This is my new Cannondale Synapse Carbon 5. It's an all Carbon frame with a Shimano 105 component set. It's a triple crank with a 10 gear cassette, theoretically making it a 30 speed. That said, one of the fun facts that isn't often advertised is that while many bikes will have 21, 27, or 30 speeds, not all of those are advisable for use... generally crossing from the big ring on the front to the big ring on the back is a bad idea, it stretches the chain.


It's an outstanding ride and I've been having quite a good time on it. I went out Saturday and had a great 17 mile ride in absolutely perfect weather. My hope is that by next summer I've built up enough endurance to ride it up to Grand Rapids on a weekend.

On a related note, the triathlon training continues and is going fairly well. I'm finally feeling the endurance gains and can notice a discernable increase in my ability to keep going without feeling like death warmed over. I went swimming tonight and completed a 2,100 yard swim in just under an hour (not all at once, the longest set was 500 yards). For those interested, and so I can come back and look at it again in the future, here's the current log of training volumes for the last few weeks. I was sick the week of 9/21 and part of 9/21 which is why the volumes there were so poor. Under my current plan I'll average between six and ten hours a week for the next twelve weeks or so. That should put me on target for a sprint and Olympic triathlon next year. Ironman, should I decide to pursue such insanity, would require a dramatically higher volume of training ;)