It is 5 AM and the alarm rings. Are you ready . . .

...to take the call and stumble out of bed, make some coffee, eat some granola and head out for a 75 mile bike ride on a wet Saturday morning? Yesterday, I am glad I was. The last couple of weeks have not been going well as far as my Ironman preparations are concerned. We were all busy with settling into the new home, family commitments, including my mother visiting from Austria, and the last couple of days heading to Atlanta for business. On top of it, I have been weirdly suffering from allergies, leaving me at times listless to train.

So, when the alarm did ring far too early for a Saturday, I was more then tempted to hit the snooze button and head back into sleepy land. But I did not and was rewarded with one of the most spectacular, only in New York kinda ride experiences. Crossing the Brooklyn bridge the fog and clouds remaining from the heavy rains the night before still enveloped Manhattan. Minutes later I rode along the West Side bike way and watched up close the early morning arrival of a cruise ship to the left while, to the right, the Empire State building looked spooky and awesome. And on it went one picturesque moment after another. I regretted not to bring along a camera, plus I had to make decent time to meet my friends from the Brooklyn Tri Club across the George Washington Bridge for the ride to Nyack.

New Wheels

OK, today I finally did it. I fit my beloved Cervelo P2C with a new set of wheels, namely the Hed Jet 60 C2. I pretty much had planned to spend some money on some new wheels in time for this year's race season. But cost clearly was one factor in my purchase decision, steering me away from the Zipp wheels that seem to be every one's choice these days. Everyone willing to spend the big bucks I guess. Not that the Hed Jet purchase was not painful, but there seems to be agreement that the Cervelo comes with a pretty basic set of wheels and that an upgrade would make a significant difference. Well, I sure hope so.

A good week and a beautiful bike ride

With the bike leg clearly my weakest link in a triathlon, I long ago made a committment to train more on the bike and to get more long rides in. Thus far, this year, none of it had happened. Finally this week I followed through. After a regular week, I headed out thos morning from Brooklyn to Piermont and back.. Unfortunately my friend Eric who set out to ride with me was forced to turn around just 16 miles into the ride, at the foot of the George Washington Bridge, with a broken bike chain. But the stretch from the GW to Piermont is pretty much a cycling highway with hundreds of riders heading out each weekend day.

The ride turned out great, the weather fantastic and the views on this ride spectacular, especially while crossing two of the countries most beautiful bridges, the Brooklyn Bridge and the George Washington Bridge. With over 4 hours of cycling covering about 64 miles, this was by far my longest ride all year. Obviously I will need a lot more like this one to get in shape for IM Arizona, but for the early summer Olympic distance races this was a good start.

Sunday in the Park with . . a Bike

A couple of days ago we finally had some serious snow here in New York. Today I woke up to beautiful sunshine. So we headed out for a nice two hour walk through Prospect Park. The snow was cleared of all the main roads, but still looked great on the meadows. So after heading back home for a brief lunch I actually got my Cervelo out of the basement for the first time in months and headed out for a nice hour-long park cruise. ,