Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Biking the IMAZ course

Today, I headed on out to the land of Ironman Arizona, otherwise known as Tempe, AZ.  Joining me for the day was The Captain and Old Wise One.  Our goal for the day was to ride for around three and a half hours on the actual IMAZ bike course.  We didn't necessarily have any goals in mind, other than riding around for the agreed upon amount of time.

As we were packing up the bikes, I noticed that my rear tire had a pretty severe gash in it.  I didn't feel like trusting my tire to not explode while we did our ride today, so I had to quickly swap out the rear tire for an old one (I'm glad I held on to a few of my old tires!).  This annoyed me just a little, because now I have to go buy a new tire for my rear wheel, even though I have a brand new bike, including a new rear tire, on it's way to my local bike shop right now.  Doh!

We pushed off at about 9:15 a.m., and found out pretty quickly that there was definitely going to be some wind for our ride.  Nothing too crazy, just a steady headwind to make going up a gradual incline even that much more fun.  On top of the little bit of wind, the high temperature was expected to be be around 95 degrees.  Oh well!

We started in the same place that the transition area will be set up and actually rode the exact bike course from end to end.  We knew we wouldn't quite have enough time to do two full laps, so we did the middle section an extra time before heading in for the day.  Once it was all said and done, we averaged right around 18.1 mph, which was pretty good in my opinion!

It was a pretty fun day, getting to ride with The Captain and Old Wise One for the first time (at the same time, that is).  And since we're all signed up for Ironman Coeur d'Alene, we're probably going to be doing these types of rides more often.  And we planned another exciting Ironman Arizona bike course ride for next week, where we're planning on doing the full 112 miles, and possible a lap on the run, depending on how the day goes.  Thanks for the great ride fellers!

Thanks for reading!

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