Biking = FAIL

Since I'm going to be participating in the Kure Beach Triathlon just two weeks from today, I decided it was time to get out the bike. (Obviously, I'm not going for a PR here.) I kinda hate biking and therefore hadn't yet brought my mountain bike home from my parents' house, so there has been absolutely no bike training in a looooong time.

When we raced our first triathlon, I used my mountain bike my parents gave me for 13th birthday. It took until my 16th birthday for us to actually go out and buy the bike, but in any case, it was a bike purchased for playing and not for racing. We knew my mom would have an advantage with her road bike, but even with that, I managed to beat her by a few minutes. Within a month, my mom had purchased a slick race bike with clip-on shoes and skinny tires. That, combined with her superior training, led her to an easy victory over me in the next triathlon.

She loves that bike.

Which is why I was slightly surprised when my mom offered to let me borrow it for this upcoming race. She was insistent, however, that I practice a lot with it this week while I'm visiting to get used to the clip-ons and gears. So, thinking it couldn't be that difficult, I snapped in the shoes and went off on a biking adventure!*

*Biking adventure may or may not have consisted of me falling off the bike in the driveway, walking in my socks, dragging the bike through the yard, taking 10 minutes to figure out how to unclip the shoes, making about a 1/2 mile of progress before goofing up the gears, falling off the bike again-this time attached to one of the pedals and landing in the barn driveway and embedding gravel into my hand, cursing, turning around, and going home and awaiting a tutorial from my mom before getting back on that bike.

I decided to remove the flat tire from my car for exercise instead. That actually worked.

By the way, the China Grove 5K Main Street Challenge was a success on Friday! My mom, two sisters, and I all ran and dad even came along to hold our race packets and eat race refreshment leftovers. For as little running as I've been doing lately, I was happy with my time: 26:42, but I think it would have been more fun to use my Garmin if I could look down and see better paces.