At 5am this morning the 2008 Norseman iron-distance triathlon began. I was sleeping. In fact I slept until noon today. Getting up for a 5am race start is something else that I’ll need to train for. It’s not that I don’t like mornings, it’s just that I have trouble going to sleep early when there are so many interesting things to read and research. I’m told that this was also my ‘problem’ in university.
Anyway, after a leisurely noon start, I made an appointment to go look at a Felt B2 time trial bike. I have never ridden a proper time trial bike so thought that I’d least see whether I could even ride one. This one was pretty sweet (although a couple of years old). With it’s Zipp 999 wheelset and aero frame it was begging to be ridden - fast. The problem is, I’m not terribly fast. So, after a quick and enjoyable ride I decided that it is probably best that, if I’m going to ride a fast looking bike, I’d better have the legs to match.
Although I didn’t purchase a bike, there were a few other things that I needed to get out of the way before I could go out for a late afternoon ride. I’d been looking for a waterproof bicycle computer while on vacation last week in Canada but no one seemed to sell them. The salespeople were nice but they didn’t seem to understand that if you want to ride a bike in Norway, you will get wet. Very wet. My last one had failed because of ‘water ingress’ (not to mention the parking garage incident) and I wanted to be sure that my next one would not suffer the same fate. Enter the Sigma 1706HR. It was advertised as ‘watertight’ plus it came with a heart rate monitor. Something that would be useful to see how little I actually work my heart on an average bike ride. As with everything in Norway, it seemed overpriced but I bought it anyway.
After taking my new kit home, I feverishly installed the computer and pumped up my tires (with my new pump) and headed out for a spin. It worked like a charm. The first few km were rough as the computer kept losing contact with the heart rate monitor but it worked perfectly for the next 35. Although I now had a way of training my heart within target ranges, I started to wonder about the safety of such a device. I’m a bit of a tech weenie and found that I couldn’t stop looking at the heart rate display - even if it meant running off the road. What I would suggest to Sigma (and I would buy one of these) is that they design a set of ‘head up display’ cycling glasses. The whole thing could be wireless and it would probably save a few lives. Remember, safety first.
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