Carbon and satellites

As I was saying in my last post, there would be big news (at least for me), and in fact a couple of them! I purchased last month a carbon fiber road bike: a FUJI TEAM V2 2006 bike. 18 pounds, 20 speeds, Ultegra rear derailleur, and 105 shifters, front detailleur. That's been quite a story since the original bike I bought (out of the box) had a chainstay that was cracked... My buddies at Performance Bikes took it back and I could get a replacement in a week's time - thumbs up to Performance Bikes Mountain View! So here I was, bringing my 4th ride in our little appartment. The purchase was totally spontaneous. A classic chain of events; walked in the store with a friend at lunchtime, discovered the sweet ride at an amazing price, took a test ride, was told it was avalaible now, and bought it. What a thrill!

Once home, the real adventure started: the rides! Here in the Bay Area there are many possibilities to test both bikes and bikers: plenty of rolling hills and also tough climbs towards Skyline Blvd. The Fuji Team V2 is up to it, very responsive , supple and still stiff. Great complement to the Specialized Langster that I still ride very often and love. Riding that road bike after my singlespeed showed me one thing at least: keeping momentum isn't a cake walk, and dialing the right gear needs experimentation. Showed me another thing: singlespeed bikes are great ways to get fit.

After this purchase and some research, I also invested in a Garmin Edge 305, the top of the line in bikes GPS. Awesome tool for training, and fun too! I have taken the HR+ package to get both cadence/speed and heart monitor as well; in fact I have even bought another set for my Langster so I can complete my data. Not only the Garmin has already educated me more than the 100's of "blind" rides I was doing w/ more rudimentary devices, but it makes my training more challenging than ever. I am of course using motionbased.com website to load and track my data, and the Garmin PC program "Training Center", mediocre but still functional. Waiting for the announced Mac version of this one. I have discovered a great and free Windows program, for the time being: the already excellent SportTracks. This program loads my rides and associated data (HR, calories, cadence..) and pulls all kinds of graphs and statistics in a very neat and well thought interface. What ST doesn't do and TC does, is define routes out of existing rides, to later be reloaded to the GPS device.

Ride!