When you're stuck like glue

The good news about gluing up a tire onto a disc wheel: you don't have to worry about getting glue in the spoke holes. The bad news: when it's time to actually put the tire on, you can't hook your toes on the rim like normal. That's right, tire gluing is best done barefoot. Anyhow, where normally I don't get any glue (well, adhesive really) where is doesn't belong, with the disc I made a mess. Luckily Fastack has pretty good cohesive strength, so rolling it off (huh-huh) was not too tough. Of course, once I was finished mounting a brand new Tufo S33, which is a perfectly good all purpose road tire, I took the old stretching rim back up to the bike room. As I threw it in the pile, I spied a previously used, but perfect CX Cronometro. Damn. That would have been fine for TT's. Oh well.

Here is a hilarious link for you: Big Jan's MySpace.

Yesterday's lost thoughts came back to me. All these blogs expose the fears, weaknesses, and mistakes of their authors. Back in the spring, everyone was gung-ho about training and competing. Now that we are a few months into it, I am finding all kinds of stories about injuries, especially on the tri and running blogs. Many of the folks who choose to cronicle their training adventures are just starting out, and they write as a support system. I am seeing a lot of writing from people who expect a huge amount from themselves in a very short time. Getting a bachelor's degree at even the least selective school would take you three to four years, or for someone like me who worked full-time through the entire process, seven years. Wouldn't you think that preparing to complete an ironman triathlon might take more than two years too?

For some people, one year seems to be a magic number. Start running, and within one year do a marathon. Yes, this can be done, but I hope the blog world is not encouraging people to bite off too much too soon, get injured, and leave sport entirely. You need drive to be an athlete, but patience comes in handy too. Athletics should be approached as a lifelong journey, a healthy lifestyle, not one where you break your body down by making it do things you haven't prepared it for.

When I started riding, my knees gave me a lot of trouble. I made the same mistakes that I see a lot of bloggers making, self-diagnosing myself with every ailment known to man. These days, with a plethora of medical advice (qualified or otherwise) available online, the temptation for this folly is much worse. Eventually, I ended up having both knees scoped and all was well, but this was due to real injuries that happened much later. Looking back, my initial ailments were simply from too much too soon. Going from the couch to centuries in one year, my body, especially the skeletal structure, simply could not adapt that quickly.

Pushing hard is a requirement, but use your head. Beginners shouldn't think of a 10K as short race just because it isn't a marathon. You need goals and determination, but you need to be smart too. Putting goals up online for the world to see may be good motivation for those who need it, but not if it pushes them to make foolish decisions and injure themselves out of fear of looking like a failure.

On a brighter note, here is a grainy spy photo of my TT rig:



Sorry, but I dropped the camera a while back and autofocus doesn't work anymore. In the realm of bike porn, this is like an au natural sasquatch shot from an ancient Playboy, but here you go. Hopefully the forecast showers will hold off and I'll see Gewilli down at the Rehoboth TT tonight, and maybe I'll finish the course without a flat this time. All the fast guys will be at Fitchburg today, so good luck to all who are toeing the line. Thanks for reading.