Retail Therapy

Since I'm tapering, I'm spending less time running and more time worrying about my triathlon. Yes, I've been in the pool and plan to do more of that, but I really want to give my legs a chance to rest before the race. That has meant no time on the bike and taking it easy on the legs in the gym.

So, what is a girl to do? My solution so far has been to do more shopping planning. I've been trying to get everything bought organized so that I can get on my bike right after the marathon. As I mentioned a while ago, Mike put aero bars on my bike for Valentine's Day. I've ridden the bike several times on the trainer since then. Mike, my bike mechanic husband, brought it upstairs to get it tuned up to ride outside a couple weeks ago. When I got ready to take it for a test ride, I noticed that the handlebars didn't turn to the left very easily. Thinking that it must have had something to do with the installation of the aero bars, I figured I would just stop by the bike shop sometime and have them adjust it. No hurry, no big deal.

We went to the bike shop today to look at helmets for Mother's Day. Are you seeing a holiday gift pattern? They looked at the bike, took it to the workshop, and hemmed and hawed for a while. Then... the bad news. They pointed out that the fork on my beautiful, Trek Lemond bike was cracked. Ugh! It had to have been there when I bought it. I had bought the bike somewhere else, but this store tells me that Lemond's are great bikes and are fully warrantied for a year. I had bought the bike on May 4, 2008. Today is May 2nd. Whew!

We jumped in the car and headed to the other bike shop. My bike is now waiting for the Trek rep to look at it this week. It is covered under the warranty, but I'm going to be without a bike for a little while. I'll know more by the end of the week.

To help me get over the disappointment of my cracked bike, I did some more shopping planning. We found some great Sidi shoes on clearance in my size. Then we headed to REI where they had bike helmets on sale. I got a new bike helmet that complements my bike very nicely. See, there is such a thing as retail therapy!