Coached Bike Practice

When we arrived at the LA Zoo parking lot, it was really interesting to see all the different types of bikes that people had. Waymond, my doppelganger and I both had mountain bikes. Some people loaned bikes that had large packs on them, some had vintage road bikes and some has actual triathlon bikes. Coach Scott went over different bike etiquette things like hand signals and pass lanes. He discuss the benefits of clip-less pedals and the need to maintain a high cadence of pedaling.

Coach Scott and Assistant to the Coach, Victor

We road along a bike trail sandwiched between the freeway and the Los Angeles River. I stayed along side Quinton most of the ride, us fellow mountain bikers and out of nowhere, we both got passed by Waymond, another mountain biker. He's just got a ton of stamina.

After the ride, Scott showed us how to change a bicycle tire. James made a comment that if you tire popped in the middle of your triathlon, you wouldn't be changing it and you'd probably drop out. It did seem really time consuming and having never done it before, it probably wouldn't be very pretty.

Meet and Greet

Tuesday night was the meet and greet in Pasadena and I got to talk to some of my teammates, my mentor and the triathlon head coach.

Scott, the triathlon head coach

I found out some interesting things about the triathlon from Scott. I didn't know that this triathlon is really popular with celebrities. They even have a celebrity relay where a different celebrity does each leg of the race. Amanda Beard was there one year. I told him I'd be so intimidated standing next to Amanda Beard and Scott said, "They wouldn't let you compete in the same race as the celebrities."

Training sounds like it going to be really useful. He told me they're going to break down every part of my swim stroke and work on each part. I've picked up a lot of bad swim habits these past few months. Some good news though! I told him that my swim kick actually makes me go backwards and he said not to worry cause we will hardly be using our legs. I was a little surprised when he told me I would be training six days a week.

Irene, my mentor, actually did the Malibu sprint tri last year. She's going to be training with us to do the Olympic distance this year.