Time To Check Your Gear For The Next Exercise, Training And Racing Season

Hi folks! Thanks for stopping by!

Here we are in Snowshoe, great ski resort, and we had a good time, but things happened: power went out half a day (slopes closed but full of fresh powder), truck on left had flat battery due to door left open, my black Tahoe had new tires, but the four-wheel drive failed just as we arrived (some switch gone out – try rear-wheel drive on ice and snow), and the front-wheel drive car on the right kept getting stuck due to lack of tread on the front tires, but they were pretty new! We dug vehicles out one after another, had a super time, and enjoyed our New Year.

Some sports, including triathlons, are quite dependent upon consistent equipment maintenance, so make sure you check all those preventable little things that can go wrong. For the triathlete, leaky goggles, bike problems, and ill-fitting shoes, are probably the only big nightmares. All that training and a frayed cable breaks and you’re riding 50 miles in bottom gear, or worse, climbing hills in top gear. So, just go through your equipment, change out anything that is badly worn, corroded or oxidised, have your bike serviced, and then build an emergency on the road repair kit, including full tool bag, short length of duct tape, plastic skin, and all that stuff, and always check tires for embedded, almost invisible fragments of glass or metal.

Oh! Yes! Practice puncture repair using the actual gear you carry on your bike – a short stem on a tube when riding zip wheels may just kill your chances of a great race time, or result in a long walk home from a workout. It is pretty basic, really, but only too easy to overlook. Things can still go wrong, and then it will depend upon your mental training how you deal with it.

If things do go awry during an important race, in spite of all that preparation, don’t lose your cool, insult people, blame race officials or other athletes, or throw your bike on the ground or into the woods (I’ve seen it all), just breath deeply a few times, smile, and take it in your stride like a true athlete.

-k @FitOldDog