Progress

The month of May was the month of new things and progress. Not only did I purchase new running shoes in an attempt to improve how I feel about running but I upgraded my mountain bike. I am now the proud owner of a Niner Air 9! I’ve been on the bike a number of times and have completed my first race on it. I raced the new bike at the Bike Line Fair Hill race and improved my time from last year by 19 minutes! Amazing what some training and confidence can do! I absolutely love the feel of this bike and the way it handles. It’s given me a level of confidence that I’ve never had before. So what made me decide to upgrade my bike and why a Niner?

My new Niner before taking it out for my first ride!

I’ve been dying to get on a 29 inch bike for about a year now. I wanted to experience the benefits of this wheel size – less rolling friction, more comfortable ride, better traction, and most importantly obstacle rollover. I never felt like I could get over anything on my 26 inch bike and I know that’s mainly due to lack of confidence. I also wanted to move to a hard tail bike as I feel like it suited my riding style better than my full-suspension bike. I like to climb and I like to climb out of the saddle. This isn’t something I could do comfortably on the full-suspension and I would often become frustrated. But I already miss how my full suspension handles bombing down rocky descents. The Niner is obviously a much stiffer ride and I have to work a little more to hold onto it downhill. I chose a Niner because I could customize the bike they way I wanted to. What wheels, components, and the ever important color, it’s black and orange!! It’s a bike that I can easily upgrade as I want and is uniquely mine. There are a lot of great 29ers out there from companies like Trek (which can be purchased at Bikesport).

My 2010 Trek Fuel EX 8

The biggest lesson that I’ve taken away from this whole experience is that it is important to get a bike that suits your riding style. Unfortunately, I didn’t do this the first time around or my riding style has changed immensely in the past 4 years. So with that, my Trek Fuel EX 8 Women’s Mountain Bike is for sale!! Make me an offer, I’ll even accompany you on a test ride!

Just a brief update on my new shoes (see previous post) – I’m enjoying them and I have completed a few runs in them. Tonight I did my first back to back run and I could feel some pain in my feet but this is normal as you make the adjustment. Tonight’s run will be completed in my old shoes. I’m planning to run the Pottstown Patriotic 5k in the new shoes on the 4th of July. I’m currently up to 2.5 miles and will soon be focusing on some speed work to reach my goal of running a 30 minute 5k. So therefore my Strava account will look like a runner’s account for the next month with the exception of the 50 mile bike ride coming up on Sunday for the French Creek Iron Tour.