Learning to (really) bike

My serious biking began with my dive into triathlons. As his midlife crisis, my dad started doing triathlons. I was very confused and unimpressed by the amount of gear and training that went into completing one. That all changed after my dad challenged me to do a free little local tri in the town over from us. Being the wonderful daughter I am, my response was "Okay Dad, I bet I can beat you!". This was summer of 2010. I had just graduated from high school, where I had spent my afternoons either playing soccer, lacrosse, or running indoor track. Athletics was not foreign to me, but besides organized sports, I was nothing more than a casual worker-outer.

I borrowed my mom's Specialized Hard Rock and helmet, grabbed my surfing wetsuit, and loaded up the car with my dad. Having grown up by the ocean, I was always comfortable in the water, but luckily, a few years ago, my dad taught me how to do a proper freestyle when I was doing a lifeguard certification course. The tri was super short - a maybe 1/4 mile swim (walk down the beach until someone says stop, jump in, and then swim back), 5 mile bike, and 2.5 mile run. I didn't beat my dad that day, but the triathlon bug got under my skin, and was there to stay.

The rest of the summer I spent occasionally training with my dad's training group. I'm not sure how I managed to do group road rides on my mom's Specialized, because that sounds miserable today, but I didn't know anything better then.

The next summer my dad got me a used road bike complete with aero bars and clipless peddles. Getting myself on that bike was a challenge in itself. I don't have an innate sense of balance on a bike, so trying to balance on something with skinny wheels and drop handlebars was so uncomfortable and strange. Needless to say I immediately swapped the clipless peddles for cages, but even that didn't prevent me hitting my dad at the end of our first ride when we were in between cars at a red light. Stopping and getting my feet on the ground was something I had to work on.

Getting myself to use the aero bars and clipless peddles didn't happen for another year or so. In the mean time, I had done two sprint distance tris and started training more seriously. I joined my college's tri team, found a coach, and really dove in. I loved the rides in the quiet and mountainy area around my college. I was getting more comfortable on my bike, my endurance was increasing, and loved pushing myself on my rides.

During this time, I learned how to put only one foot down when I came to a stop (I unclipped both feet for longer than I'd like to admit). I also no longer had blisters on my hands from breaking so much and gripping my handlebars so tightly. I could avoid potholes, remove one hand from my bars to signal or drink some water, and look over my shoulder, all without wiping out. Many of these things are probably skills most cyclists take for granted, but these were major accomplishments for me. My skinned knees were reminders of how far I'd come.

At the beginning of the bike leg of a triathlon, I tried to press lap on my watch, lost my balance, and tipped over. Balancing on a bike is hard...

Over the next several years, I did many sprint and olympic distance tris. When I upgraded to a tri bike, I had to relearn how to balance on a bike because the geometry was so different. My dad and I invented a sweet hydration system that had drink tubes running from my water bottles in the cages to my aero bars so I never had to get out of them during a race and risk loosing my balance. The uncomfortableness of riding slowly faded into memory as I kept road riding and racing tris. By the time mountain biking found me (I definitely did not seek it out), I was feeling super comfortable on the road, only to once again find myself relearning how to ride a bike for the fourth time in my life.