40 yr old Mom from MA doing transformation

CONGRATS on the progress. KEEP GOING!!!!!

congratulations on your health choice!!!! it's a great time to do it.

i am new to tris and racing, but i may be able to offer something meaningful on the bike. i've been riding for 6 years have gone through the whole new rider experience. my first thought is don't worry. road bikes 'feel' funny/unstable compared to bikes you may have ridden in the past. after not too long a period of time, assuming you don't bag the experience, you will come to fully appreciate it and the 'shakiness' becomes responsiveness. i baited my 52 year old sister into week long 500 mi charity ride last year. it was not a race, just a ride. she was in good general health, but had not been very active for decades. the short story is that once she got a couple hundred training miles under her butt, she got to be very comfortable with the bike. it took a while for her to adjust to clipless pedals, but she finally got it. she got competent on the bike in a few months time.

the best advice i can give to a new rider is that a _good_ fit and saddle are absolutely required. you should talk to people at a few bike shops and read some of the forums you can find on the 'net about what 'good fit' means. a difference of fractions of centimeters in the geometry on a bike can make a world of difference to your body when riding for hours. there are female specific frames that take into account the subtle (or not subtle) diffs between men and women. some women can get away with 'male sized frames', but be careful. women's frames are a little pricier than typcially stocked mens' frames, but if you can afford it, well worth it. one of my litmus tests for the 'competence' (bad word, but the best i can come up with) of a shop's fitting talents, is how anal the fitter is about fit. you can expect to sit on a trainer for nearly an hour to get sized right. if you get a whirlwind fit or get a feel that a shop doesn't hold fit extremely important, go someplace else. unfortunately, there a bit of a catch-22 here. you won't get fitted until after you've purhased the bike. so you need to get a feel for the shop before you commit. there a infinite adjustments that can be made to get things perfect, but if the frame isn't quite right, you may experience annoying aches that just won't be able to be adjusted away. from my experience, i would not recommend spending less than $1500 on a bike that you intend on spending a lot of time on.

saddles are completely personal. you may have to try several to get the right one. you may get lucky with a stock seat. my favorite is one that came with my newest road bike. it is the thinnest, narrowest seat that looks like some torture device, but it is the most comfortable saddle i've been on. i took a cross country trip last year, and would easily take this 'racing' seat with me if i would do it again. the key to saddles is that your butt should not hurt when you are done. pain is a very subjective thing. after riding for 40+ mi, you can expect that you feel a little sore - not much different from sitting on a wooden chair for a few hours in a row. but it should not be painful at all - especially in the more sensitive areas. if it is, you _need_ to get a new saddle. some of the women on this site may be able to recommend some good saddles for women.

the end of my sister's story is that she fully enjoyed getting acquainted with her road bike. she never felt any physical discomfort from the bike itself. of course, training for a week long 500 mi ride required some effort, but you've already made it through that.

hope that little diatribe proves useful.


good luck.

Best of luck with your training and getting acclimated to a bike!  They're great fun!

Thanks for the encouragement!

-- Gwendal

Wow, that was useful. Thanks for sharing it. I like that I can come back and read it again later when I'm prepping myself to enter the Lair of the Bike Shop. :-)

-- Gwendal

Hey, welcome aboard!  Don't worry too too much about which bike to get for your first season.  Any bike, preferrably a road bike, you can lay your hands on that will carry you through the season faithfully will do.  You will realise more improvement by learning about cadence and using you gears do the work for you.  Join a bike club, a tri club, or a spin class; that will go a long way to getting you bike ready. And log as many miles over diverse terrain as you can possibly manage.

Yeah! There's another 40 yr old Mum out there who is having trouble getting on a bike - I thought I must be the only one. I feel especially good when people tell me that cycling is the easiest bit!! I like the bit about doing anything as long as you're there to get dinner on the table and act as a taxi [can relate totally]. Good luck with all your training and planned events. Hey, we mothers can do anything. Cheers. Susan.