Another leason in Murphys Laws, good and bad.
The workout called for only one bike loop today, 40 miles. So I loaded the bike up with just one 200 calorie bottle of Cytomax (forgot to buy more CarbPro), a full aero bottle of water, an extra powerbar just in case and a small backup water bottle in case my aero spilled out. Sounds good right?
One loop turns into one and half, not a big deal unless that half equals an additional 20 miles of riding that I didn't have liquid calories for. At least I had that powerbar and extra water.
At the turn around to pick up the extra mileage, I realized that the back up water bottle had jumped ship. Down to my bottle of Cytomax and about a 1/4 of an aero bottle of water. Not promising for the next 30 miles of riding. I conserved as I could and scanned for my bottle.
20 miles later I saw it lying on the side of the road, thankfully unspilled. The temperature is 80 degrees and I am very thirsty. The bottle jumped out after I rode over a think bump in the road while going fast downhill.
As I picked up my bottle, I realized there were dozens of bike bottles strewn about the same area. Apparently I am not the only one to dislodge a bottle after going over that bump. A bottle graveyard. After examining a few, I decided on collecting a brand new Tri-Sport bottle and a short Gatorade bottle.
During next weeks training, I will have to stop and pay my respects.
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11 comments:
Sounds more like a treasure discovery than a grave yard.
Benny
Now that sounds like a great IM dress rehearsal - losing water bottles and rolling with the punches!
aaah...the bottle launchers..I haven't taken the tri-bike out in awhile so haven't had to deal with the bottles flying out of the seat-mounted aero cages. Nice that you were able to find your fuel with some extra parting gifts- you can't beat that!
Sounds like a good ride. So if you'd gone a little further out in the desert would you have found the "dead from dehydration" cycling graveyard. My cartoon bubble has various bikes and riding gear clad skeletons poking our of the sand. :)
Free bottles? Sweet :)
What bottle cage do you use?
that's pretty funny. Of course, it wouldn't have been if you hadn't found some hydration.
I have the same problem with seat-mounted bottle cages. Using cages on my down tube and seat tube seems to work better for training rides and then I remove them during a race.
The very best combo of cage and bottle (lowest recorded number of launches EVER) that I use on my saddle mounted XLAB saddle wing is the Specialized Rib Cage Pro with the Polar bottle. Rib Cage has an almost claw hold on the bottle in its indentation point, and I've even put frozen Polar bottles in there and not had them launch very often at all (and I put about 4,000 miles on that combination last year).
Rib Cage was my third tested set of cages on the XLAB, and they are the clear winners!
I always load more fluids than I might need for a ride in case of lostness or a bottle mishap, and I always know where I can stop and buy more in case of a problem.
Bike never leaves the house without spare tubes, extra fluid, driver's license, credit card, cell phone and $20. You can fix pretty much anything with that.
For 1/2 IM or less race, I bring my own nutrition. WTF I can carry 3 bottles plus my aerobottle, so no excuse there. For IM, I start out with all 3 bottles plus my aerobottle is full. Then as I drain my own bottle, I toss and replace with something from the race. At the end, I should end up with "extra" which is way better than not enough. Most IM races are smart enough to have bike aid stations about every 10-15 miles, so if you miss one station you should be OK until the next one.
80 degrees? I want some of that!
That is too funny! Always nice to pick up some souveniers on rides.
That's pretty nifty, actually. You should put up a little sign or something so other riders know about it.
question is...were you thirsty enough to drink the stuff in the other bottles? That would be some serious dehydration!
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