Try a Du and Night Rides

Okay, I had things to say about riding last Tuesday, but I waited too long and I've forgotten.  Except that it was my first ride with the Magicshine mounted to my helmet, and it was awesome.  And slow.  I really need to start hitting these trails during the day to get a feel for the twists, bumps and drops.  I also finally got new batteries for the camera, so I'll be able to take pictures of some of the ridiculous trail features. 

I other news, I intended for a second try-a-tri last Saturday, but unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate, and they canceled the swim, thus making it a try-a-du (2k run, 10k bike, 2k run.)  Despite the last minute changes, it went really well.  I did the first run pretty quickly (maybe too quickly) actually beating my previous best mile time by about a minute.  I also came first in my category for bike time, even despite my size and the horrible wind.  My total time was 40:47 with a split of 7:35/22:47/10:26.  I couldn't believe how difficult the second run was on my legs; I'm fairly sure I got passed by at least 15 people in that section.  I guess that's why they call it the brick.

Official pictures haven't been posted yet, but here's a couple of my friend Jesse and me post-race.

On Sunday I made the mistake of taking a decent (~100k) ride in my cheap commuter shoes.  These have cleats, but the sole is rubber, not hard plastic (lets be honest here, I can't afford carbon fiber) and does not provide good support to the balls of the feet.  After the ride I could barely walk for almost a day.  I went into the bike shop in the biggest, most comfortable shoes I own and softly padded around for fear of tumbling.  Stupid commuting shoes.  Because of that, I decided to skip a Big Dirty Don Ride on Monday with the don rats.  I was pretty stoked for it, and was bummed to miss it, but it turned out that they hit 110km of the Don, which is ridiculous.  They ended up going for 9 hours.  Maybe I don't regret missing it that much...

I'm going on a bike tour in the Niagra wine region this weekend, which is going to be tons of fun.  Hopefully I can get some pictures with the Magicshine next week to do a full review