New Goodies!!

So the first item was actually purchased during my bike fit. It is the infamous ISM Adamo saddle. For anyone doing triathlons or TTs that has problems with seats putting pains where there really shouldn't be pains, these seats are for you. Basically, its design puts the pressure right back on your sit bones where it is supposed to be. There are several models available. Each has different amounts of padding so its just a matter of finding the "right" one.


The next item was a recommendation by the fitter. I needed to lengthen the front end of my bike. I did this by replacing the standard Vision TT aerobars which were 250mm in length with the Profile Design T2+ S-Bend aerobar clip-on extensions. Since I was changing the bars, I also changed the light gray shifter and brake cables. After a week of adjustments, I finally have what I feel is a manageable setup. Once interesting thing was I routed the shifter cables through the plastic ends of the aerobar extensions. You can see these barely in the photo. I outfitted them with Zipp bar tape which I am pleased with.


One of the problems I ran into was where to mount my computer. The bars are fairly narrow and doesn't give much space. The computer I have, a Garmin Forerunner 301, is a wide computer and will barely fit between the bars. Off I went to Home Depot. I came out with a 3/4" curved PVC pipe. After a little bit of dremeling, I came up with the following mounting bracket:

The PVC is dremeled so it has curved ends to fit between the bars yet rises up slightly between them. The gray PVC was then covered in black electrical tape to semi-permanently mount it between the bar ends. The computer mounting bracket is then zip tied to the PVC. Here is a final shot showing how the actual computer fits in between my arms.



The last goody I got was related to running. If you have been following my blog, you know that I've had recent knee problems that have kept me from doing pretty much anything. Well, I finally decided that after 500 miles of biking, I should make an attempt to run. I started slow doing 2 minutes walking at 4mph and 2 minutes running at 6.5 mph. Not blazing at all. One big thing that I noticed was that if I accidentally over-extended my stride, my bad knee would experience sharp pains. I came to the realization that my running form may be what caused my injuries in the first place. I may have had a double whammy of overstriding and a major heel striker. In an attempt to fix this, I bought into the marketing hype of a shoe company. No its not a major player... its Newton Running. So I am using their 30 day "free trial" period and bought the following:


The shoes are their "Gravity" cushion trainer model. The shoes are very interesting concept. They are designed to promote forefoot/midfoot running form. The heel material is less, they have a more flexible forefoot, and they have "lugs" underneath the midsole. The lugs are supposed to be some type of energy retention system. Whether these lugs work or not have yet to be seen, but I'm not getting my hopes up. So after I got home I took them for their maiden voyage. Another 2 min walk, 2 min run session at 4mph/6.5mph. What I noticed right away was the shoes wanting to "keep me on my toes". Its a good thing I was only running in 2 minute intervals, because I don't think I could go further. Two observations were made after the 20 minutes of running. My cadence improved 10 steps per minute from 80 to 90. Changing to this running style is going to take some time. In the end, I didn't once get a jolt of pain up in my knee. I attribute this to not heel striking and letting the knee try and absorb the shock, this was since the foot was doing most of the shock absorption. Over the next month, updates will continually be made on these shoes and my progress in a gait change.