Biking isn't necessarily the problem

At least I think that's right. Yesterday I had a little eye opener and I really do think it mostly explains the frustration I biking. Outside of the obvious cost issue.

Yesterday I biked about 80 miles with a bunch of friends. It was with the Twin Cities Bike Club (TCBC) with their all member ride. It was definitely a lot of fun and I'm glad I did it.

I'm not a member of TCBC and will probably join. It's a great club with a lot of great people. But they're all great clubs. I belong to a handful of clubs and don't do much of anything with them. A person's time is limited and there comes a point when there's too much. I'm going to need to focus my club memberships this coming year by dropping the ones I don't do anything with and adding the ones I do.

I didn't make it too far into the ride before I started getting tired. Very tired. And then it dawned on me. Something that I didn't bother to think about before. With each of these sports, there's a certain "shape" one needs to be in to be competitive. I've been doing exactly what I've been told and that is to treat multi sport events as one event. That is, don't think of a triathlon as three different events. It's all one event. On that note, it seemed to be the logical conclusion that I should then be considering my abilities in each to be the same. And that's not true.

When it comes to being "in shape", you need to be in shape for each sport. Just because someone is in shape to run doesn't mean they'll be good at swimming. Or biking. And likewise for the other two sports.

So, what I found out is I'm terribly out of shape when it comes to biking, decently in shape for swimming, and, due to lots of time away, moderately in shape for running.

The rest of my season, performance-wise, is going to be a disaster. Again, I'm doing too much with little focus. Like a good recipe, you need to have just the right ingredients, put in with the proper doses and at the right times. I was a poor cook this year with little discipline. But, thinking forward, this was an amazing journey with some incredible learning. I'll be taking a much more focused approach with me next year.

For those of you interested in seeing the route, I'm working on putting it together right now.

[UPDATE: Here's the route. Now I know how to bike the NE and north St. Paul area.]