In triathlon there are three major components: Swim. Bike. Run. It seems pretty obvious, no? The most obvious for the bike portion is you need a bike. While I have seen people out on Cruisers with wicker baskets right alongside competitors with several thousand dollar Triathlon specific bikes, I fall somewhere in between. I ride a bike. It's not my bike. The bike is on loan. The bike gets the job done. The bike has been sworn at. The bike has been mocked. Combined the bike and I get the job done. Period. Thanks, OCR.
Oh, the OCR. My best friend is loaning me the OCR for this season and the bike got me through Esprit de She and several training rides, and even long leisure rides. The age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg? It's similar to me and the OCR. Is the bike the problem or is it me?
Don't get me wrong. The bike serves its purpose, it gets me through the bike portion. Now my getting to be competitive on the OCR has not been without fail. It has not been without falter. It has not been without blood. It's not without a sense of irony that I have a cinematic crush on Paul Thomas Anderson. His movie There Will Be Blood really has nothing to do with my riding, my competing, and yet the title nearly foreshadows my biking experiences. In short, there's two type of cyclists: Those who have fallen and those who will fall. I literally fall into the later category, and I like to believe I'm in good company.
The OCR is officially a Giant OCR One. It's a Men's frame, sized small. As I said, it serves its purpose. Then again I've also said I'm ignorant. I actually thought all of the shoulder and neck discomfort I was experiencing while biking as well as after biking was because I was riding a road bike. The body positioning on a road bike is quite different than that of my prior bike. I wrote it all off as it's the road bike, this is how it is. Only it's not.
A couple weekends ago I racked up the OCR onto my car and hit the open road. I went to my Sister and Brother-in-Law's house and the plan was go to biking. My Sister, Jill, and Brother-in-Law, Matt, well, more or less live in the country. Actually there's no more or less about it ... around the corner is a very large corn field, and just down the street is the Kankakee River. Their closest store is about 9 miles one way. They enjoy the life, and I enjoy visiting. I'm fortunate enough that Matt actually was a competitive cyclist while in college, the bike coach of his college's triathlon team, and he worked in a bike shop. I knew racking up the bike and taking it to him could result in mockery. Then again the OCR gets mocked in my own apartment by Will because of it's age, it's dated components.
I was wrong. Matt competed on a similar bike, the TCR, so he is very familiar with the bike and promised me there was hope for it. Now granted our ride was delayed by two hours just making small tune-up adjustments in their garage and driveway.
Once the chain was cleaned and a few other things we headed out. The ride went well, it's nice to ride in country roads where the entire 90 minutes we were out we saw 4 cars. The ride was hilarious. You see, there was a bike race and century ride in the area that day. And when I say in the area that day we literally crossed over the start/finish line and passed two aide stations. Our country ride was in fact a portion of the race.
After we completed the ride we set out to make some adjustments. I had in fact been told that the handlebars on the bike were the original ones and there was a geometric flaw with them. I couldn't reach down to ride in the drops without my chin nearly resting on the handlebars themselves. Matt also noted that one of my rear cables was slightly frayed so that and the housing would need to be replaced. I continued to have issues unclipping with the peddles that I had been racing on so we switched those out too because Matt literally had some laying around.
All of this was not without some hilarity. We had to get some parts and Jill and Matt, as I said, don't exactly have a local bike store down the street. We ended up getting handlebars at one store, we went to another to get a new stem for the handlebars, we got new tape, new cable and housing, tires and tubes, and headed out. We set back up in the garage and stripped the bike down.
Oh, the OCR. My best friend is loaning me the OCR for this season and the bike got me through Esprit de She and several training rides, and even long leisure rides. The age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg? It's similar to me and the OCR. Is the bike the problem or is it me?
Don't get me wrong. The bike serves its purpose, it gets me through the bike portion. Now my getting to be competitive on the OCR has not been without fail. It has not been without falter. It has not been without blood. It's not without a sense of irony that I have a cinematic crush on Paul Thomas Anderson. His movie There Will Be Blood really has nothing to do with my riding, my competing, and yet the title nearly foreshadows my biking experiences. In short, there's two type of cyclists: Those who have fallen and those who will fall. I literally fall into the later category, and I like to believe I'm in good company.
The OCR is officially a Giant OCR One. It's a Men's frame, sized small. As I said, it serves its purpose. Then again I've also said I'm ignorant. I actually thought all of the shoulder and neck discomfort I was experiencing while biking as well as after biking was because I was riding a road bike. The body positioning on a road bike is quite different than that of my prior bike. I wrote it all off as it's the road bike, this is how it is. Only it's not.
A couple weekends ago I racked up the OCR onto my car and hit the open road. I went to my Sister and Brother-in-Law's house and the plan was go to biking. My Sister, Jill, and Brother-in-Law, Matt, well, more or less live in the country. Actually there's no more or less about it ... around the corner is a very large corn field, and just down the street is the Kankakee River. Their closest store is about 9 miles one way. They enjoy the life, and I enjoy visiting. I'm fortunate enough that Matt actually was a competitive cyclist while in college, the bike coach of his college's triathlon team, and he worked in a bike shop. I knew racking up the bike and taking it to him could result in mockery. Then again the OCR gets mocked in my own apartment by Will because of it's age, it's dated components.
I was wrong. Matt competed on a similar bike, the TCR, so he is very familiar with the bike and promised me there was hope for it. Now granted our ride was delayed by two hours just making small tune-up adjustments in their garage and driveway.
Once the chain was cleaned and a few other things we headed out. The ride went well, it's nice to ride in country roads where the entire 90 minutes we were out we saw 4 cars. The ride was hilarious. You see, there was a bike race and century ride in the area that day. And when I say in the area that day we literally crossed over the start/finish line and passed two aide stations. Our country ride was in fact a portion of the race.
After we completed the ride we set out to make some adjustments. I had in fact been told that the handlebars on the bike were the original ones and there was a geometric flaw with them. I couldn't reach down to ride in the drops without my chin nearly resting on the handlebars themselves. Matt also noted that one of my rear cables was slightly frayed so that and the housing would need to be replaced. I continued to have issues unclipping with the peddles that I had been racing on so we switched those out too because Matt literally had some laying around.
All of this was not without some hilarity. We had to get some parts and Jill and Matt, as I said, don't exactly have a local bike store down the street. We ended up getting handlebars at one store, we went to another to get a new stem for the handlebars, we got new tape, new cable and housing, tires and tubes, and headed out. We set back up in the garage and stripped the bike down.
We put the new handlebars on, but we could not put the new stem on because it's not the original head on the bike. The handlebars themselves made a drastic difference, as did moving my seat up slightly. We pulled out the old cable and housing and set out to put the shifters back on. Of course it made sense to clean out the shifters of any dirt that had gotten in there, etc. What didn't make sense was the amount of sand in the shifters, specifically the left shifter. I had been experiencing issues shifting on the left side, I wrote it off as the age of the bike and it's components. Nope, sand.
The OCR had to sleep over with its cousins so to speak. Matt had to reach out to some contacts he had in order to find out how to take the shifters apart to remove all the sand because air and flushing water through them were not working. So we hung the OCR up and I told it I would see it the following week.
(L-R) The OCR, Matt's TCR1 Tri, Matt's TCR1 Road, Jill's Liv, and Matt's Defy.
A couple days later Matt sent me a photo, the OCR was all done! It was like Humpty Dumpty had been put back together again ... this time without the sand!
The handlebars and tape on them alone gave it an updated look. Not to mention new tires and tubes were going to help the safety and speed of the bike. I went the following weekend and we went out for a spin again; this time without a bike race out in the area. The bike rode so much smoother with me in a better position. I was faster because I could get lower. I was able to clip and unclip easier. As well I could shift! I was a shifting fool! Ok, not really, you don't want to shift a lot!
It was as if the OCR had a new life to it. I was faster. I realize I personally have gotten stronger and worked some things out, but so had the OCR. The following evening after picking the OCR back up I went for an 18 mile ride around my neighborhood. I hit up an industrial area to practice turns and corners. The new tires and tubes added some grip to turns as well as speed so I needed to practice those safely and the best place was in an empty area.
Will and I went out riding last weekend. We hadn't rode together since I had a bad crash in June. While Will still doesn't love the OCR, he noted I was faster and the bike was better. I'm sure the OCR will still get mocked, and that's ok because it's getting the job done. And let's face it, that's all that matters. Well that and making sure there's no sand in your shifters, that seems pretty important too.
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