My New Bike

Last March, my family doctor sent me to a Podiatrist because I have  Plantar fasciitis.

This is not a fun condition. I could no longer enjoy hiking or walking. Every morning when I got up I felt like someone had stuck a hot poker up the bottom of my heel. Well, the podiatrist told me to ride a bike for exercise and that would not bother my foot. I told  Rod and we dusted off a couple of bikes in our garage and went for a ride. We thought we were really something as we went about 2 1/2 miles that day. The next day we did the same thing, and so forth for about a week.

I was riding Becca's bike as my mountain bike had been stolen out of our garage a few years before. I told Rod that her bike wasn't very good, the seat sucked and that I couldn't ride it any more. We immediately went to Dick's Sporting Goods and bought a mountain bike. I wanted a bike that was designed for comfort. It was awesome! We started adding a few miles on to our ride and were soon riding 10 - 15 miles per day. I told Rod I wanted to go farther. He decided I needed a better bike if we were going to ride these distances, so we went back to Dick's and got a Hybrid. Wow. I noticed a HUGE difference in the ease of riding, and the ability to go farther faster. We went 25 miles. We went 30 miles. We went 40 miles. Each increase in distance was a milestone accomplishment. The first time we went 20 miles on a Saturday, we came home and went to bed for a couple of hours to recuperate. Same thing with 30, 40 and 50. Our record is now 62 miles and we ride 20 miles every night. We feel quite cheated and like we haven't gone very far if we don't get our 20 mile ride in.

While on a pit stop at the water fountain at Rio Vista park, we encountered a neat old guy that talked to us for a while. He was experienced and had on a competition jersey. We asked him about doing century rides. He told us about the Tour de Tucson. I went home and looked it up and told Rod I thought we should do this. We looked at it closely and saw that there is an 85 mile loop in that event. We signed up. We ordered our own competition jerseys which, by the way, have arrived.

A couple of weeks ago, Rod said he thought we should get some new road bikes before the big event. He said I am working too hard on the hybrid and that a road bike would make a big difference in going farther faster. We started shopping around. We ended up going to Landis, a bike shop down on Indian School and 7th Ave in Phoenix. We got some AWESOME Trek road bikes. I can't believe it. Rod was simply giddy over this. I have never seen him so excited about something. We have had so much fun with our riding and we look forward to being out every single day! Rod took this photo as we were riding on Thursday evening.

 I love my new bike!!