Training has continued apace, work has continued apace (yes, despite what a couple of Facebook friends have said, with the help of St Pete I do somehow manage to hold down a busy full time job alongside my ironman passion!), and 2013 continues apace.
2013 brings with it an exciting new challenge.
This year I will be taking on two ironman events. Yes, I know, I have two ironman official finishes in 2012 but, with New Zealand being shortened to a half, Ironman Cairns became my single actual iron distance race completed. This time I'm going to do both Ironman New Zealand (in March) and follow that up with Ironman Cairns in June.
To help me in my quest St Pete decided last year that it was time to upgrade my favourite ironman race tool. No, it wasn't time to upgrade him (!), rather it was time to move on from my trusty and faithful Avanti Cadent road bike and onto a triathlon-specific bike. And who was I to argue?
Enter Black Beauty.
A few months had been spent researching the various options and for a long time I had considered that my next bike would be a Trek. They are known as one of the top producers of triathlon bikes and the ability to customise the colour options via the website was particularly appealing. (It's a girl thing.)
Last season, however, my opinion started to sway when Specialized introduced the Shiv.
For any triathlon geek this bike looks like sex on wheels. Added to that the very cool integration of water bladder inside the frame and nifty drinking tube held to the aero bars with a magnet and I was seriously reconsidering my original dream of owning a Trek. The buzz around bike geeks is that the Shiv is not UCI-legal. So you won't find any pro bike teams racing it in time trials. What Specialized has done, then, is be the first company to throw away the UCI rules and design a bike specifically for triathletes.
And given I don't give a toss about time trialling, it's got to be worth supporting.
Besides the sex on wheels thing, the other thing that finally swayed me in favour of the Shiv (Pro Di2) was the gearing. Thanks to the wonders of Shimano's fancy pants electronic gearing, the Shiv has been able to achieve lower gearing ratios than the Trek which means climbing is easier - and for a hill-phobe like me that's a big plus! Oh, and having a bike with electronic gearing might have also played a part in the decision-making....just a little...
...OK, a lot. :)
So, at the beginning of December, and after a Body Geometry bike fit with Jet Cycles, Black Beauty came home.
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| Do I look happy or what? |
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| Goodbye gear levers, hello buttons |
Merry Christmas to me....
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