Not My Bike Or My View 🙁
I’m On A Bike!
Good news! Exactly one week before my first real triathlon, I got a bike. Last minute, like always, I snagged this one from my brother when I was back up in Chicago for the weekend. He got it like 10 years ago back in high school and hasn’t touched it since so I decided to steal it for next weekend. It’s silver & blue, and is basically a super cool…mountain bike. Great for riding around as a kid, probalby not so great for a triathlon race against time. I was a little worried about this at first, but most of my fears were calmed when I read Jim Hodgson’s advice in his Art Of Manliness post on the Ironman:
Beginners ask me sometimes if I think it’s dorky to do their first triathlon on a mountain bike. I think it’s far dorkier to be slow on a super expensive carbon bike and carbon wheels. You will see a lot of people being slow on very expensive bikes. Laugh inwardly at them, because you know that this is a mental game, not a fashion show.
These first triathlons I’m competing in to finish. Yes I would LOVE to buy a carbon bike (or for that matter a low-end road bike) but it’s not essential for the first few races I do. What’s important is that I do it and finish, not what bike I’m riding.
Sure, I’m probably going to have a slower race time (and probably look like a dork) because I’m riding a mountain bike, but I figure I’ll just be that much more impressed with my perceived improvement when I’m able to compete using a real bike. =)
Killing Off Excuses
I think this is pretty important. Triathlons, like a lot of activities, require a certain amount a of perceved “things” that are necessary in order to compete. While yes, there are some things that are necessary [It would be pretty hard -and possibly illegal- to try to do the swimming protion without a suit, impossible to actually compete without some sort of bike, and even most of us running in Vibrams Five Fingers would have issues running completely barefoot] a lot of the things you’d like aren’t essential.
There’s a big difference.
Take my example of the bike. It’s easy for me to convince yourself that I NEED a carbon fiber bike or I would never be able to do a race. However, if I have that attitude, I’ll probably not end up doing much of anything, other than making excuses. If I’m not able to do a triathlon without a carbon bike, I won’t be able to do it even if I got one, because I’ll just have a newer, shinier excuse then. The bottom line is:
If you want to do something [whatever that something is], you can do it.
- Want to start working out but don’t have a gym membership or personal trainer? Steve Kamb has tons of FREE fitness videos you can do in your home.
- Want to learn how to cook filet mignon but don’t know how? Google It
- Want to start a blog but don’t have a computer? I bet your library does
- Want to start a business, but have no money? Start one without any overhead or make some cash on the side and bootstrap it yourself.
You get the picture. There will always be some reason why you can’t do something and there always will be some reason telling you it’s bad idea.
Stop wasting time engineering reasons why you “can’t” do things and just do them.
Don’t let weak excuses & not having the correct “things” stop you from starting. You don’t have to have it all together from the start. You can get better equipment as you get better and get nicer things as you progress, but you have to start.
My dusty 10-year old mountain-bike
So come Saturday, I’ll be pedaling away on my dusty 10-year old, borrowed, mountain-bike…but at least I’ll be pedaling.
How do you deal with your own excuses?
[Also, does anyone in Indy want to sell me a road bike? :)]
Good luck on the triathlon, Joel! Hopefully not having a bike until this point won’t be too much of a setback. 🙂
To carbon fiber,
Haidn
Thanks Haidn. I’m not terribly worried about the bike portion honestly. It’s only 12 miles (famous last words, right?) =)
I’ll keep you posted.
You really nailed it with this one Joel. So many times I’ve mistakenly told myself that “if I just had this particular lens I could make a great photo” or “I can’t shoot this scene without a particular camera body or lens combination”. Thoughts like that all boil down to nothing more than excuses. I love what you wrote here:
Stop wasting time engineering reasons why you “can’t” do things and just do them.
While a hammer might work best for hitting a nail I can still accomplish the same thing with a pipe wrench. There are always options and solutions for any problem if you look hard enough.
Good luck to you on your first real triathlon! Hopefully the bike portion will be on gravel. 😉
Hey Matt. I know how you feel when you talk about photography. I feel liked I need to get a dslr sometimes to get great shots, but if I need to remind myself that if I can learn to take a good shot with my camera phone, then I can even be more ready for when I have the money to spend on a DSLR. Just because the tool isn’t ideal doesn’t mean you can’t start. A photographer takes photos, the camera is secondary.
Congrats on getting ready for the race! Thats definitely something that I’d like to do sooner rather than later. I’m still debating about running (walking?) the Portland Marathon.
It doesn’t matter how you look, what matters is that you are doing it. And who knows, maybe this isnt your thing? It’d be a shame to spend 2 grand on a bike only to realize you never ride it.
Good luck and be sure to let us know how it goes!
Oh and thanks for the mention 🙂
Thanks Sean!
When’s the Portland Marathon? I want to push myself and get one in this year, but I know I need to be careful and not push myself too hard & get injured :(.
Thanks for the support!
This sounds exactly like my first tri, I rode my (now) husband’s sister’s one-speed mountain bike, I could have borrowed my gramma’s mountain bike which at least would have been better because I could shift on it.
Glad to see you’ve gotten a better bike now and are out there kicking butt. Also, thanks for stopping by my page. Looks like a great blog you got going here.
Thanks Melissa. The mountain bike was definitely an experience…sort of my triathlon initiation, if you will. Glad I did it, but probably never gonna do it again. Road bikes only from here on out =)
I know this post is a couple years old, but I wanted to share my thoughts. Something occurred to me while reading this. See, I have this motto “There’s always a way” but I realized that daily I make up reasons… excuses… why I can’t do something. And then accept it as fact and truth.
“If you want to do something [whatever that something is], you can do it.”
“Stop wasting time engineering reasons why you “can’t” do things and just do them.”
These are both phrases that I’m going to keep in mind each day. Thanks Joel for such an inspirational blog, reminding me constantly that I CAN do it… and I WILL do it.
Now go make it happen 🙂