More setbacks - Maybe I'm destined not to do well at Iron Star. Well, I got back on the bike today for the first time in 7 days. I did about 20 miles on the relatively flat Parmer Lane course near the house. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a training setback. It was raining this morning at 8:00 AM when I went out - not hard rain, but misty and wet. Two miles into the ride, I made the turn from Crystal Falls onto Parmer and down I went! The rear wheel slid out from under me. I wasn't hurt at all, really . . . a strawberry rash on my right hip and my right butt cheek, but no damage to my bib shorts or my jersey. There weren't even any cars or other cyclists around, so even my pride wasn't too damaged. Everything seemed fine, so off I went to finish the ride.

As I got near my turnaround place, I slowed considerably to make the turn to go back. That's when I noticed the problem. I pulled the left-bar shifter to shift from the big chain ring to the small one, but it wouldn't shift, even though the lever was working fine. Then, I noticed that the lever was not actually still connected to the cable, so it wasn't shifting right. Also, the left bar-end shifter was loose and popping out. Not sure how that happened, as the front of the bike never hit anything in the crash.

Well . . . I managed to make the best of the rest of the ride, and was even able to manually push the cable to make the shifts I needed to make. I got home and got cleaned up okay, and even got a little sympathy from Lisa for the crash. (I made it sound worse than it was!)

So . . . in a nutshell, I had to take the tri bike (Guru) in to get fixed after church. The Colnago is already in the shop (and has been for a couple of weeks). I won't get the Guru back until Thursday, so now I'm relegated to having to clean and lube my old Specialized Allez to ride tomorrow. I guess it could be worse . . . I could have no bike to ride, but I'm not relishing riding the old 21-speed with the triple chain ring. Although . . . after 7 days without being able to ride, I guess I can't be too picky!

Well . . . off to get in a short run!