Training

I knew it was going to take a little bit of getting used to the new bike.  It was much heavier than my road bike.  It had ‘bar end shifters’ which I thought I’d have trouble getting used to since my road bike had the shifters integrated into the brakes on the handlebars.  Turns out it wasn’t that big a deal.

Since I didn’t have all of my gear, I decided to use a dummy load to get used to riding with weight.  I put a 3 1/2 quart bottle of water in each of the four panniers.  Once I strapped my tent on the back, I figured I was riding with about 35 lbs of ‘ballast’ which would be a good substitute for the real thing.  I am going to try to keep my load to 40 pounds or less for the real ride.  We’ll see.