Friday, September 8-2:00 p.m. (36 hours to go)
I wheeled the bike out of Athlete Pick-Up, still excited. My happiness gave me the focus…
(You, focus?)
…to manage the tech issues with my power meter. The bike mechanics could solve a mechanical issue with a bike, but this one needed a computer expert. When I got home it turned out that the bike computer needed an update and in Nice it couldn’t connect to any of the WiFi signals near me.
(This sounds like a simple issue to fix.)
In hindsight, it was, but at the time, I had no idea why equipment was not working and I didn’t want to go down a rabbit hole here on something I could manage without. I can be laser focused on a problem for hours and block out everything around me. I didn’t have hours to spend on this issue. There were other things that had to be attended to before Shabbos started. I needed to focus on those other things and not get sucked into a time vampire like this power meter.
(Didn’t you need the power meter for the race?)
The power meter is helpful to me when I train on the bike trainer and when I’m on a flat road. About 95% of this bike course was hills. I was going to be relying on my cadence meter and the bike elevation feature of the computer to help me determine gearing and effort.
(I don’t understand.)
I do most of my bike training in the house on the trainer, a device that turns my racing bike into a stationary bike.
(A Peloton?)
No, that is a stationary bike that connects you to other rides, also on stationary bikes. The power meter is a sensor in the crankshaft of the bike pedals.
Power is measured in watts. A watt is a basic unit of power equal to one joule per second. It is a common unit used to express effort exerted. A power meter measures power by tracking the amount of torque produced by your pedaling and multiplying that number by cadence, or how fast you’re pedaling. So, for a moving bicycle, power = torque x cadence. (https://www.sram.com/en/quarq/collections/quarq-power-meters)
(I’m not Jesse Schwartzman. I do not work in aerospace. Please translate.)
Cadence measures how fast I pedal. Power measures how hard I pedal. A power meter lets me know if I am in the wrong gear. Since 95% of this bike course is up or down a mountain, I expect to be in either my “easiest” or “hardest” gear most of the time.
As I wheeled my bike back through the expo, I noticed Joanna at the Ironman booth.
She was the reason I was here. She was the person who had told me three months before that if I finished Ironman UK, I would be awarded a spot at the Ironman World Championship.
All I wanted to do was tell her how grateful I was to her.
“This is all happening because of you,” I told her.
“No, you made this happen.”
I just stood there for what felt like minutes but was probably three-five seconds. I was caught off guard. Yes, I had done the training and I had fought to finish the bike course at Ironman UK when I thought I was not going to have enough time. On that July day I was literally riding, waiting to see if I would roll in before the clock expired. After the race I campaigned to get my spot, then to get permission from work to go to Nice. So, yes, there was a lot of wait-and-see-if-this-works moments that were on me, but I was not alone on this journey. My wife and kids were there for me. My parents deserve credit for instilling the never-quit mentality in me.
My friend Peter Shankman had told announcer Mike Reilly that I was competing at Ironman UK and Mike told European announcer Joanne Murphy to look for me. So, I owed those three people for this moment. All I wanted to do was show gratitude and now I had to respond … and I had nothing.
“Selfie?” is all I could get out.
Friday, September 8-4:00 p.m. (34 hours to go)
It was time to go test the new swim goggles … and then get ready for Shabbos in Nice, France. This second swim was way better than my previous swim in the aqua blue waters of the Mediterranean.
(Did you wear flip flops?)
Absolutely! The beaches of Nice are not sandy … they are covered in silver dollar sized pebbles and those hurt. At the water’s edge I slipped off my Bike4Chai flipflops. I fitted the new goggles on my face and looked back to see my footwear float off like Wilson in the Tom Hank’s movie, “Castaway.”
David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6. He can be reached at [email protected].
