What's My Prediction? PAIN.

Welcome back to bike training, I suppose.

After much deliberation, financial wrangling, and headaches that would rival the best (worst?) of my hangovers, I finally got the bike situation figured out. Went and had my initial fitting on Wednesday, and brought it on home.

Please, allow me to introduce you to Oddjob:

Allow me to get the Slowtwitch joke out of the way: seat's too high.

What's with the name? As like all of my bikes, this one's named after a favorite character of my late father-in-law. Considering we'd already gone through the Muppets and Wallace and Gromit, we went to the Bond franchise with this one. 

So why Oddjob? Oddjob was known for throwing hats. You know, off his head? What's the most noticeable feature of this bike? The size of the head-tube foil. See what I did there?

So anyways, Wednesday was the initial fitting, which we'll be tinkering with (play with saddle height, eliminate spacers, etc.) Thursday was the shake-out ride. 

Friday...well, Friday was my re-introduction to Friday Night Fights. It's an 8-week CompuTrainer competition, earning points towards a series title. I missed the first week due to not having a bike, and I will probably miss a week somewhere else. So I had to ride this Friday to get into the series standings.

Alright, not a problem. What's the course?

3.1 mile time trial, starting flat and maxing out at 7.5% grade. No downhill. All uphill.

Oh. This'll suck.

There's a fellow athlete in the area who talks trash with me a fair bit. So, naturally, he was my target for the week. I saw what his time was and just had to beat him. Put my game face on and got ready to rock.

I was paired up with a couple of other strong athletes in my wave. So I figured I'd have to fight pretty hard to even make the podium within my wave. Good thing I'm pretty light overall.

Managed to finish 3rd in my wave and demolished my nemesis. Only wound up 8th or 9th for the placing in the GC. Going to need to step up my game! Although, to put in perspective, my effort there was the off of my first three rides in three months. Not bad to get back on the horse.