Heading for the starting line.

I did my first bike race today!

Peggy and I showed up at the crack of dawn this morning at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park for a 6-lap, 20 mile road race.

It was thrilling to ride with over a hundred other riders, thirty of them in my racing class (Category-5, the lowest level). Riding in such a big group of cyclists was at first a little nerve-racking — but my excitement overcame my jitters, and pretty soon I got into the groove.

It was fairly easy going at first, but after the first lap the pace picked just up a little — and suddenly I found myself struggling to keep up with the pack. MORE…

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I am going to enter some bicycle races this year.

I’m learning, however, that training to race can require a massive, life-altering level of commitment. Specifically, it requires huge amounts of time, time that a person like me might not realistically ever have. Is it possible for a business owner/entrepreneur to also be a competitive athlete? MORE…

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I bought a wind trainer about a year ago but I’ve never actually used it because I was always afraid my adventurous little cat Nike would stick her paw in my back wheel. When I noticed a neighbor was throwing out a large roll of carbon fiber, my mind clicked: Disk wheels!

So this weekend I built up a couple of wheel disks to protect Nike from whirling spokes. Don’t get me wrong here: I do not want to pretend these are real aero disk wheels. They’re just carbon-fiber-looking wheel covers for kitty-safety purposes only. The fact that they are actually made of carbon-fiber is purely superficial - I could just as well have made these out of poster board.

Construction was pretty simple. I traced a big circle slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the wheel, and a smaller circle the size of the hub diameter, plus one radial cut to “dish” the disk. Naturally, as I was building them, Nike had to stick her nose in as well.

I attached the disks to the wheels using good old fashioned gaffer’s tape, which you can kind of see through the translucent carbon fiber sheeting. Finally I cut a little notch for pumping up the tire, and viola, it’s done!

I used a spare rear wheel for this, since my intention is pretty much to use this wheel only for indoor training. We’ll see how much I actually use it.

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