"Dance your cares away....worries for another day..." A cycling Fraggle Rock theme song mantra.

I mentioned earlier I'm a nervous cyclist. Scratch that. I'm a first rate weenie on my bicycle. Which is especially ironic seeing as I was telling my band kids at rehearsal Wednesday about the nervous break down I had on my tri bike that afternoon, while I was wearing a Martha's Vineyard 20 miler shirt that proudly displays "no weenies" on the sleeve. (A 20 mile road race on Martha's Vineyard in February is not for weenies...its for the lucky few of us out there who know what an absolutely fabulous race it is!). But though I may not be a weenie in the world of running, at times, I'm a disgrace to cycling. Some days I just feel scared out there. I break going down hill. I live in constant fear of the dog that will run out at me. (Okay, so I fear dogs while running too...). I cringe when trucks go flying by me. And yesterday, the granddaddy of all weenie actions on my bicycle - I cried. I stopped. I unclipped. I sighed. I cried. And I rode back home.

I can't pinpoint what the exact problem is. The fact that I didn't grow up on a bicycle? My lack of eye hand coordination? (I literally can NOT play video games. Though I love her to pieces, I blame my mother who forbade nintendo). My general nervous nilly disposition? Regardless, even if I don't know why I'm a weenie, I need to stop being a weenie, and quickly.

The first time we went out for a ride after Lake Placid, I rode my road bike like I've never ridden it before. I refused to be afraid of all the natural gas truck traffic, and I pedaled into and flew on the downhills. (And there's a lot of uphill and downhill going on here in the Endless Mountains of northeast Pa). It was as if just registering for the race had released what I've deemed my "inner bad ass". I knew I didn't have a choice but to just ride, and I didn't have the time or luxury of being scared anymore. Ironically I felt the safest on a bicycle I ever have.

With a few solid rides in "Rachel: ba cyclist" mode under my belt, I was ecstatic to pick up two new additions to our family on Tuesday. A Cervelo P2 that Mike will be bonding with, and a Trek Speed Concept 7.0 with pink tires and pink bar tape (huge thanks to tri guy Chad!) I'll be getting to know well. Our first stop on the way home was a ride with Greg and Julie in Ithaca Tuesday afternoon and it was...a disaster. We pulled out of the parking lot of the Museum of Earth and Greg, Julie, and Mike pulled further and further away. Not because I'm a weak cyclist, but because even the strongest of cyclist can only gain so much speed in their third easiest of twenty gears. (*terminology faux pas here cyclist readers? I'm in learning mode so please feel free to correct!*) And why didn't you shift to a higher gear, you ask? Very simple answer. The same answer, in fact, that I gave Julie when five miles in she dropped back to see what was going on. "Julie...I'm scared to drop into my aero bars! And if I can't drop into my aero bars, I can't shift!!".

Julie is one of the most patient, compassionate, sweet, dear people I've ever met and she's a naturally gifted teacher. (That first swim lesson in Lake Chalet - Julie. She's actually a nurse). She talked me through dropping one arm at a time, shifting, relaxing, and kept up light hearted calming chit chat, and before I knew it, I was on my aero bars and all was becoming well in my cycling world.

Which is what makes Wednesday's outing so baffling. Feeling a little more than a little shifty on the new bike, I went out more to work on comfort than for a real ride. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't drop into my aero bars, I felt scared to death, and my inner bad ass was nowhere to be found. And I was overwhelmed. And well...you know the rest.

Once I calmed down at home, I decided that I just needed to get to know my bike and start seeing my bike as a buddy in this whole tri craziness instead of the thing that was going to kill me. I thought about its (does my bike have a gender?), fun pink bars sticking out all crazily. I just heard a reference to the show Fraggle Rock recently. The Fraggles with their crazy bright hair sticking out. My bike looks like a Fraggle. I loved that show. Fraggles were always picked up and thrown and bounced, but they always just scurried back to their home under the earth and were fine. And that's what my bike and I will be. Gas trucks will whiz by, there will be pot holes (its Pa..there WILL be pot holes), and my bike and I have no control over what anyone else does on the road. But however we're picked up, thrown, bounced around, we will be just fine. And so on days like yesterday, when I just can't summon inner bad ass (I scream bad ass just about as much as I scream ironman), my bike, with its crazy pink fraggle hair handlebars, and I will embrace Fraggle.

And so yesterday morning after xc practice, Mike and I headed up to New York (where there's still a moratorium on gas drilling and the roads are much better cared for...baby steps to being bounced and thrown around like a Fraggle) and I started to get to know my bike. 1 hr and 50 minutes, 32 miles, a water bottle and granola bar consumed (just to prove I could do it), and the vast majority of the time spent on the aero bars later, (though, to clarify, I can also now shift even if I'm not on my aero bars:), I know my bike a little better. We've got a few kinks to work out for sure, but I think what happened yesterday could be the beginning of something beautiful:)