More biking tips -- from Tom

If I can give you any advice after today, it would be:

You guys can find any information you need on how to improve any aspect of
your riding - between your friends and the tremendous amount of
information out there on triathlons, there probably won't be any gaps at
all.

But you should set some real (I mean, like, numerical) goals, or even
fabricate incentives, to get you to actually train. It's terribly easy to
ride a bike for 13 miles. It's very hard to ride 13 miles in 30 minutes,
and pretty hard to do it in 40, but you can totally do it if you train.

It's easy. Find some course on which you'll regularly time yourself -
maybe a 7 mile stretch somewhere. If it takes you 24 minutes now, can you
take 30 seconds off each of the next 5 times you ride it? With a
computer, you can keep track of your average speed and go from there.
With a heart rate monitor, you can do the same.

Having something like that really helps me - otherwise I just go ride and
it's fun, but I don't get any faster. There's much less motivation to
work toward anything if there isn't anything to work toward . . . So set
some goals, experiment with position, and ride a lot. This will surely
make you faster on the bike.