I admit it, I'm bagging out on training again today. This is the one thing I need to worry most about with the Tri moving to 10/22, thinking, "Aww, it's 3 months off, I can skip a day..." However, I have been careful to make sure that I'm only doing this when I have a) no childcare or b) other exercise so that I can mentally justify my slackerness. Today it was three hours trying to keep up with Kindergarteners at the zoo.
So today I'm going to focus on something that continues to weigh heavy on my mind (get it- weigh heavy tee-hee) what on EARTH am I going to wear for this thing?
Tomorrow is our 1st open water swim, and I think I'm the only one who doesn't have a wetsuit. Let's be real, it's my 1st tri. Do I really want to spend that kind of $$ on something I may only use once? And if I do another tri- I'm hoping to need a significantly smaller size, right?
But in other wardrobe areas- where do I want to go? I was all excited about the fact that my butt only hurt for the 1st 5 min or so of my "run" on Saturday since I tried to go with out something padded (I think I mentioned, can't run in my bike skort... it rolls down as I go) since they don't make "tri shorts" in super big booty size, and I don't think I want to run in padded shorts anyway. My coach suggested a gel seat cover, and unpadded shorts. I'm looking in to this now.
So beyond that controversy... what am I going to wear on top? Should I bite the bullet and get a bike top that's big enough, and therefore long enough for me to keep me from developing a sunburn tramp stamp on my lower back? I really like the idea of getting out of the water and and slipping on a dress... but do I need to pockets? And does anyone MAKE the dress in a XXXL? Let's face it, even as I lose some flab on the bottom, the girls are hard pressed to fit in even that size...
So there's my musings for today. Picked up a Champion C9 skort in XXL at Target today, but the shorts have a 1" inseam... so I'll have to break out the body glide if I'm to make that work... at least as I sit here typing it's riding up, not down. Will report back once I take it out for a spin.
My observations as a fattie who did her first tri (Seattle Danskin) last year:
ReplyDelete1. A wetsuit is absolutely worth it. Even if you shrink your body out of it for next year, you can still get a good chunk of your money back out of it by selling it. I don't know how you're proportioned, but if you decide to go with a wetsuit, definitely look at the WLA (or WXLA, if you happen to find a old stash of them somewhere) size from BlueSeventy. It seems to work fine for a pretty wide range of body types. (I'm an "apple", a friend is a "pear", and we both had luck with that suit.)
2. Padded/cushy seats are often worse than hard seats...they provide more opportunity for things to get mashed up. (And by "things," I mean your bits.) You may just need a different shape/make/model of saddle that fits you better. Once you get the fit right, your butt will get used to it as you ride more.
3. Check out the tri wear from Junonia. Also, if you can't find a tri-short that fits you, see if the people at Aero Tech will do their plus size bike shorts with a tri chamois/pad instead. They've been known to make modifications like that in the past.
4. My raceday wear consists of: Louis Garneau tri-suit (XXL), BlueSeventy sleeveless wetsuit (WXLA), a QuikWik tank from Junonia that I put on before the bike (2X), a pink race skirt from SkirtSports that I put on before the run (XXL), and a pink racebelt (from some random tri shop in Seattle).
Hope some of that helps!
J.
(@judashlie on Twitter)