Broken Aerobars & Misc Shopping

Executive Summary: Broken aerobar armrest starts compulsive shopping spree.

Shortly before this morning's bike ride, my bike fell over (darn wind). No major damage except that one of the armrests of my Profile Design Aerolite tri-bars, split into three chunks of plastic. I duct-taped it together so that it would semi-usable for the ride, but I had to do a permanent fix.

So when I got home, I set about doing just that. Luckily, Tri-Zone sold reasonably-priced F-19 replacement armrests ($29.95 - 10% for my "Team Tri-Zone" discount). Of course, since $50+ orders get free shipping and they were also tossing a free running hat and 2008 triathlon wall calendar as bonuses, I just had to get some more gear.

So I also got some additional items to pad my order:

• Xterra Sunscreen (supposedly very waterproof) - will apply before the half-Ironman
• BodyGlide (anti-chaffing compound) - for my feet and arms for long runs! Can also be used under a wetsuit to aid removal, but I've heard PAM cooking spray works just as well or better.

As a separate shopping endeavor, I've been meaning to get some Penguin Sport Wash laundry detergent for a while now. I got some sample packs with various run/tri packets and it seemed to work well with cleaning my racewear and I like how it's marketed as not damaging the mosture-wicking and other technical properties of sports apparel.

I've looked for it everywhere to no avail - Derek even tried to buy it for me from the RunOn store near his house but they have been sold out for months. So I searched the Internet for an alternate vendor. Surprisingly, that vendor was not some esoteric extreme sports outlet, but rather, Sports Authority. With a 15% off coupon code and diminishing marginal shipping costs for multiple bottles, I ended up ordering five 2-packs or ten bottles total. So I shouldn't be running out of it any time soon. :-P