First Ride Outside

Happy Easter everyone!  The weather today turned out to be pretty nice so Sydney and I headed outside for our 45 minute ride to be followed by a 20 minute transition run.  This was my first ride outside this year and I have to admit I was a little nervous.  I've become pretty comfortable on the trainer (though bored some days for sure) and was wary about what things would be like outside with the elements coming into play.  


Fortunately it turned out pretty good.  I was dressed properly so didn't freeze or overheat.  The traffic was really light (I guess everyone was at church?) so not alot of cars buzzing by.  And, by some miracle the gale force winds we've been experiencing here were alot calmer!  


I did have a hard time keeping my heartrate in zone 2 which is where I was supposed to do this ride.  I wasn't feeling overly taxed but for some reason as soon as I would get my cadence anywhere near 90 rpm it would shoot up to high zone 3.  


I spent some time in aero as well.  My goal this year is to really get comfortable in that position because until now I've felt really out of control in my bars.  I do think they need to come back a touch still as I still feel a little too stretched out which messes up my centre of gravity and my control of the bike.  The problem is that I'm so damn small that the bars have to come back so far that I don't have enough sticking out the front to attach my aero bottle to and still have something to hold on to.  I was really hoping to use the aero bottle this year because I have a hard time getting bottles in and out of the cages.  Again, because I'm so small and the frame of my bike is so wee regular bottles are too long to fit into my bottle cages and I really have to fight to get them out.  Even the smaller bottles are tough to maneuver and I'm not nearly coordinated enough to wrangle with them while maintaining any semblance of speed.  As a result I ended up not drinking enough on rides last year.  I've though about getting one of those seat post holders but have heard that they tend to launch the water bottles if the road isn't perfectly smooth.  Oy vey!  


What's a 5' tall girl to do?  Suggestions are welcome although I've already thought that this makes a great case for me to get a tri bike. ;-)