Having spent 6+ hours over the weekend riding in the cold with continual rain/sleet, it seems bizarre to now be thinking that I’ve been lucky with the weather, which is what I’m doing after the few inches of snow that fell overnight Sunday. At the moment the weather during the week is fairly irrelevant to my plans. I’m either on the turbo doing recovery or other low intensity sessions to improve form or going for a run, which I find less weather dependent compared to cycling. The weekends are another matter and having to cancel a 4hr ride due to snow and replicate it with a similar workout is something I’m hoping not to have to do and as the days draw out that concern becomes less and less of a potential hurdle to cross.
I’m feeling really positive after the weekend; in the past the sound of rain would have more than likely seen me heading back to bed than out on the bike, but that’s exactly what I did on both Saturday on Sunday. Saturday looked like being the better of the days and I duly decided that would be my longer ride. This turned out to be a wise decision, with the only ‘dampener’ being that I left my wet shoes in the garage instead of taking them indoors to dry off and they were therefore still damp Sunday morning! After riding through the rain and blizzard on Saturday, damp shoes weren’t about to affect my new found hardened outlook to riding through the elements. I’d planned a route to give me just under 2 and half hours and once home I’d just about had enough. The Sunday ride took me to 99 miles over the weekend but I wasn’t about to ride around the block to bring it up to 100, I’ll leave that for another day.
The coming week see’s another increase in training time. An additional 1.5hrs which whilst on the face of it seems a small amount extra to fit in, scheduling in around other responsibilities will be a challenge in itself. Fingers crossed the weather is more favourable come the weekend.
The phrase “winter miles for summer smiles” has never been so relevant after the weekends riding.
silentroadie 