Friday Ride

We’re out visiting Trisha’s family in Dickeyville today, so I was able to take in some new scenery.  This is a really beautiful area of the state, the area which wasn’t flattened out by the glacier drifts, and I love riding here.  The consequence of the land not being smoothed out is that I get a nice little hill workout.

These hills are about the same size as the hills we did on the Ironman Wisconsin bike course (~400ft.), but during Ironman, you do them about nine times.

They've gotten quite a bit more snow here than in Milwaukee, and much of it is still around. Most of the time there was a ridge pavement not covered in snow, but covered in plenty of gravel.

Curves are good for the soul

Vanilla Ice Ice Baby

No riding on Tuesday, but got a good core workout in instead.  Tuesday is my late day at work which means I have meetings until 5p and don’t get home until close to 6pm.  As I write this, it almost sounds funny that I consider 5pm to be late, as six months ago it would have been pretty standard.  This fall, I did something I never thought I could do – I became a morning person!  These days I typically wake up around 5 or 5:30am, and try to be done with work around 3pm.  I can’t wait until this spring and summer when I’ll be able to take off at 3p and get some nice long rides in!

Wednesday was relatively warm, starting out about 34 degrees.  I was watching the yards on the drive home from work to see if the snow had melted enough for me to hit some of the trails by Grant park.  I rode out the driveway hopeful, only to find the hikers had packed the snow down to pure ice…

Grant park beach…

Snow Biking Two Days in a Row

We’ve been watching the forecast for the last few days, and looking forward to the mid-30′s they had been promising so we could get out and go for a hike or something together.  Well, it never got warmer than about 28, so I ventured out on my own.  What I missed in the forecast was the w-i-n-d…

Wisconsin Weather Takes Some Creativity

After ‘cross season ended and the holidays really put the nail in the coffin of my 2011 fitness, I’m starting to start thinking about starting my training up for 2012.  Winter is here for real now, and after a few weeks of cold and snow, I was aching to get out and ride.  I’m avoiding indoor rides on the trainer right now as much as possible, as I don’t really have a great place to setup the trainer at the moment.

I’ve also been reading up quite a bit as I start thinking about a periodized training plan for this year (we’ll talk about that in another post) about the concept of training “specificity” from elite trainer Joe Friel.  Basically the idea is that if you want to become a faster runner, you should run.  If you want to become a faster cyclist, you should ride your bike.  Winter is a tempting time to just lean back and “cross train” 100% of the time by running, weight training, and anything else you can find to stay active, but this was a good reminder to make sure to get some saddle time.

I grabbed my beloved 29er and headed out into 3 inches of snow and slush to see what we could see.

Staying warm in 23 degrees was made possible thanks to LG lobster claw gloves, some Vaude shoe covers, and a cheap balaclava from Nashbar.  On top, I had a Nike Dry-fit insulated compression top, IceBreaker Merino wool top, and my yellow cycling jacket.  On bottom I had some Nashbar insulated bibs (highly recommended as they’re only $30 right now, they’re tall, so buy a size smaller if you’re short, or plan to do some sewing), and heavy SmartWool socks.

I stayed mostly in the small (30t) chainring, but shifting wasn't a problem

I've heard lots of problems with rear derailleurs freezing up in anything colder than about 25 degrees, but no problems today. Looks like the temp held steady at about 23 degrees.

Bontrager 29-2 tires did surprisingly well in the snow & slush

Nice little slush ridge on the downtube and bottom bracket