First Ride in the Big Room

Sunday is my long ride day. Today's schedule called for two and a half hours. That's a full 150 minutes of vomitron goodness. Yuck.

In strange, self-mutilation sort of way I have been enjoying my indoor training sessions. I don't have the hassles of choosing the route. I don't have to worry about the terrain being wrong for the training schedule. I can ride at night. I don't have to worry about how to dress or weather conditions or food/nutrition or hydration. And I get watch movies - something I don't get to do very often for one reason or another.

So I haven't felt really compelled to try riding outdoors yet this year. Perhaps if I wasn't on an organized training plan I would be going outside ever chance the roads are clear, like in previous years. But earlier this week I got an invitation to ride on Sunday and the weather was supposed to be very warm. Supposed to be. Like 50's warm - which is typical for mid- to late-February in Colorado.

I caught a ride with Zin and ShadowCat heading north to Deadhead's house where we would meet up with Deadhead, Howard, Popeye and PedalPusher. We stopped at Starbucks on the way so Zin could get his latte fix and we chatted as Zin drove. All was good until we were about 15 miles south of Loveland, at which point we hit a wall of cold air. The temp plummeted from the mid-40s to 25. None of us were dressed for 25. We knew at that point it was going to be a painful ride.

Finally everyone had shown up and we put on all the clothes we had with us and took off. It was painful. Within 5 miles I had lost feeling in my fingers (due to only having mid-weight gloves) and my toes were in danger of staging a rebellion. My core was warm enough and I happened to have a skier's neoprene face mask for the bottom of my face, so I wasn't too bad, but I wasn't enjoying the ride either.

Finally after 16 miles we decided to go up the road to a convenience store for a rest stop, the cut the ride short and head back. By the time we were done with coffee and snacks it had warmed up to an impressive 35 degrees. This was definitely not what I signed on for!

Back at Deadhead's house after 37.5 miles we had the post-ride feast. In this case apples, bananas, chips & salsa, and mixed nuts.

Arriving at my house (after a nice little nap on my part) we looked at the external temperature...it was 57 degrees.

Think I'll stay in the dungeon a while longer.