Sunset in the foothills.
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This looks amazing! Would love to try out riding a fat bike in this much snow 
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An hour with a mate before rolling back to the hill near my house to do Mono. Not raining but wet and mucky lanes which are standard for South Wales this time of year!
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Itâs fun. If you crash, itâs generally a pretty soft landing 
(unless you hit a tree!)
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A ride round Peterborough on the gravel bike for me today ending in the pub. Well almost I still had 7 miles to get home so I did 15. To try and shake some of the mud of my bike. It never worked. 
The decisions you make after 3 pint (lol, Im a lightweight) 
Lol, from the profile you can tell when we were east of Peterborough (spoiler, its flat)
Edit my mates pics:
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The weather here has been the right amount of middling poor, not bad but not really good. The result is frozen trails surfaces and hardened snow. Having been spending my time on the rollers on the road bike, I finally went on the trails this morning after seeing enough runners and talking to a neighbor that the ice bits near / around our entry into the forest isnât pervasive. I wouldnât recommend aggressive riding, but an easy predawn spin this morning after Saturdayâs 90min VO2max and Sundayâs 75min Sweetspot wasnât bad. The temp is hovering around 1ÂșC, dropping to -2, going up to 4, so thereâs some melt, some freeze. It seems, in spots, that the road conditions are better than the trail.
This hard snow didnât give much, if at all.
Most of the time, though, the path was either completely exposed, with a light dusting (from a few hours earlier), or with thawed/worn sides to ride while the crown was a bit slick.
Here are two pictures taken at the same place. I carried my GoPro but I took these with my iPhone 15. The first is a quick picture with a good indication of the low light. I have about 1900 lumens on a handlebar-mounted light and a 2100 lumen helmet-mounted light, but some of the latter is blocked by my phone.
This is the same spot & moment in time but with the iPhoneâs night exposure, which makes for a pretty nice pic, IMO, if misleading since I couldnât see all of this detail.
Finally, not spotted on the ride but while walking the dog in the forest, is the indication of a new âneighborâ in a small clearing (see the small fire ring in the background) a short walk from our flat.
As someone who saw this said, âThis is either the beginning of a horror movie or a fairy tale.â The red light is, to be clear :D, is from my dogâs light (a clip-on bike light⊠far brighter than pet lights).
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Some slow and easy spinning on gravel for me. Plan builder has this as a recovery week, so after last nightâs 75min on the rollers I went out for a morning ride, with a twist. The twist was doing some email before my 6:30a need to be in the kitchen and going out in broad daylight after driving the son to school. I avoid the post-routing morning roll because a) so many people are out and b) interferes with my work routine, but I thought Iâd give it another go. Plenty of horses on the trails, many people, many with dogs but not all. All good people â plenty of âMorgaâ and âGrĂŒeziâ Swiss-German greetings â and animals. There was one dog, however⊠Along a flat part next to the small river, I passed a guy walking toward me. As I neared, and slowed, he turned to whistle at what I figured was his dog, which I couldnât see. The trail bent to the left and then uphill, but I was still at the start of the bend. I looked up the hillside thinking I might see the pooch. And then I saw the proud hound: a full-size weimaraner carrying a âstickâ huffing toward me. I immediately pulled over, I had to because even though he moved to the side of the trail away from me, his âstickâ still reached over to me, to take a picture. Unfortunately, by the time I got the GoPro, he was a bit farther away, hence the low-res shot.
Overall, the 59min, 8mi, 1,090ft of ascent ride in 0ÂșC to -3ÂșC made for a chill start to the day. There was hard, icy snow higher up â I was just at the snow line in general â and here Iâm pausing on the 20%-26% main climb of the ride to give you a picture (& not because I wanted a breather because this was an âeasyâ spin day).
I prefer the pre-dawn start to get it over with but not having a must-be-home time limit and the extra sleep is nice.
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Hello and greetings from a first-time poster. Have absolutely loved seeing the pictures in the thread and amazing discussions taking place in others. This morning I did three loops in Central Park, NY, before sunrise. I am one year into loving my road bike and getting used to so much, and now Iâm acclimating to riding with bike lights and street lamps to guide the way. Real pictures coming on future rides. 
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Woah, I see this ride all the time on Strava, but never is it from âoutsideâ!
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Someone who rides there in real life and not Zwifter 
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Iâm liking this a lot 
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It is always funny when I see a native NYer riding the Zwift version when it is beautiful outside.
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Flatland.
Not the book 
but rather the riding terrain outside my door⊠Where my house is around 60 feet of elevation, and looping towards the river and back is about 100 feet of âclimbingâ from 2 highway overpasses
One of my 2022 goals is to see at least 10,000 feet (3048 meters) of climbing on my Strava goals each month. With a catch - no car to/from ride start. So here is my riding heatmap for the month of January:
Its like the movie Groundhog Day
Progress so far:
Not too shabby 
On Tuesday I set a climbing record of 1000+ feet on a single flatland ride, by doing âhillâ repeats:
Still trying to come up with a theme song for this insanity, first it was Going to Take you Higher by Sly and the Family Stone, then it was Elevation by U2, and this week an old song I love came up on Apple Music Favorites:
As good as any song for that slow dance up to 10,000 feet a month.
Doing these in the afternoon = great sunsets. From last night:
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It had been a Tad icy first thing and our WhatsApp cycling group was a bit panicky with some posting icy pictures. It was sunny and warming up fast though and I was desperate to relieve the cabin fever. I debated going on the road bike into the flat Fens (no shade there for ice to form) or take the gravel bike into the slightly undulating Northamptonshire terrain. I kinda decided on the road bike but didnât get far before the freehub started failing so the decision was finally made and I doubled back for the gravel bike. I had the Holly Lodge cafe in mind as a destination but no fixed route in mind. I had intended to stay clean but my curiosity took me down a gravel path which got a bit muddy so I then decided to go the whole hog and ended up in a field South of Stilton
Pre ride warnings!
During the ride though 
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Pacing Effort for Upcoming Field Test
Ended up doing a 32 minute field test. Felt really good, later into the effort I could feel the breathing/HR tipping point when spending 30-ish seconds above 290-300. Could have easily extended this well past 32 minutes.
Two weeks ago my coach had me pace a 10-min effort at what I thought I could do for 20-min. Turned out 11-min at 290W, and I definitely had locomotive breath on that one so could have suffered out to 20-minutes above threshold. So I figured my FTP was around 275 and so I did a longer TT style effort today to find the tipping point.
This was the 2nd to last workout at the end of a 3 week block. Only reason to go 45+ minutes was to get better estimates from my analysis tools. Garmin awarded me 264, Xert put me at 264, Intervals at 271, WKO at 269. Algorithms shmalgorithms, I was holding steady at 276 and could have pushed this out longer. 275 it is.
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Excellent progress!
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Thanks! Just 5W away from all-time 30-min PR from April 2017, and its only January!
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