Where did you ride OUTSIDE today (2022)

[mountainrunner]

An easy spring, or maybe autumn, ride. It was warm enough, at 6-7ºC / mid-40sF at its coolest, to not need a hat, let alone a winter jacket or cold weather jersey. Instead, I wore a lightweight long-sleeve jersey under a cool-weather rain jacket. Nearly all the snow is gone, save a pocket here and there.

My annoyed face because all of the snow is gone just as my brother-in-law, his wife, and their three young (oldest is 10) kids fly in later today for Christmas. There’s a high wind warning today, which started to pick up during my ride, with stronger gusts up to 41kph/25mph and rain tomorrow. We may have to revise our plans to visit the Zurich Christmas market tomorrow evening.

Watching a horse and rider at the nearly near-to-home stables (maybe I should have leveled the pic before posting it…)

And nearly home…

Only 13 miles and less than 1500’ of climbing.

[HLaB]

In contrast to yesterday it was extremely mild, still and clear. At least in town. I headed up the nearest 1000ft hill and the top of it was a pea souper, it was still still and mild though. Until I started the descent and it started to get a little colder. As I started to climb again it dropped to below zero deg. I had intended with it being so mild to head to climb on small lanes. But I decided to abort that, and headed west instead. Thankfully the minute I started to descend it started to get warmer.
By the time I had done a little loop into another city a I was getting a little peckish so I popped into a Cafe. Re-fueled and it now being warmer I decided loop over the river and come back by its southbank.
One doh moment, Id forgot to relock the Garmin touch screen so I ended up recording two rides. Ive managed to combine them though.

[DaveWh]

A cold one tonight, but my gear was dialed and I felt very pleasant on the bike.
My kid has ski practice tonight - I hope he stays warm, as the temps are still dropping.
I enjoyed a nice post ride hot tub soak and a pleasant pale ale that I hadn’t had before. Is green a better Christmas color than red??

[WindWarrior]

green is the color of Buddy the Elf, so yes, green is better than red

lazy ride with some accelerations to wake up the legs before Festive 500, not much to see other than a couple accelerations around 20s and 600w according to the ride’s power curve:

yawn.

Ok, this will wake you up:

@Scheherazade gave the stamp of approval on Strava. Fun fact… they added a second electrical panel about 15 years ago to power the display. Used to have the roof covered, but the husband passed away although the 30+ year old ‘kids’ come over and keep the tradition going.

[mountainrunner]

The snow is gone, the temperature is up, the rain is falling, and I went out for a nice spin on the trails.

A pause to enjoy the feeling of living inside a model train set…

My winter shoes had been Lake MX145’s. These were awesome but they are showing their age and the beating they get in the winter. The insulation has reduced significantly, and the boa dials are beginning to auto-loosen. I liked the look and description of the Fizik Artica GTX. In dry but cold weather, these were great. The insulation was wonderful, so I could wear a lighter sock around 0ºC / 32ºF, for example. Riding in light snow, my perception started to shift as my socks were a bit wet. Maybe, I thought, the lower collar meant ingress from the cuff. Ok, let’s go with that.

Today was a proper rain and only about 9ºC / 48ºF. Thirty minutes in and I could feel my socks were very wet. Fifteen minutes later, I could feel they were waterlogged and I could swish water by scrunching my toes. I got home and was able to pour the water out of the boot.

This is the description from the Fizik site:
“Off-road winter cycling shoe featuring a waterproof GORE-TEX membrane and insulating, breathable fleece lining for better warmth and comfort on cold-weather MTB and Gravel rides.” Now, maybe somehow I’m wearing these shoes wrong (??!!), but these aren’t waterproof. It seems the bottom is waterproof as the shoes didn’t drain before taking them off. It looks like these will be my cold weather but dry shoes, sort of a middling shoe between my regular gravel shoes and my winter boots, which will be the new Lake MX146.

Still, it was a good day in the saddle. Back home and about to eat some Rösti (basically Swiss hashbrowns) as the family and in-laws and their kids get up on this Christmas Eve. Today is a mellow day, but I’m going to try to find snow for the Southern California kids who haven’t been in snow yet. With the “Christmas Thaw” (warm winds melting the snow and bringing rain), we don’t have local snow.

Sidenote: I went out for a run yesterday morning. 6.75 miles on the trails (720’ of ascent, so sort of flat ), and my Garmin Fenix offered this adverse opinion of my starting pace / effort:

[Scheherazade]

Woah, I’ve never seen a -15 performance condition before! Good work

[DaveWh]

@mountainrunner

Today was a proper rain and only about 9ºC / 48ºF.

Well done for going out in that. Between you and @HLaB you win the award for braving nasty wet weather

I’ve gone soft with regards to rain. Living in Colorado, if it’s raining, I just don’t ride. Generally, I just need to wait for a few hours, or sometimes a day, and it’s dry again.

I had to ride through 2 hrs of heavy rain and mushy wet gravel for about 2hrs in SBT GRVL this year. Neither me or my bike were used to it.

[HLaB]

It poured all night but the forecast was correct it stopped just before the club run. Doh, the only problem I turned up half an hour early. So after a bit of Faceboking I found out the proper time and went for a warm up. Lol, the young lad at the front missed the memo about mud guards. When the other rider at the front pulled over I went through at the exact same pace, only for him to shoot through beside and slightly ahead. I thought I’d been too slow with my change over and closed the gap. Lol, I think that set him off and he gradually upped the pace and every time I matched it he upped it again. Then I found out it wasn’t too slow a change over and we had dropped everyone and had to sit up I really shouldn’t indulge the exuberance of youth from somebody 3times younger than me. It was a more relaxed pace after then

[Dubadai]

Celebrating Christmas in Calpe calls for Christmas Bonanza Ride!

[KorbenDallas]

I have so many great memories of Howelsen hill from my ski racing days. Always raced well there for some reason…great pictures!

[Scheherazade]

I’d have done a few more km to get that imperial century

[chrisb82]

One of those days that makes me glad I live in Northern California.

Ride #1 Solo

Ride #2 w/my two boys

[WindWarrior]

You almost finished “The Bug’s Head” route!

[mountainrunner]

@DaveWh

braving nasty wet weather

Ah, the rain this week was nothing. There’s getting drenched, and then there’s drenched to the point that it exceeds the IP rating (water-resistance/proof) of your tail light and your headlight. While I didn’t have mushy gravel, I had six hours of often very hard rain, sometimes with hail, riding an 80mi route around the Dolomites. This is looking back from whence I had just come for a brief respite from hard rain and hail (it’s just a light rain at this point):

Before the pic above, in the shadow of the iconic Dolomite ridgeline, a long pause in the rain ended (this is still in the first half of the ride). The rain jackets went on less because it was raining, but more for additional protection against the hail!

Under the Christmas tree this morning was this, which the family thought was so very funny: a new bike for me!

To be fair, she did ok buying a new bike. The ready-to-paint frame is / will be on the way to a painter for next month. Wooo-hooo!

[MadTuna]

NBD and first outdoors ride ever!
Happy Christmas

[mountainrunner]

Slacker spin. Pre-dawn start, post-dawn finish.

[HLaB]

A leisurely Boxing Day club run for me today. It was supposed to over the hills north of town but about 3/4s of the way up and after a lot of ice we decided to stick to the main roads. My garmin says it was -2 deg C when we turned to the low ground. We had done about 31 miles by the time we got to the club house for a wee dram and I probably should have went home at that point but I had the notion to round it up to 47 for some reason. Sod’s law after a couple of passes close to home it started to rain, which quickly turned to sleet then hail It sent the Garmin touchscreen rotation off and I ended up overshooting things slightly

[HLaB]

After yesterday’s VO2max session I had thought originally about a recovery gravel ride today but I saw someone was organising a road ride. So I ended up doing that. According to my garmin it never dropped below 0 but we seen a lot of ice and snow. My mate avoided a flooded road only to find the side of the flood was slush brown ice. So rather than turn on to it I kept a straight line and freewheeled through the flood, hoping that there wasn’t a massive pothole. Fortunately there wasn’t and we all stayed upright. I had thought we were going to be soaked give the forecast (rain was keeping the temperature up) but we just beat it.

[jonnyknight]

Arm warmers were too much… had to take them off after about 30min.

Insta Reel

[Aeroiseverything]

First day in paradise, and man it’s great to finally be riding outside again, in shorts mind you.
First ride set out from the hotel in South West of Tenerife.
It was only 3k to Playa San Juan, and from there , it is only up. The start of the climb is a well paved road, that winds through the banana fields. After around 10ks, I reached Guía de Isora, and Chio another 5 ish k later.
From there the climb up Mount Teide is only 3 more huge hairpins, the lower two of which are through the „Corona Forest“, a needle-leaf forest. From the third hairpin out, it’s a lot more exposed. You can see the snow capped Pico del Teide, and the lava rock is a lot more fresh looking than lower down the mountain.

The last few Ks were a bit of throwback to my bad experience in Sierra Nevada a few months back. It was super windy, and getting really really cold (5 degrees C). So I stopped for the first time to put leg warmers on, and continued to the „top“.
I was able to hold the power I was planning at consistently, didn’t have many spikes in HR. Very happy with the current form.
I finsihed the climb at 2100m, the climb would continue in a flat down hill from here, and then a few ks later pitch up again to get to 2250m. I’ll see to get that another day, when tackling the climb from the other side.
The view to the much higher peak was great from the pass.

I descended super slowly, like grandma coming home from the shops, some I had passed on the way up zipped past me again, but that’s okay. once I was below 1300m and the winds were a lot calmer, I picked up the speed again. Also, it got a lot warmer and the sun came out.
The ride home was relatively eventless, with the one exception of the great Peter Sagan passing by me.
Not bad for an ordinary Wednesday.