Those of you in New York and New England (and probably Tennessee Titans
fans as well) know what kind of weather they're talking about for today.
Not all-time record low, but probably a record low for the date, and
possibly a record lowest daily high. When I got up this morning it was
about -2°F, and by 10:00 it had warmed up to a toasty zero.
My family had been bugging me last night to go out and get ice cream, but I refused. However I
decided today might be a good day for a winter ride just to see how I fared, and to get the ice
cream without having to worry about it melting on the way home. So went through my ski clothes
trying to figure out what would be about right to keep my face, hands and feet warm without making
my torso sweat. For my hands, I ended up with a pair of Pearl Izumi full-finger cool-weather cycling
gloves under a pair of heavy leather fleece-lined mittens. On my head I put a silk balaclava mask
with a foam rubber-like half-face mask over it, and my helmet on top. Then a regular cotton t-shirt
and turtle neck, and my regular winter coat with a liner which can be zipped separately. On my legs
I had a pair of sweat pants under a pair of insulated nylon warmup pants. My feet had a pair of thin
UnderArmor socks underneath some heavy ski socks.
Once I started moving, I tried the shifters to be sure everything was working, and that I could
control them ok with the mittens on. Shifting the Tiagra STI's with heavy mittens was a little
clumsy, but acceptable as long as I was a little careful. The front shifted a little stiff but still
worked ok, since I only expected to need to shift it once.
Then I headed out. To be sure I didn't work up a sweat, I went up the hill from my house in the
granny (30x23), and kept my cadence down to around 70, but I still ended up fogging my glasses. So I
took off the half-mask and pulled down the opening in the balaclava to below my mouth. The bike came
with an 11-32 cassette, but I had swapped it out for an Ultegra 11-23 a month ago to get some closer
gears for racing, and because I never needed the 30x32 or 30x28 gears.
Going to the store was with the wind (not a whole lot of it; maybe 5 - 10 mph), and I was able to
maintain about 15 mph with little effort at a lower-than-normal cadence. I quickly found myself
starting to get excessively warm, so I unzipped the outer coat about half-way, and that seemed to
work well.
Loading up to head home from the store, I had to rearrange things a bit because I was heading into
the wind. I needed the half-mask to keep my cheekbones from feeling like they were going to freeze,
and my forehead above my eyebrows felt like it was going to no matter what I did.
By the time I got home, the thermometer on the house was registering about 6°F, but I was sweating
pretty good even with both the outer coat and the liner zipped halfway down from riding into the
wind, and my toes were cold. So I still have a bit to learn about what to wear to keep from
sweating, and need to figure out something to keep my toes warm.
Other interesting lessons learned:
My Specialized SpeedZone pro computer doesn't register the temperature when it gets down
around zero (the manual says what the minimum it will register is, but I don't remember off
the top of my head), and the LCD display is a bit slow to update, but seems to work fine
otherwise. No problems like others have reported with blank displays or inaccurate readings
on other brands of computers.
My new seat (Specialized BG2 Sport) is great, and works well with non-biking clothes. The
cutout gave enough room for the crotch seams of my two pairs of pants so that I had no
problems with pressure points or chafing. It was a short ride, though, so that might change
with more time in the saddle.
--
Dave Kerber Fight spam: remove the ns_ from the return address before replying!
REAL programmers write self-modifying code.