dabac said:Then your impressions have led you wrong.
QUOTE="cyclintom, post: 3845197, member: 224138"]Seven degrees C would be considered very cold here
So does that mean that your ”famously long and hard winters” statement was to be read with an unwritten ”compared to California”?
QUOTE="cyclintom, post: 3845197, member: 224138"] If you see that as anything else than a hard winter one has to wonder if you spent a lot of time above the Arctic circle.[/QUOTE]
If you think one has to go North of the arctic circle to see winters as cold or colder than that, one has to wonder how much you’ve travelled.
Actually above - not much, but close, yeah.
On a site open for all nations, its unwise to post weather or climate commentary based on YOUR references unless you either say so or it’s entirely obvious from the context.
With the engineering background you so often mention, you should know how important it is to provide a baseline, a generally agreed reference for any descriptive statement.
Comparing weather in one spot to other places at similar latitude, altitude and distance to coast is generally far more useful than using yourself as a reference.
It’s a big world, and a wide open forum. Weather that’ll chase one rider indoors is well within another’s average riding conditions.[/QUOTE]
You sort of got that quoting incorrect single you have to enclose them with brackets. So doing my best to be as accurate as I can:
The latitude of Switzerland is about the same as Moses Lake, Washington (state). That means that the entire state of California is below about latitude 38 degrees north while Switzerland is about 48?. So even Switzerland's summers are cold in comparison. Their winters compare to the Sierra Nevada mountains above 2,000 meters in the winter time. So yes - most Americans would consider Switzerland to be cold even in the locations here where we have very bad winters. And especially Californians. We could hardly say that Switzerland is a moderate climate. And in the summer there is no snow at all on the Sierra Nevadas except the very highest peaks in particularly cold years.
As I said, it was either late July or early August when I visited and all of the peaks had snow on them. Since this only happens in California on rare occasions I would consider the difference in climate between California and Switzerland to be significant.
If the fall, winter and early spring could be called riding weather by you, then why have indoor trainers at all. Especially since the subject was a man who was riding these things for 8 and 9 hours a day?
All of this is not to make the slightest complaint about Switzerland. The Swiss seem very pleased with their country. We were speaking about how a 22 year old in Switzerland could be that overweight and the claim that he reduced his weight with exercise which doesn't actually work. Weight reductions in the manner are usually replaced with only slightly lighter muscle mass. The only real method of weight reductions is with diet changes.
Now we understand that hard exercise does lead to voluntary diet changes and perhaps that was what really spurred this on. But I've had long tours and hard rides like the 200 miles in one day Seattle to Portland and lost nothing more than water weight.
In any case I am extremely reluctant to assert that he lost all of this weight and became a world TT champion simply because he rode a trainer. I have designed many medical machines and so have a passing interest in physiology and it screams no go.
