Training Ride #1
Kevin and I just finished training ride #1 which started out very cold. According to the Weather Network, it was -3°C with a wind chill of -11°C when we started out the ride - yeah, chilly! Once we got going it was pretty good, though people were really taking our pre-ride pep talk to heart. People were pointing out every little pothole and ice patch. It made for an odd experience, a group of bikers travelling along shouting "pothole!" as they went.
About 10 km into the ride, we were heading up John street, and all the riders were beginning to settle into better packs. Kevin had already mentioned he wanted to move up a bit so we could finish the cold ride sooner, so we were doing that. I got delayed at a traffic light, then while playing catch-up I noticed that my fingers were pretty much frozen. I couldn't move them well, and they were quite numb - it made shifting gears tremendously difficult. I pulled over to warm them up, and shook my arms to get a bit of blood flowing. Well, my hands started to feel like they had been put in a meat grinder - I think it was very early stages of frost bite, but it seems I caught it before much damage was done. Soon we were up on 14th Avenue, and as we turned south on McCowan, it was like a whole new ride!
We had the sun beaming down on us, and the wind was no longer in our faces, everyone seemed to be sitting a little lighter in their seats, and the pedaling seemed so much easier. Things were great! Even the detour on McNicoll was no problem. There was just one more obstacle to overcome.
The training map does warn us of the big hill on Cummer. It's pretty fierce. I'm sad to say that I stopped my bike part way up to take a drink - when you're going that slow it's harder to keep the bike stable, so it's more dangerous to do stuff like grab your water bottle. Or, at least, that's the story I'm using to explain why I stopped ;-)
With the detour included, my bike computer logged the ride as a 36.5km ride. Not a bad ride for a chilly day. Now, I think it's time for a nice hot bath!
Look for Kevin's details to be posted in his training log.
3 Comments:
Hey cool, you rode right through my old 'hood! I used to live just off of John St. in Thornhill (off of Aileen Rd.), and I went to elementary school on Henderson Ave. just north of Steeles.
Stu man - this is awesome !! I've just gotten into biking as well - we'll have to go for some rides sometime (although it sounds like you'll be whoopin' my butt out there) - whatcha ridin' ? Claire and picked up a couple of Felt F60's last summer that are nice - I'm jealous of all your new gear.
I just looked up the Felt F60. Well, actually I could only find the F55 and F65 which I'm guessing are quite similar. Anyways, I'm quite jealous, and I imagine Stu would be too! I have an 8 year old road bike (Trek 370), and at the time I bought it, you couldn't find a bike with STI brake-shift levers for a reasonably low price. So I have to suffer with my dorky downtube shifters. But hopefully next year I'll be able to invest in a new one.
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