Cold Weather Riding

I went out for a 2 hour ride today. It was my first real road ride after the cross season and also the first time I'd been out on the road with temperatures in the low 30s. I initially wasn't very enthusiastic about leaving the comfort of my nice warm home (and especially the soft couch I had sunken into after breakfast), but I put on a bunch of layers, stuffed toe warmers into my shoes, and off I went.

I was actually a little warmer than I had expected, which came as a pleasant surprise, but next time I should probably shed the sleeveless base layer. My training for the day was 1.5 - 2 hours of riding, including 2 x 5 minutes of LT, followed by 10 minutes of Tempo, and then repeating 2 x 5 minutes of LT. This was the first time I used the Power Tap for a workout on the road (I've only used it on the trainer up to now), and it was really tough to keep the numbers steady. In fact, I'd say that it was darn near impossible to keep the numbers steady. Every little fluctuation in the grade of the road resulted in either wildly high or ridiculously low wattage. I really struggled to keep it even and completely failed. I didn't fare very well keeping my cadence steady either, so I guess I have a lot to learn.

It's kind of fun to get home, download the data, and stare at the graphs for a while. I keep hoping that I will magically understand it all (osmosis would be nice), but I should really make an effort to learn about how it all works. I was happy to find that for my first two LT and my one Tempo intervals, I had actually nailed my average power and cadence to my targets! I had absolutely no idea that I was doing it right when I was out on the road. Unfortunately, my last two LT intervals ended up looking like Tempo - I guess I was tired. Two weeks off the bike, then a cross ride, then a couple of days off recovering from knee pain... well... I tried and came pretty close to getting it right.

But more importantly, I really enjoyed my ride! It's been a long time since I had a solo ride and it was really nice. I just sort of made up my route as I went along, and came back a different way. It was nice to just wing it without any real plan and to ride on some different roads for a change. I think I will have to do a little re-exploring of roads on the southern side of Route 2. It's too easy to fall into the pattern of Lexington, Concord, and Carlisle, on roads that, while extremely nice, are also entirely too familiar.