September 22nd (Morning)

Chilliest ride of the year yet at 2°. Uff da! At least the sun was out, which made it seem not so bad… Actually, in reality it wasn’t that bad. At first, I was quite chilly. But once the blood got pumping, I didn’t do too bad. I did find my leather driving gloves this morning and wore them over top of my regular biking gloves and that seemed to do the trick. While my fingers were a bit on the chilly side, they did not freeze like yesterday morning. So I think that will be my trick for these next few weeks. The jacket did well, and I kept it zipped up just under my chin which helped a lot with the cold wind. I might consider buying a beanie with ear covering of some sort, as my head and ears were pretty cold. Especially at the end of the ride with the sweat and then wind… A bit of brain freeze… My toes, however, froze solid!! The good news is that I got an email from MEC this morning stating that they were shipped yesterday. I checked Canada Post, and they should be here tomorrow, so hopefully they help as much as the leather gloves helped my fingers!

On the climb connecting Frolek’s lower and upper roads, I decided to get off and walk/run the hill instead. Not because I was too tired, but because I needed to get the blood flowing to my feet! It did work, as by the time I got to the top my feet were warming up a bit. And by keeping a fast walk/run pace up the hill, it wasn’t a rest at all (just so my head doesn’t get to thinking that this is the easy way out and try to convince myself to do this later when I DON’T need to warm up my toes!). I managed to keep my heart rate right around 92% or so, about where it normally is when I ride this hill.

The rest of the ride was really good, minus the noisy rear brakes. I guess with all the bears I’ve been seeing lately, noisy brakes aren’t a bad thing in the mornings! I stopped again at the top of the Peterson Creek valley and did some jumping jacks to warm up my toes again… What a beautiful morning, though! With the crisp, cool air, blue skies and sun coming over the hills, it looked pretty cool!

I finally made it through the creek this morning (after two failed attempts this week already), but didn’t make the technical climb up the other side. After that, the climb up out of the valley went well and the rest of the ride was pretty good. I had a decent time of 59 minutes, but I have a feeling that time will be getting longer as the temperatures get colder. I don’t feel like going as fast down the hills as normal, due to the wind chill factor now! Hah! But, then again, I tend to go harder/faster up the hills as I am trying to warm up so maybe it will all balance out in the end…