October 27th (Morning)

It rained a bit last night in Juniper it appeared, but no rain on my ride! I can’t believe how many times I’ve been blessed with good timing like that this year. So many days it would rain all day, only to stop for my ride home… Or it would rain all evening/night, only to stop while I rode to work. Sure, I rode in some rainy days, but when you consider the amount of rainy days/nights that I didn’t have to ride in rain, it’s pretty cool. That will be my next hurdle, riding in the cold, dark AND wet… Not sure how that will go, but I’m willing to wait a looooong time to find out… Heck, if I never find out I won’t be sad!

This morning was actually a bit warmer than usual, 5°. I love how the body gets used to temperatures, 5° used to be so cold! Now it’s a warmer morning… Sweet! I am getting faster now with my light, and as such I’m noticing it’s limitations more. I can’t seem to see as far ahead as I’d  like, or around corners as far as I’d like. I didn’t notice this as much before, but then again I wasn’t going as fast. This morning was over 4 minutes faster than my last 4 rides. And to shave 3 minutes or more off of a ride is a big deal, so I was moving along better than normal. I will try to mount this thing on my helmet this weekend and hopefully that will help.

It was a quiet ride. I waxed the chain this morning, and yet at the end of the ride I noticed it was getting noisy already. I really will have to go to the local bike shops and see if anyone has an opinion on something that might work better for these conditions. At $12 a bottle of chain wax (and that’s a small bottle), I can’t afford to be lubricating the chain every day!!!

As I said, I felt faster this morning. I didn’t make the dip/corner section on the single-track again, and I also missed the climb up and over the west bank out of Peterson’s Creek. Both of these I can attribute some of the blame to the lighting (or lack thereof I suppose), as it does make it more challenging when I can’t see and plan my line ahead of time (even though I should know my line by heart at this point!).

I had a good, hard and fast sprint at the end of Summit, as I came to the bottom of the last climb up to the light when I noticed it was going to turn green! I sprinted hard up the hill in the biggest gear, just making it through the intersection by the time the light turned red again. Man, that’s killer! However, I still sprinted up the first climb on Howe, and then through the trailer park again like I usually do. Pretty good, I think, as the last few Wednesday’s have been my “off” day. We’ll have to wait and see if I pay for it on my ride home tonight…