Sunday, January 31, 2010

One down, eleven to go.

January is pretty much over. Crazy month. I can't remember a January with so much snow. And so much cold. Not in recent years, anyway. Still it ended up being a good month for riding, especially when things got nice in the middle of the month. 200+ miles, most of those on the road. Only one day of MTB riding. I need to try to get more of that in February.

It'd be great to get as many miles in February as January. The past two years (the only two Februaries that I've had a bike) have been pretty slow in terms of riding. I'd like to think that I have my winter gear up to the point that I should be able to make it out in almost anything, so maybe this year will be better.

It was definitely cold this morning. I got out of bed at 9:00 and checked the temperature. The weather channel said it was 8° and sunny. That sounded pretty cold, so I wasn't in a real hurry to get ready and out the door. By the time I did make it outside (closer to 11:00, it was 18° and still sunny. Much better. It's nice to see the temperature more than double in less than two hours.

Really, the only time I was really cold was right at the start, and that was just my forehead, which felt like it was going to peel off. I kept telling myself that I was going to pull over and make sure that the balaclava was low enough, but after a few minutes it either got warmer or just numbed to the point that it didn't hurt anymore.

I was out for close to two hours, and the sun was around the whole time. Really, it's been surprisingly sunny so far this year. It was sunny all weekeend. It was sunny the previous two Saturdays (followed by disgusting, gross, rainy Sundays, but we won't talk about those right now), and there have been lots of sunny days in between. It might not always be warm and sunny, but I think I'd rather have cold and sunny than warm and grey on most days. Sun and body heat can make up for low temperatures.

Not too much else to talk about right now. Just glad to be able to get outside and ride at this time of the year.

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