This time of year, on most days, the weather is not conducive for riding. It’s windy or cold, or worse – both. Fewer hours of daylight doesn’t help either.
My fitness level is high this time of year, but the opportunities to take advantage of it, and build on it, are quickly diminishing. Sigh.
It doesn’t seem fair, but that’s the way it is. As the year comes to a close, so does regular riding – at least for most of us. So when you have a day, where there is hardly a breeze, the sun is out and the temperature is around 60 – you ride.
That’s exactly what we did this past Saturday. We ended up riding 42 miles, on a hilly route, and put Mark within 12 miles of reaching his goal for the year of 2,000 miles.
It felt good to ride off some of the Thanksgiving "excess" and also see that the fitness is still there.
I am determined to keep up with off-season training. We recently bought a couple of books to help, plus we ordered a spinner! We will still get some rides in outside over the winter, but the majority of training will be indoors, on the treadmill, elliptical and soon, the spinner.
Trying to take away all excuses for not training! How do you train over the winter?
I didn’t realize it got that cold in Oklahoma. I’ve never been there but have been to Spain.
I suspect that riding in the cold is more of a guy thing. I see lots of males riding bikes around here in December, but only one or two females. And the way they ride makes me think they are training for something.
It gets cold here, but we don’t get much snow, so that helps. Our cold is nothing compared to what you experience, I’m sure. As far as the male/female cold tolerance, in our house, I’m the one more likely to be out there, can’t speak for others. I also think part of what you see is because more males than females ride bikes in general.
We’re getting a spinner to help augment our cold weather training. Hope to take away all the excuses for not doing it!