Cycling season starts early
During January and February the weather can be a bit, well, unappealing, and I get most of my pleasure by staring out of the window, looking miserable, and making life miserable for the rest of the family. Mrs B will tell you I always get my pleasure by being miserable but it’s not quite true…
Anyway, this year winter seems to have passed without being too unpleasant. Not too cold, or wet, or windy. And the weather for the last week or two has been awesome.
The first few days of warm sunshine each year are the best type of days possible - you can feel the winter-depression floating away, the rickets starting to recede for another year, and generally feel like skipping around the garden singing at high voice.
Since my singing is unpleasant for everyone else, I get my bike out instead and cycle around the countryside with a big grin on my face. Well actually the grin becomes a grimace after about an hour or so but the principle is the same. The sheer joy of straining horribly to ride up a slight slope after two months of inactivity is impossible to describe. But I expect you can imagine it.
The best aspect of cycling during the first week of the season is coming home and plotting how well I did. I like to keep records of my speed distance and so on, although I’m not sure why. Originally I planned my graphs so that I could see my improvement year on year, but I soon came to realise that when you are my age the battle is to keep up with the previous year, not to improve on it.
But for that special first week of the year, I can hardly avoid seeing a dramatic improvement. With rusty knees and wasted muscles the first ride is, to put it mildly, an effort. For my (not as long as it should be) route this week my average cycling speed started at 22 kmh, which is not very impressive. But within just a few days I was up to 26kmh.
That’s a pretty good speed for me, thanks, and about a 20% improvement during the course of a week and a half. Now I just need to get distances back up to say 70 kilometres at the same speed and I’ll be very happy. And probably unconscious.
Just got back from a ride myself. 35 miles today. Beautiful sunny day here in Los Angeles, we have had much rain (for us) and I didn’t ride for almost 2 weeks. We are moving to france for a 1 year sabbatical in October and are very nervous about the weather….we need to ride!!
Hi,
Depends where in France you’re going to be - the winter can be pretty wet and cold in the north of France (and occasionally in the south). Cold I don’t mind too much but I don’t go out in cold rain, and I’m not keen on strong wind.
I’m sure overall you’ll have a good year of cycling though, even with the occasional bad weather week thrown in. Just October might not create a good impression when you arrive…
We’ll be around Najac in the Averyon. I saw a picture of the house we are renting for a year and one of them was taken during the snow storm of 2006. Loads of snow. I guess we’ll have to get some mountain bikes or train inside on our trainers. We get some santa ana winds here in Los Angeles, 40+ and it’s brutal. i don’t do well in the wind. my blood is pretty thin, but i’m sure i’ll be fine. to live in france for a year will be so exciting. hopefully it will go well and we can move there full time. we are heading up to san francisco this weekend for 3 days of the tour of california and then back down to la to the final in pasadena. our good friend is the world champion mountain biker (female) she rides for specialized and we are meeting her up there…should be a great time. Although we are excited to be in france for the tour 2009 - hopefully Astana will be able to race that year - they can’t this….so unfair.
Hmm, you wouldn’t be very impressed by my efforts then! It’ll be great around Najac, if a bit well…wintry sometimes.
Plenty of hills around there, if not mountains, you’ll be pleased to know, although I guess you’ve looked at plenty of maps. We are 100 miles to the west of there, and it’s much flatter around us.
Riding for specialized is pretty cool, I ride a specialized (road bike) and often say nice things about them, perhaps your friend can get me a free top of the range model! Seriously, I’m very impressed, she must be extremely talented.
Good luck with your plans