deep freeze

(Not my bike - we don't have snow... yet!)

The Seattle area has had quite a bit of cold weather lately, cold air that has drifted its way down from British Columbia and the Yukon.

With overnight temps in the teens, something we don't get around here much in the 30+ years I've lived in the Puget Sound area of Washington State, I have chickened out of the bike commuting this week, mainly due to concerns about black ice. My commute has me riding through a construction area which often has water running across the shoulder or the street - this condition has existed prior to the construction - and I'm concerned hitting this area could lead to a broken collar bone, wrist, arms, rib, or worse. (I'd read stories online of other bike commuters doing these things while crossing icy bridges or overpasses).

So, yeah, I'm a chicken this week, but at least I won't be on crutches for Christmas. I intend to drag out the trainer this weekend so I can still get some "miles" in and in the meanwhile, I'm hoping for rainy weather in the 40s returns soon... that's pretty twisted and sick, huh?

Note: I'd love to test ride a set of Schwalbe Marathon Winter HS396 studded bicycle tires and write a review if anyone has some to loan me :) One of our LBS here in Renton, GHY Bikes, has them in-stock and they're around $80 each if I remember correctly.

trainer time already?

The weather here is getting yucky quickly, not to mention quite dark, especially during the post-5PM uphill sprint home.

Not wanting to completely hang up my spurs until spring, I'm finding I am itching to ride more than I have been able to the past couple weeks. Think of a hamster with pent-up energy sans a wheel and you're pretty close to what I feel like lately. This morning I awoke to cascading rain over our gutters, so I didn't feel like getting soaked going TO work. Getting soaked coming FROM work is fine by me - I do anyways because I work so hard riding all the way home uphill that I get quite sweaty. The rain's a bonus.

Naturally, it seems we have the best weather throughout the remainder of the day on the days I do not ride to work. Right now I'm looking out on a wet and cool (but not freezing cold) city without rain actually coming down. Showers predicted for later today though. I don't like to think of myself as a "weather weenie" and have been able to keep riding throughout the year roughly 60% of the time, however, as the temps get closer to freezing, it gets harder and harder to maintain my routine.

So I guess soon, maybe this weekend, I'll haul out the bicycle trainer and set it up in the garage. It's pretty easy to work in a 30-40 minute spin a couple times a week. More challenging is to find something to keep me interested and focused. Uploading different mixes to my iPod (I have the cheapy clip-on one) seems to help.

For gear, I'm using a Ascent brand fluid trainer I picked up from Nashbar with a gift certificate from my VA inlaws last Christmas. Note the link is to a magnetic trainer available from Nashbar as the fluid trainer appears to be out of stock. Since I went the cheap route, it was priced at about $140 but it dropped to $100 when discounts were applied, I now know one feature I would look for in a trainer if I were to buy another one. I'd seek a quick-release for the rear wheel versus a screw in/out knob like my trainer has. It makes taking the bike off the trainer much less of a hassle. This Cycleops brand wind trainer pictured below - and other products by this manufacturer - features this.



So I gotta ask. What do you do in the winters (if you do indeed change your riding habits) and if you do any indoor training, what's on your iPod, DVD player, etc. If there's an interest, I might post a sampling of the songs I find most effective at pushing me to ride harder. The first that comes to mind is Chemical Brothers' "Block Rockin' Beats".

"nice" weather was back this weekend

I guess in the winter months, I need to define "nice" as not a rainy downpour, ice or snow on the ground. By this definition, the last couple days was "nice" though the temps were peaking in the low 40s. With adequate cold weather gear, it isn't as much an issue. I did do two rides, one being up to about nine miles of mixed flats, downhill, and uphill. I rode for about an hour on the saddle.

Of course, with the improved weather conditions, the fluid trainer I ordered arrived today. I'm sure if snow lingered longer, it would have taken a few more days. It got here pretty quick, considering I ordered it on the 26th of December.

It's a Ascent brand, pretty much as entry level as you can go. I'm not complaining though. For a list price of about $139 and discounted to just over $100 (plus I had a gift certificate to use on the purchase too) I only had to pay for tax and shipping.



I mounted a 1990s cross bike (Schwinn CrissCross) to it. It is a flat bar road bike with 700c wheels and Tioga City Slicker tires. Not dialed in completely, but it seems to do the job as a dedicated trainer bike. I used a 2x4 scrap of wood for a front wheel elevation block instead of the $24.95 rubber/plastic thingies they sell for the same purpose.

Today for an inaugural run in the garage, I went for more than 30 minutes, equipped with a bottle of water and my iPod. Time went by fast, but I may need to find an old TV and DVD player (to view training videos, like the ones by Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's trainer) if I want to do longer workouts.



I didn't realize how much you can sweat doing this and I'm glad I had the water handy. I went through 24 ounces in that 30 minutes.

I dressed in cycling gear, especially the shorts. The hat was because our garage is uninsulated and I also figured it would help retain some heat and catch any sweat that would otherwise drip down. I need to find a better saddle, as the one on the bike now has absolutely no padding to speak of. Also, I may get clipless pedals for this bike too, as it felt odd to ride in street shoes after having been in SPDs for the past few months on my commuter bike.

mothballed!

Since it snowed A LOT since mid-December, I've reluctantly put the commuter bike in mothballs (figuratively) until the overnight temps are above freezing. I've heard to many bad stories of slips and falls on black ice during the winter. We had over a foot of snow accumulate and stick around for over a week - unusual for the Seattle area.

With the holidays, I would not have typically commuted as much anyways, however, the commuting got to be such a routine for me, I miss it immensely, especially since I was seeing results with strength, weight, stamina, etc.

Luckily, from my in-laws, I got a gift certifcate from Nashbar, an online bicycling parts and supplies warehouse. I ordered an inexpensive fluid trainer, so I can mount a cross bike to it that I've had sitting around. I heard fluid trainers offered more of a road like feel than a mag trainer or other styles.

After the gift card was applied and tax and shipping were added, I only paid about $30 out-of-pocket. I'll see whether I really get into riding a trainer or not. The "good" ones are easily over $200 and the "really good" ones that output your performance to your PC can exceed $1,000.

I'll be sure to report how this goes when the trainer gets here.