To me, there is nothing cooler than riding in awful weather. It automatically associates you with the Spring Classics, held in wet, wind, and rain, over the the worst roads you can imagine. There is no image of cycling that I love more than of a tough Belgian Pro dressed in knickers, arm warmers, cycling cap perched beneath their helmet, grimace upon the face, and rain pouring from the skies.
The only good thing about winter and spring training is the fact that simply climbing on the machine that day means you are an automatic badass. Hell, you don't even have to ride hard, just being out means you're awesome. But I'll be honest: I never ride harder than in the pouring rain, the drops of water dripping off my cycling cap tapping out my rhythm like a metronome, looking down at my knee warmers and shoe covers and imagining I'm cutting my teeth as a Pro on some godforsaken road somewhere in Belgium or Northern France.
Today was actually a beautiful day, but it was cold, so I dressed in my warmest gear and headed out on the road, Badass by Association. It's one of the Rules.
I even took some shots of myself, Dan O Style. How did we satisfy our narcissistic self-portrait needs before cell phones?
[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/frank@velominati.com/Winter Riding/”/]
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@david
Ahem. You mean 15-20 kph headwind, no?
Because metric's, like, way tougher. Because the French invented it.
@all
Fucking hell. This is terrible, this scrutiny. But, this is "Discovery Hill" and it is in fact somewhere in the 15-17% range. In fact, I took Marko up it last weekend and he spun his wheel when he stood up.
To be fair, I had just cleared the steep section and failed to go Sur La Plaque immediately, but the grade is still in the 10-12% range.
Bad weather and self-photography on steep slopes? Plenty of Rule 5, bitches.
@Steampunk
Um...yeah? What sounds tougher? 20mph or 32kph? Nuff said.
@david
Let the record also show that you don't have to race to need a recovery ride. Indeed, training properly is for anyone hard enough to desire peaking.
If you go out and flog yourself without any reason better than "riding hard because that's what you do on a bike" might be the most pure embodiment of Rule 5.
@frank A nonracer on a "recovery ride"? Heh. You might as well be nonacademic on a "sabbatical", a nonfootball coach drafting players in a fake-ass fantasy league, or a noncelebrity hiding from paparazzi. Jesus Christ. Training for what? It's like saying, "I think". Well, what you do think? "Nothing, really." Peaking for what? Nothing really. I'm just peaking in two months. I'm playing at it, don't you see? What the fuck?
Glad I read this post earlier today. First time on bike for 15 days this afternoon,following partial recovery from persistent cold. It was cold and raining. But getting back on the bike felt good. And even better when I reflected on how badass I was doing it in the rain. (Almost took my mind of the coughing and spluttering - and the fact I was riding at about 5kph.)
@frank
I do everything in kph...as per whatever # rule... But I always benchmark it by miles, really annoying, everything in the UK is in miles so 25.6km/h is an important figure (for a slow hilly ride). I think about 3 years ago my top (ave) speed, back in the day when miles was the order of the day. Don't worry I've ridden about 10000km since then, and they were km not miles.
@david Have to disagree on this one. Since I have not raced in 15 years and then only a couple of open races my club put on, so really 25 years I still have recovery rides. Ok so my training is for "life" not racing, it still counts. It counts because I love to go fast. I am like an old dog, give me something to chase and I go! The kids I ride with are amused that I will occasionally chase down a truck for a quick draft. Or that with 10 k left of a 177 k ride at an average speed of 29 kph I took off in the big ring.
To me there is no better reason to ride than to ride fast no matter what the millage, sure I am slower than in the day but so what I am still faster than some and it is still fun.
To get there I have to train, put the miles in and work on speed. This means that I am doing nothing differently than you, just not so much or so fast. Ok every one reading this is groaning - the old fart is just deluding himself. Maybe I am but here on Long Island there are the guys I come across every week in their 60's who do the "Early bird ride" out east, 85 km average speed 35+ kph and I am sure they too train to do this - with recovery rides?
I hope to see you out there in 20 years...?
@Rob
GO. YOU. GOOD. THING.