Sunday, January 02, 2011

Jan 1, 2011 Ride - It was cold

This post is mostly about the clothing worn to deal with the temperatures. A little background:

Marcello has organized two first-of-the-season rides in Oregon. The weather looked good for the first of these - clear and cold with no precipitation in sight. I 'needed' a ride for January to make progress on my R-12 attempt. The route was nice. An out-and-back from Hillsboro to Dallas, OR. So, I made the attempt. Finished the ride fine. But, the temperatures were colder than I normally ride.

So, here's what I wore. It worked. Starting at the top:
  • Helmet cover - water proof - but I wore if for the wind protection and an extra layer up top. Had to take it off once it got dark - so I could use the headlamp that attaches to the helmet.
  • Head-sweat - I wear this year-round for bicycling
  • Head band to cover the ears
  • REI brand base-layer t-shirt. Long sleeve. It comes up and covers most of my neck - and seems to do a good job of wicking and keeping me warm.
  • Oregon Randonneurs wool long sleeve jersey. It's the red one.
  • For 2/3 of the ride I wore a standard issue yellow cycling wind breaker. Took it off at the half-way point as I was breaking a sweat, it was the warmest part of the day, and I wanted to dry out before we lost the daylight.
  • Standard issue cycle shorts
  • Knee warmers
  • A very old, garish, pair of tights from Primal Wear. They do a good job of blocking wind, and the keep the knee warmers in place - but have limited insulation. The combination of these w/ the knee warmers is good starting at around 50F.
  • Liner socks (from hiking)
  • Wool socks - for cross country skiing. They came up to the bottom of the knee - adding some insulation below the knee warmers and perhaps adding some compression on the muscles below the knee.
  • Standard issue cycling shoes (mountain bike)
  • Gore shoe covers. These were pricey; but, they have been worth it - a significant upgrade in warmth and dryness over the previous.
Finally:
I used two sets of gloves during the ride. On the 'out' part of the ride, I used an old set of dense-fleece ski gloves (a nice gift about a decade ago from one of my brothers). They were a little soggy from sweat at the half-way mark, so I switched them out for a wool combination: smart-wool liner gloves inside REI's nubby-palmed wool gloves. These worked fine, and might have worked the entire ride.

The above kept me warm enough. If it had been raining, that wouldn't have worked. I would have switched to a water-proof outer layer and lightened up on the other clothing.

Now - for the ride part. It was good-to-great. Here are the heart-rate traces that go with the exertions:

Out: Hillsboro-Dayton-Dallas, with a stop in Dayton at a very nicely ran convenience store. Worked hard the whole way. We tended to have a tail-wind - my ride time for this leg was about 4:30.

Out-1

Back: I stopped to have hot chocolate and chat with Marcello. Then another stop in Dayton. The tail-wind was now a head-wind. The exertion falls off at the end as I'm winding through the neighborhoods and focused on navigation, as opposed to just pedaling hard.

Back-1

The complete set of pictures, such as they are, are available here.

Finally finally: for food I had some simple sandwiches made from Safeway's finest cheap French rolls. Some had cheese and some had salami. I also had a cashew/raisin mix from home, and 2 Lara bars. Two bottles of Heed - went with Coffee (from the excellent convenience store in Dayton), hot chocolate, and NUUN-in-water. Also - Marcello had supplies on the road. I had 6 cookies. No food issues. The cashews worked, again. Had them towards the end of the ride.

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