xc62701
Well-Known Member
Yesterday I needed to get in a decent training ride and I knew it was going to be cold out so I prepared for it and headed out at 7:30am. I think it was about 10 degrees and with the wind chill - MUCH colder. EWith 3 layers on the bottom and 4 up top I was either prepared or over prepared. I had a couple of workouts prescribed so that kept my mind at ease for the first hour or so. I headed from Parsippany up into West Milford as I needed some hills for my workouts. It was good until at the 1:30 mark my toes were numb and frozen. That's usually not too bad so I kept pressing on. At 1:45 the sides of my feet were numb and progressively getting worse. I kept doing 1 leggers and shaking out the other leg to get blood flowing. This would work for a little while but it wasn't a real solution. At 2 hours my heels were then frozen. I've never felt this before and I was starting to get a little worried.
I did have a plan though. My folks live up in West Milford and I knew they'd be having a fire. So I then booked straight to their house and proceeded to strip and warm up. After 2:30 of riding I was so grateful to be in a warm spot to chill and get some feeling back. When I got there I took off my shell jacket and on the arms of my fleece there was snow. Lol...i just started cracking up after seeing all that sweat from before turn into snow flakes. Kind of amusing... After 45 minutes of stealing food, drying my clothes, and thawing my feet I did head back out. I knew it would be over an hour and a half to get home so I tried to keep the blood flowing and take my time and keep myself warm. The problem was that my jacket was still wet and proceeded to saturate me and start chilling my core. So now my feet were good but the rest of me was just uncomfortable.
The ride home was uneventful but just cold and especially blustery. Those winds kicked up and reminded me more that even as it was warming up a little it was still going to be ballz cold. So I arrived home after being out for 5:15 with 4:33 riding time, 63 miiles, and over 4000' of elevation it was nice to be in my warm apartment. As miserable as it was at times I just kept thinking to myself, when I really get bummed this summer(which will happen at some point) I'll be able to look back on this and have some motivation to say well at least it wasn't as miserable as "this" day. If only I had some foot warmers it would have been a much more enjoyable ride. Everything was toasty except my feet. The moral of the story - buy foot warmers and ride happy
I did have a plan though. My folks live up in West Milford and I knew they'd be having a fire. So I then booked straight to their house and proceeded to strip and warm up. After 2:30 of riding I was so grateful to be in a warm spot to chill and get some feeling back. When I got there I took off my shell jacket and on the arms of my fleece there was snow. Lol...i just started cracking up after seeing all that sweat from before turn into snow flakes. Kind of amusing... After 45 minutes of stealing food, drying my clothes, and thawing my feet I did head back out. I knew it would be over an hour and a half to get home so I tried to keep the blood flowing and take my time and keep myself warm. The problem was that my jacket was still wet and proceeded to saturate me and start chilling my core. So now my feet were good but the rest of me was just uncomfortable.
The ride home was uneventful but just cold and especially blustery. Those winds kicked up and reminded me more that even as it was warming up a little it was still going to be ballz cold. So I arrived home after being out for 5:15 with 4:33 riding time, 63 miiles, and over 4000' of elevation it was nice to be in my warm apartment. As miserable as it was at times I just kept thinking to myself, when I really get bummed this summer(which will happen at some point) I'll be able to look back on this and have some motivation to say well at least it wasn't as miserable as "this" day. If only I had some foot warmers it would have been a much more enjoyable ride. Everything was toasty except my feet. The moral of the story - buy foot warmers and ride happy