Find some new gloves - please offer suggestions
For those of you about to rock...you missed out on Sunday. To begin the day, I rolled out from the house at 8:30 into a balmy 15F. By the time I made it to the $tarbuck$ it was up to 17F and after an americano it was at 20F. sweet! we were ready to rumble. Crispy lit us up with some nice 'cross form. The 2 cyclocrossers Crispy and Step-o-han showed up with some happy legs after the cross race saturday along with AJ. AJ and I are saying that we are trying to keep a lid on the intensity, but what we really meant is that we can't keep up with that kind of power. We were rolling out on this false flat towards the Bingham highway and he just kept going harder and harder. He would look over and say something like, "So how many days is VotS?" I would have to suck in a big breath so I could reply without gasping, "3!" I think that Crispy finally resigned himself to being cold no matter how hard he drove it, so we slowed down.
After 2.5, Crispy and AJ were calling it good. Smart. Step-o-han and I kept things rolling. It ended up being the Tour of Salt Lake Valley. F-burn told me Saturday that on cold days you burn something like 20% more calories. The whole time I was thinking I can drink 20% more beer tonight than originally planned. Do you also destroy 20% more brain cells by training that many hours in the cold? We made one more coffee stop in hopes of warming the insides. All the tables inside were full, so we went to the outside table to sit in the sun at the "smoking" table. Mistake...these wannabe hipsters show up to smoke and we got to listen to them try to sound cool but sound really lame. So it was back on the bikes to head north this time.
I kept thinking throughout the day that we'd see some fellow cyclistas, especially since we had crossed the valley east-to-west and back and were now on our south-to-north trip. Sure enough we saw some of the Draper Canyon crew on Holladay Blvd. The Claw and Hollywood were out with some of the boys and then heading south on 9th east just south of Sugarhouse we saw Skinny B and the Dutchman from Foothill. I hardly recognized Skinny B with the stylish beard. We flipped and rolled with them for a few blocks and then slogged southward. I think the long day finally sank into the legs around the Fort Union area.
Step-o-han pulled off to roll home in Sandy and I kept wishing that D-oza and the kids would call to say they were headed home from somewhere and thought I would be close to finished. No such luck. As I climb the hill into the neighborhoood I looked back to see the car driving up the street behind me, arriving in the driveway the same time I pull in. My cold fingers were happy to be home, but it was great training for another freezing rain/sleet storm at Hell of the North(Salt Lake) again this year. Maybe I should stop wearing gloves all-together for that kind of training. By the way, SRAM kicks!