Week Fourteen - Day Four

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 35 min.
TIME BACK: 33 min.
WEATHER: clear, -14C (-21C with windchill), 13km/hr wind there; clear, -10C (-19C with windchill), 24km/hr wind back.
WHAT I WORE: double pants, turtleneck, fleece mid-layer, waterproof shell, scarf, lobster gloves, ski goggles (goggles and waterproof shell in panniers on the way home)
NOTES:

(I wrote this first part right after my morning ride)

Fuck! This. Is. NOT. Fun.

My toes froze on the way to work this morning. I can barely move my legs when I'm biking. I feel like I can't breathe because it seems no matter how hard I'm panting I can't take in enough air. I move so slowly. Every fucking block I ride is an effort. I had to downshift to 9th fucking gear just to get up that tiny hill by the High Level Bridge, and even as I crawled up that hill I felt like I was dying from the effort. I'm chilled to the bone from the ride and I don't really warm up again during the day, especially because I keep having to drink so much (water-cooler-chilled) water all day. My thighs are freezer-burnt (seriously, even hours after my last ride they were bright red and stung in the shower last night). I'm not even sleeping that well at night! Between my daughter and whatever the hell is wrong with me, I keep waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble falling back asleep. And my freakin' finger still hurts from the fall last week! Stupid sprain. Fuck! And I keep forgetting to bring in milk for my coffee at work so I've been using this hideous Coffee Mate powdered shit. Come on, LIFE! You SUCK!

Sadly, THIS is what brings me consolation. I have it in my head all the time, it makes me smile, and it's awesome. But, really? I need a rapping banana to cheer me up? Is this what my life has come to?

(The following was written after arriving home for the day and having a big, hot, yummy dinner)

Ahhh, feeling much better now. I had a decent ride home - it wasn't too bad, really, even got to get my speed up in a couple places! I outpaced a truck for about a block, and in an effort to catch a green light before it turned yellow I managed to bike faster than I thought it was possible for me in this temperature. Some parts of the ride were still painfully slow, but it didn't feel like such a chore on the way home today. Maybe it's that it was the end of the day and I was already awake and warmed up, whereas in the morning my body was still half-asleep and working at that slightly-below-normal body temperature we crazy humans tend to drop to overnight. Maybe it's the relief of knowing I was going home, whereas in the morning I was biking to work and maybe the motivation just wasn't as high (even though I love my job). Who knows?

I did try a couple things to lessen the general shittiness of winter riding. First of all, I started gear-shifting like a mo-fo. I usually cruise around in one gear and only downshift one gear if I'm going uphill. Today, though, I was shifting gears when going over snow, when faced with tiny inclines like the gradual almost imperceptible slope of a mostly flat road, and generally any time my thighs started to protest against their vigorous effort. I even downshifted three gears to climb the hills on either side of the High Level Bridge today, crawling along at about the same speed as a pedestrian might take those hills. But what can I do? My thighs are tired - sore, achey, overworked - and I need to take care of these bad-boys so I can continue biking without injury (and without absolutely hating it). Also, I abandoned the waterproof shell because I think I've been over-dressed, at least in the torso region. That seemed to help, actually - I felt a whole lot less restricted in my movement and also less sweaty by the time I got home.

Another thing I need to consider is whether I'm eating enough. I've heard that winter biking is a whole different game: between the additional effort of biking in wintry weather and the body's effort to maintain its heat during long exposures to the cold, a winter cyclist burns a whole lot more calories than a belle-weather cyclist. Since I started calorie-counting last week, I've been eating in the range of 1,500 calories a day (at least on biking days; I tend to eat a bit more on the weekends). Since my regular belle-weather commute would burn over 700 calories a day for me, and given that I'm likely burning a fair bit more than that now that it's cold and snowy, I'm thinking the 1,500 calories a day thing is probably not going to work for me long-term. In fact, it's probably contributing to my lack of sleep, my inability to bike faster, and the perpetual worn-out feeling in my thighs.

So, more food for me! Tragic, I know . . .