Winter is creeping closer
I ran up to Sandy for some donuts this morning (and, as a bonus, to get another 100km’s worth of RUSA miles) and, my, it was kind of chilly out there. I had three layers on on top (wool baselayer, cloud chamber jersey + arm warmers, Portland Cyclewear longsleeve jersey) and it was still a battle between my metabolism and the damp air to see if I was warm or cold.
An interesting discovery I’ve found in the last few cold-weather loops is that I get congested and need to breathe through my mouth at speed. It’s not normally a problem, but if I need to eat I end up having to eat + breathe through the same orifice at the same time, which usually results in my slowing down. This does not combine well with the anemic climbing I do on the project bike – today I started to feel somewhat peckish on Bluff Road (I was burning a lot of energy trying to keep up with Kevin on steeper ramps) and pulled out a banana to snack on. But first I wanted a no-handed photo, so I used the next level spot taking a photo, and then peeled the banana and started to eat it, just as Bluff Road pitched up on the longish ramp up to the junction with Kelso Road.
I’m not sure how long Kevin waited at Kelso Road, but we’ll just say I wasn’t climbing very fast what with the combination of the project bike, trying to eat a banana, and trying to breathe. (I have a new lots-of-clearance cyclocross fork in hand now, and I’m waiting on enough time to assemble a fork-raking jig so I can shorten it by making it into a low-trail (65-70mm offset) fork, and when that is done I’ll be able to reassemble the mlcm and start using it instead of the project bike.)
But, even with this, and with stopping at Joe’s Donuts for a cup of coffee and a half-dozen donuts for Silas and my parents, we still managed to finish the loop in 4h17 (including a 20mph sprint down the unpaved part of the Springwater Trail; the Nomad 35s do a pretty good job of eating up the bumps on the gravel/dirt/rock there), which brings me up to ~11,000 miles of riding with 10783km’s worth of completed RUSA/ACP brevets/permanents.
I was thinking of a night-start 200 for tomorrow (leaving for Ripplebrook at 5am, which would get me back into Portland by 3pm – i do not think the project bike would be well-suited for attempting a sub-8 Ripplebrook run) but I don’t know if I could bear the idea of waking up that early and staggering out into the 35°F predawn with my current cobbled-together attempts at winter wear. Instead I’ll probably just hide inside and wait until Saturday morning to go out and freeze my way up into the mountains.