East and West Running: First Outdoor Bike Ride of the Year!

Thursday, March 22, 2012

First Outdoor Bike Ride of the Year!

Cross Eye all ready for the first ride
of the season!

Joy here...We've been having some incredible March weather lately. On March 2nd we were skiing in the snow, and a weak-ish later I was out the door running in +15C temperatures. Since then, the temperatures have topped out at +29C! Given that the average high temperature for March in Ottawa is around +4C, I really just don't know what to make of all of this, but if it's climate change, I will take it, and thank you.

And as a consequence of this lovely la niña weather, I was out the door on my bike on Sunday morning for my first outdoor bike ride of the year. Last spring, my first outdoor bike ride was April 3rd, and it was a cool -2C when I started. This year the temperature was already nearly +10C in the morning, and it was +22C by the time I got back from my bike ride around noonish.

Look at that fog!

Let me tell you, it was one of my favourite bike rides to date. Because this unseasonable warm weather is crashing up against the remaining winter's chill - the residual snow on the ground and the ice too thick to be fully melted - as we rolled out towards the strip of road where we would ride an out-and-back loop (7.5km one way) a couple of times, the air was full of fog. We were wrapped in a chill cloud that kept the landscape all around us misted in milk, and so as we rode the stretch of road ahead of us only revealed itself the further we went into the clouds as the road behind us disappeared.

One part of the bike path that was a little
too snowy to ride through (I guess
The Trainer knew what she was doing when
she decided to wait for a full thaw!).

Many of the cycling sisterhood from last summer (a total of 6 of us: The Trainer, The Professor, Power Penna, The Sashinator, Cili Padi, and myself) weren't available for this ride. The Trainer isn't riding until there's no possibility of snow or ice on the path; The Professor went back to bed with her third sinus cold this year; Power Penna just told us that SHE'S PREGNANT; and the Sashinator had out-of-town guests, so Cili Padi and I were a sisterhood of two out there in that early morning mist and fog, testing out our legs and our balance as the sun slowly rose up above the fog and made the mists begin to dissipate, revealing a spring landscape that had hidden beneath the blanket.

As the sun came out and the blue sky shone, we could
see the chunks of ice still floating in the river like
mini-ice bergs.

Last year when we did this ride, we drove our cars from our houses, met up in the parking lot, and then rode our bikes out and back only once, for a total of 15kms. This year, Cili Padi rode over to my house on her bike, and then the two of us made our way out to that particular parkway (which is where time trials are held throughout the summer months). That's probably a 15km bike ride there and back itself. And then we rode the parkway twice for a total of 30kms. And while last year we were happy to keep our speed somewhere around 21kms/hr, this year, we easily trundled along at around 26kms/hr. Now for this early in the season and for a cross bike (with bigger, slower tires) that's not too bad. Whenever I feel like I don't have any fitness and I can't do the things that I dream of doing, I like to be able to have real data like this so that I can compare one year to another. Because right now, even though I don't feel like I'm in good shape, and don't think that I've got any real fitness as spring unfurls around me, I have objective data to counter that and give me some much-needed confidence moving forward.

Oh, and the bright sun and blue sky that cleared away all that fog also helped! I rode home, saying a fond farewell to Cili Padi who is off to France for a month, and felt those endorphin feelings of happiness that I haven't felt in a long time.