Cycling in the cold and the snow! Also a update on the journey.
Cycling in the Cold!
For the past few weeks I have been cycling in the cold each morning. Its so much harder to get started when you wake up and its cold in the house and its dark outside. I was also having a hard time getting back into the full swing of cycling becuase of stopping for a little bit at the start December. With all of that I have been getting up and cycling every morning again. The set up is a little different than when I was cycling in the sping or summer but I am still doing it in normal clothing. I am not going to spend money on special clothing just for cycling and that might sound silly becuase the cycling gear is designed better than standard clothing but to me I get by just fine so I wont spend the money on it. I have a winter jacket that I do not want to get all smelly by sweating in it each morning so I have a layered set up using a cheap hoodie and a windbreaker jacket. I also did buy a 4 pack of neck gaiters to cover my face as I ride and a cheap under helmet hat. So in the morning I get my coffee ready I put on my windbreaker pants over the sweatpants I have on and then layer on the hoodie and windbreaker jacket. Grab my coffee, my back pack, and I put on my boots and head into the garage where I have my gloves and bikes. Before I open the garage door I put on my camera for recording my ride and then I set up the ride on my watch before putting my gloves on. After that whole process I have on helmet, hat, neck gaiter, windbreaker jacket, hoodie, shirt, gloves, windbreaker pants, sweatpants, wool socks, and winter boots. It is a lot to put on just to go for a bike ride when I have a treadmill down in my basement but I love cycling so much now that I have done it for a while. This set up is a bit extra for when the weather is just 32 degrees fahrenheit with no wind but its perfect for days like the other day where it was 10 degrees fahrenheit with wind gust of 15 miles per hour. I was not cold that day until near the end of my ride when my toes started to get cold but it was nothing too bad.
There is another difference with cycling in the cold that I have only had a problem with a few times so far and I hope to not have again. The problem is black ice and ice under the snow. I am well covered for being warm but I am riding cheap bikes with regular tires. I do not have a set of spiked tires or anything that would prevent slipping on ice. This winter has been nice so far with very little snowfall so the roads and trails have nothing that can ice over really. There was one morning where it was warmer overnight and then colder in the morning and the trail had some black ice on it from that. That one day was the hardest day to ride because I thought thigns were going to be fine and got on my gravel bike to go nice and fast. Well going around a corner on a paved trail with black ice is not so fun on a gravel bike with no spikes. I was super lucky and happend to gain traction right after slipping and did not fall off the bike but it was close. I have not been riding fast any day since that happend. This has taken a bit of toll on my ability to get done a full ride in the morning before work as I like to do the whole trail loop before heading home and going slower makes it so that I cut it close to my morning meeting times. Either way I have been able to do it and have yet to fall. This also got me to thinking I might not want or need spikes on my curent bikes and I should buy a fat tire bike. I did that the other week and reviewed it in another post but it has changed a few things.
Cycling in the snow!
So after all of the cycling in the cold I did have a little bit of snow before getting the fat bike. This was another reason to purchase it. I do not want to ruin my main bikes in the hard riding of the salted winter snow. 
An image of how much snow got on my Ozark Trail Ridge after trying to use it for riding through the snow shows why I did not want to continue this. I use that bike for pulling my kids in the cart and taking them places so I need that bike to be in perfect working order. It also was not the right bike for snow it was able to ride through it fine but slipped in places and when there was patches of ice where someone walked over the snow it was boucing off them in a way that was making it hard to ride. like the ice was rounded out on the foot print where snow covered it over and then riding over that caused the tire to slip off the ice and bounce because the ice was larger than the tire. In comes the fat bike!
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Another thing about riding in the snow is there are fewer people on the trails and I can explore some of the other trails that normally I stay off of becuase people let their dogs off leash on them. They are not allowed to do this but everyone does it and no one seems to care so I just stay away from that area and call it a day but I get to ride those trails now becuase people are not out. There are a lot of technical sections with rocks and things where I would not want to do this in the snow normally but I got some confidence with the fat tires and I have to say that it has been awesome to be able to ride over things with carless disregard. I am sure that I am going to end up rolling over something at somepoint that causes me issues but for now its fun to just roll over everything. Cycling in the winter is a new obsession of mine and I will continue to cycle no matter what the weather is.
Small update on the Fat Bike.
Clearly I still like the fat bike and think it was an good purchase for me. There are some things about it that I am not thrilled with even more after getting more miles on it. I currently have 60 miles on it and there have been a few problems. The bolts for the front tire came loose on my most recent ride. I noticed this right away as when I hit the breaks I could feel and see something was off with the front tire. It was wobbly and sounded wrong when I picked the bike up. It was not wobbly when moving it by hand and did not come off the bike but the brakes always tell first. I carry an adjustable wrench with me when I ride this bike and gave the bolts on the front wheel a few test turns and sure enough it was loose on the right side. I am sure I tighened down everything properly when I put it together so I will have to keep an eye on that. The other thing that happend was a peddal came off mid ride and it was not stripped it just wiggled it self out. Now I have to be at fault for not putting it on right but either way I used some teflon tape to make sure that everything was nice and secured this time. That is not the way I should have done it maybe but its what I did. One last thing that I am noticing on this bike there is a small grinding or clicking when putting too much pressure going up hills and things like that. I will have to dig into the bottom bracket and find out what is going on there but its not super loud or crunchy its hardly noticable so I think its fine for now. My guess on that is that the factory just did not put the grease in there right. I mean when I got the bike in the box there were some issues so it would not shock me. It does not change my review on the bike much but I would have a hard time telling someone else they should buy this bike.
Other update on the journey
I have been lifting again. About a week ago I decided it was time to start lifting again. I thought I would start fairly small to get back into lifting but I also kinda just went for it. I dusted off the squat rack and the curl bar and got to it. I don't count the bar for the weight but it is standard 45LBs bar that I use for lifting. I put on 90 LBs and got to squatting. I like the 5x5 set up for lifting as it seems that I get a good work out and fair gains from the lifts. So I did 5 sets of 5 reps at 90 LBs for squats and felt awesome so I just continued what I was doing before. I then set up the bench press and 5x5 70 LBs which was right where I left off after my last times lifting. In the end I did everything I could except deadlifting. I ran out of time to deadlift but that will be on my list going forward. Anyway the list of things I did and the weights so far is Overhead Press 25 LBs, Bench Press 70 LBs, Push ups 10x5, Sit ups 10x5, and curls 45 5x5.
These numbers might not seem like a lot and I did not put a plan on what days I should be doing what but I am building back up to things and get started with it again so I did not want to plan everythnig out and then end up not following through. I also know that over the past few years people have started hating on the 5x5 plans like starting strength and there are better work out plans but I don't really care much at the moment I want to start with what I know and get into it again before moving to something else.
For the final update on the journey I have been slightly telling a lie. More so I have not updated the blog properly. Over December I was honest about gaining some weight and I knew that I would but I gained more than I thought I would and I am at 155 right now... I do not fully know how this happend but that is my current weight. My body fat percent according to my watch is 22 or something like that but other methods put it closer to 17-19 percent.
I will say that I do not look fatter than when I was 139 or so but I do not like seeing that number on a scale. I also seem to see less fat around my mid section but feel worse about myself becuase of the added weight. I know that this is all a bit silly and I should not be upset because a number is larger than it used to be but its hard to not be upset by this. I do not see physical changes like larger muscles but I still see a small bit of fat over my belly that taunts me every single day. I am more physically fit than I have been in many years and I can do all kinds of exercising with out feeling beaten down but still mocked by a bit of fat. I also know that no matter what I am not just exercising for vanity and I am doing it for overall health and its a journey but the day to day sometimes does end up getting to me and I get mocked by some fat.
I am going to forget about the fat mocking me for a while, plan out a lifting schedule, and continue cycling in the cold and snow. Thank you very much for reading have and wonderful day!
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