rolling hills

Thankfully, the weather is at last cooperating around here.

With temperatures hovering around 10 degrees, a ride was in order.

I did not go too far - 58.99km - but really enjoyed the outing. My route took me over a series of rolling hills which I have not seen for the bicycle since sometime last October. In total, I managed 219m of elevation gain, not bad for this part of Ontario. We lack real hills around here.

I was reminded that commuting on a heavily overloaded bike is not a replacement for road riding. Yes, I have been very active this year so far - evidenced by the 1653km I have logged on the bikes after today's efforts. But that riding has been overwhelmingly slow and choppy, and has done nothing to build endurance. Today's ride, on the other hand, was a spin fest, with lots of climbing - km 5 to km 19 was mostly uphill with some minor descending - over mixed surfaces which included glass smooth pavement, broken up potholed roads, and gravel.

It was a great way to break in the new cyclocross bike - my bright orange 2013 Kona Jake the Snake.

So far, I am absolutely loving that bike. It is lighter than the old one, and much faster. The cockpit of the bike is very strange to me compared to what I am used to. The stem is shorter - all of my bikes have longer stems which were popular about a decade ago - giving me a seemingly cramped riding position. In actual fact, the slightly more compact riding position, matched to shallower road bars compared to the old bike, makes it significantly easier for me to get into the drops and produces much more assured steering than the old bike had. In part, this has to do with the very stiff (yet comfortable) carbon fiber fork vs the old bike's steel mountain bike based fork, and the tapered head tube. I point the bike where I want it to go, and it goes there with no drama, no matter how smashed up the road surface is.

The tires that come on the bike are not that great for asphalt, but are marvelous on gravel, and will be a hoot later on when things dry down a bit after the spring run off. For low pressure cyclocross knobbies, they roll along quite nicely and contribute to a fairly cushy ride on broken up surfaces. Speed is sacrificed though. I still managed a reasonable average speed for me in March. If I could afford a second wheel set, I would get one with slicks mounted for road use, and save these for trails and gravel road riding. The tires are Maxxis Mud Wrestlers.

Back to the riding though.

My legs and lungs need to be reforged as a cyclist's legs and lungs. I found myself gasping a few times when I shouldn't have, and honestly considered one hill on gravel -  an elevation jump of 33m over 310m - to have been a mistake being as it was near to the end of the ride.

And yet, I felt refreshed. It was wonderful.

I estimate that in another four or five rides, things should be back to normal and start to look up for the rest of the season.

Where is that pesky hammer and anvil...