Wear your helmet kids!/Inter-collegiate Spring Training Ride

Post date: Jul 18, 2010 2:32:4 AM

Bad times for a Protour rider who swerved to avoid a cat.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/lack-of-helmet-led-to-kesslers-skull-fracture

Helmets are mandatory on all team activities.

And....

Its January 16th, there's snow on the ground, the mercury is hovering a bit under the freezing point and most normal people are probably thinking about skiing (or staying inside and watching the playoffs). But this is a collegiate cycling team, the first race of the season is in 42 days and you guys need to get some training miles!

Ian, Brian and I tried to join the University of Chicago for the first out-door training ride of the year at 8am. We decided to skip the hills of Lemont and start out a little easier with a flat 60 mile ride to Schererville, IN. Forecasts said today was to be mostly sunny and in the mid to upper 30's. It wasn't.

We started out a bit late so the freshmen started strong, hoping to chase down our neighbors to the south while I hung on for dear life on my cyclocross bike. The path heading south is mostly clear with only a handful (4?) of 5' stretches of ice until about halfway through the Greenway in Indiana where it was completely unplowed. The roadie gods were watching over us though and just as we came upon this we had passed a UofC alumni/professor/Hyde Park local/complete stranger who had also started late for the ride and kindly showed us the detour around this stretch before turning around citing cold hands.

We had been suffering in silence, all too manly to admit it, or maybe we were just ignoring the pain but after his comment we all looked at each other, questioned what we were doing and made a detour to the nearest gas station in search of some chemical hand/toe warmers. 20 minutes, a pair of $5 hats, and a puzzled foreigner later we walked out sans warmers and continued on our way in search of piping hot coffee and just maybe the UofC squad.

Some time after this we finally rolled up to a Starbucks with a dozen bikes lined up outside, taking up almost the entire width of the sidewalk and even one perched atop an outdoor table and met the rest of the book-smart/commonsense-retarded members of the ride, who then promptly walked out the door to continue on their way. Meanwhile we defrosted, consumed some calories and got into a 2 hour stand-off with the sun - both parties refusing to be the first to show our faces outside. Resistance proved futile, so after a quick stop to the Walgreens across the street for toe-warmers we started back with the tailwind but still no sun.

At some point around the half-way mark of the route back Ian bonked and the pace thankfully dropped from tempo back down to the intended base miles (on my knobbies at least). We rolled back to campus around 2pm (I think, I didn't really look at the clock on my way to the fridge) which was none too soon because the pace had slowed way down as we got back on lakeshore trail and heart-rates dropped below the threshold of being able to produce enough heat to keep us warm, and Ian began noticeably shivering and mumbling something about how delicious cafeteria food is as we turned off the trail at 31st street. Brian had his poker face on and looked like he was ready to keep going, and I was beginning to get cross-eyed.

All in all it was a pretty fun freshmen initiation ride. The welcome-to-Chicago-in-January, this is 95th street, this is Hammond Indiana, where-the-hell-is-Bo-taking-us kind of thing which was then augmented by the complete-stranger led detour on a 6 lane road past industrial parks that I had never taken. We won't plan to ride in the mid-20's again (for a little while) but it was one of those rides that will be brought up for awhile when somebody questions your dedication (or sanity). And despite not having accumulated quite enough clothing for such a ride both Ian and Brian were close and handled the cold well. Then again, they also didn't know I have three people with trucks/Eurovans on speed dial that could have picked us up from the Starbucks.

Clothing everybody should have for cold rides and early-season races:

Beanie ( http://www.dowrap.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=DWMWC&Category_Code=SVWB )

Neoprene shoe covers (the thick kind, not the rain/TT ones)

Arm and leg warmers

Double up on your socks works well if you don't have shoe covers

Multiple pairs of shorts (Double wrap it for your enjoyment-cold rides are miserable if you go numb, hats/socks?)

So, Ian is the rider of the week. Mainly because I could find an almost-decent picture:

http://sites.google.com/site/iitcycling/

-Bo