The Wheelsucker Braves the Great White North

Many years ago the Wheelsucker left his friends and family in Canada and moved to the Washington DC area. This gave the Wheelsucker a significant increase in his standard of living, and he also enjoyed the easy Washinsgton DC (and Annapolis) climate, which allowed him to sail year round. The move meant giving up cross country skiing, but the wheelsucker was prepared to do that in favor of sailing.

More recently Annapolis weather has worked well for the wheelsucker's cycling; the wheelsucker probably missed only 2-3 Saturday rides last winter, and rode most Sunday's too.

The wheelsucker still has family in the Great White North (GWN), now living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and quite recently has a wonderful girlfriend in the GTA, so chose to use his last vacation days to be in the GTA for Christmas and New Years.

Being commited to riding and doing his workouts (and having missed two workouts just before going to the GWN/GTA), the wheelsucker was determined to ride while there. He drove up the evening and night of the 23rd, and was able to get a shortened ride on the indoor trainer on the 24th; shortened because Christmas Eve festivities were starting. But Christmas Day was the day the Wheelsucker decided to brave the elements.

The wheelsucker's coach said 2 hours: Ride on a flat to gently rolling course. Get at least 50% of ride time in 2 zone. Avoid 4-5 zones. Keep the 2-zone effort steady and continuous.

The wheelsucker was short of sleep, had been eating and drinking too much, and was looking forward to a good ride. It was about 20 degrees F. BRISK! But the Wheelsucker could recall cross country skiing in 20 F and colder, so why not cycle?

The Wheelsucker got a late start due to Christmas Day celebrations and the time it took to put his cycling clothes -- all of them -- on. He rolled down the street just before 15:00. Fortunately there was almost no wind.

Holding z2 outdoors was much easier than holding z2 on the trainer the day before; the Wheelsucker was feeling good -- and keeping his HR down -- when he turned around for the ride back. It was almost dark when the Wheelsucker made it back. Apart from not drinking enough as the water bottles had quickly frozen -- and even putting them inside his cycling clothes was not enough to thaw them -- the ride went well, though the wheelsucker was sneaking into the low end of z3 a bit too much on the ride back.

The wheelsucker was struck by how different a 1:10 mostly-zone2 ride on the trainer was from the 2:05 mostly-zone2 ride outside.

	inside	outside
temp	65	20
time	1:10	2:05
average watts	172	191
normalized watts	178	233
average HR	138	131
average cad	92	89
distance	24.24	35.51