Winter Training Begins

All right, all right, all right. So it’s been a long while since my last post. Go ahead and sue me, but these things happen.

Actually, I don’t mean to sound like a whiney douchebag, although I do have two excuses in that (a) it has been ridiculously busy at work, and (b) it’s cold outside and when it’s cold outside, it’s not as much fun to ride as it is when it’s warm outside. Am I right or am I right?

Speaking of the cold, it wasn’t long ago that I arrived home on a weeknight, suited up for temperatures in the high-forties, strapped the blinking headlight to the handlebars and the blinking taillight to the seat post, and hit the road for my usual 18-mile weekday training ride. Honestly, it was the first time since last spring that I had to wear full-fingered gloves, a baselayer, a long-sleeved jersey, leg warmers, my Woolie Boolie socks, and my riding cap under my helmet. I mention all this as, once my ride was over and I climbed the stairs to the front door of my house and stepped inside, I had one of those flashbacks, but not the drug-induced kind of flashback. The moment I stepped inside out of the cold, an entire winter’s worth of riding came back to me all at once. Know what I mean? The season’s change and you spend so long riding on warm mornings with just a jersey and a pair of shorts that you forget how long it takes to gear up when the temperature drops below fifty. You almost forget how good it feels to get home, blow your nose with a tissue (as opposed to umpteen snot-shots while on the road), peel off all the layers, and hop in a hot shower. It’s the shower that always does it for me. Spending a few minutes under the warm water as the mirror and windows begin to fog and then getting dressed in fresh clothes and then sitting down for a satisfying meal? Putting up with the wind-chill almost seems worth it when you think of it like that, doesn’t it?

Speaking of the cold, though, I pulled myself out of bed a little after seven this past Sunday morning (and leaving your girlfriend/wife in bed under the covers to go for a ride in twenty-eight degree weather is never too easy of a thing to do) and geared up for a brisk, two-hour blast. And you know me and my size 14 cycling shoes--finding booties that fit is close to impossible, especially considering I have shoes of the mountain biking variety (that’s a whole other story, so let’s not even bother), so I tend to simply roll with the Woolie Boolie socks, a second pair of thick neoprene socks over the Woolie Boolies, and a regular pair of Pearl Izumi toe warmers.

Needless to say, an hour into the ride, I found myself desperately searching for either a convenient store or a grocery store or any sort of public establishment where I might sit down for ten minutes in order to regain the feeling in my toes. Of course, this is not new news. This has happened to every person reading this page, although I’m happy to report that over the weekend I came to realize that Pearl Izumi (one of my favorite apparel manufacturers, fyi) does indeed make an AmFib bootie specifically of the mountain biking variety and they also happen to make this bootie up to size XXL for those cyclists with shoes size 49+.

I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. Really excited. As soon as I found out about the MTB booties in just my size, I quickly hopped online and promptly spent $49.95 of my hard-earned money on a pair of new Pearl Izumi AmFib Mountain Biking booties. Will my feet soon be thanking me? You’re damn right they will be. Especially when I also invest in a few pairs of those air-activated heated insoles. The heated insoles combined with the booties? Cold weather? Freezing temperatures? I’ve got your freezing temperatures right here, tough guy!