Monday, March 19, 2018

Winter

It's starting to look like spring out there after another pretty long winter. It can be a little hard to stay in shape over the winter in Montana, as the cold, snow, and dark all conspire to keep you on the couch with a tasty local beer. While the couch and beer are appealing, and it is nice to have a bit of a winter break, I don't want to spend too much time sitting around getting fat and out of shape.

With thoughts of springtime bike maintenance, upgrades, and new equipment in mind I tried to keep my winter time expenditures to a minimum, so no, I still don't have a fat bike or a fancy backcountry ski setup. Or even XC skis. Those things would do a much better job at keeping me active during the winter as riding on a trainer is really not very fun. I did at least managed to stay a little active. After an early november snowstorm the roads cleared up and I manged to get a good amount of riding in during november and december. Then around mid-January things cleared up a bit, and despite being a little cold I got in a few more miles in Jan-Feb.













That was a run of about 350 miles, but then around mid feb it became winter again which resulted in less riding, and it was March before I got out again, which brings us to now. During those bouts of winter I did XC ski a few times, which is pretty boring, ran and hiked, rode the trainer once or twice, and started lifting weights. The weights is something I've talked about doing for awhile now. I've mostly been concentrating on squats and deadifts but do work in other stuff to help with upper body strength as well. I see a lot of pros lifting weights and added leg, and general strength really seem like they should be beneficial on the bike. So hopefully I'll be able to keep that up once or twice a week, ride consistently, eat better, drink less, and be a little faster this year. However it's already the middle of march and I feel behind. Speedwagon is coming up on the 31st and then the gravel challenge is mid-april. So I'd better get out there.

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