I feel it in my fingers

 

Today was another chilly one, and I had a second go at testing my minimal cold weather outfit - just a synthetic baselayer under a thin windproof jacket. This time the plan worked perfectly. As soon as I got outside I was slightly uncomfortable, and could feel cold leaking in (or heat out, whatever..) in my hands and also through the front of my jacket. But then the magic happened - a few minutes of pedalling later and I was toasty warm apart from my fingers. Even they warmed up once I got to the woods and started going uphill.

Proof!

The only bit of me that was cold for the second half of the ride was my feet. They actually got worse every time I got off the bike, so it must be that they lose heat quickly through the ground when it is so frosty underfoot. Next time out I'll experiment with some different socks and see how that goes.

The first section of one of my favourite trails.

The ride itself was good! I recently went on a ride with a friend and went through part of the wood that I didn't know already, so today I wanted to go back and explore that area a bit. I got a bit lost getting there but found some nice trails on the way and made it in the end. After that I headed over to my favourite area and did a few laps of the "normal" trails. The conditions were pretty good for going fast! The ground was frozen enough to firm up some of the softer corners, but not icy enough to be slippery or scary, and according to Strava I had a couple of personal bests on some downhill sections. I also made it down one of the scariest bits of trail I've found so far without stopping or dabbing for the first time, so a double success. I like to try to find one new interesting thing, or do one thing I haven't done before on every ride, and today I managed both.

One day I'm going to ride over one of these. Maybe in the summer.