Five years ago, while training for the Tupper Lake Tinman, a 1/2 ironman-distanced triathlon, I was running early in the morning in Plattsburg, NY. It was May, but it was brutally hot and humid. I was making the return leg back to the hotel on a 6.5 mile out and back route I had done several times while staying in Plattsburg. I was hurting bad, having gone through several days of traveling to work on farms with consultants in the hot, humid conditions. All of a sudden I hear a kid in his driveway getting ready to catch the elementary school bus yell to me, "why are you wunning mistaw?" He replaced his r's with w sounds. I managed to get out some words from my salt-stained lips in between grimaces of pain and said, "because it's fun." The words were reflex, and not even meant to be ironic. He replied before my next heartbeat with, "you cwazzy mistaw!" After I told this story to Donna it has become our catch phrase for when we plan or do something extreme.
This morning Donna asked me if I would join her at Dan's Saturday 8 am spin class at the Y. I said no, that I was planning on joining a group mountain bike ride at Grafton State Park at 1 pm. And, you know what she said. The fact that it was 7 degrees out and snowing lightly had something to do with her response. When she told Dan and other members of the spin class why I was not with them, they came up with other words to describe my intentions.
Ice biking is not a familiar activity to even some avid cyclists. Two winters ago I bought a set of Nokian studded tires for my Epic mountain bike. They have a carbide tipped stud sticking out of every knob, all 296 of them, in each tire. You can bike on glare ice and not spin or slip a wheel. After solving that problem it is just a matter of keeping yourself
warm. The only problem I have had with that is keeping my feet warm. It don't have winter mountain biking shoes and my attempts at using Gore Tex socks and neoprene covers with the regular mountain biking shoes, which are vented for crying out loud, have resulted in near frost bite. In addition, the metal clips conduct heat out and also freeze up making clipping in a problem. My solution for this day was to put on the flat, studded Kona pedals that came with my Yeti and wear my GoreTex hiking boats.
There were 10 of us "cwazzies" on hand for the 1 pm take off from the Winter entrance to Grafton. We rode for about 3 hours, a little over 10 miles, on icy hard-packed snow, rocks, roots and puddles. We did a lot of hill climbing which actually helped keep us warm. It was a fantastic day on the bike and despite the sub-20 degree temperature, most of us stayed pretty warm. My foot solution worked very well and I even wore my snowboarding helmet for extra protection, although it was overkill - I could have gone with the regular biking helmet with the hoody underneath. It was just what I needed - 2 hours of hard aerobic effort and probably close to 2000 calories burned off. The woods were beautiful and we even rode out on the frozen lake among the ice fishermen - who looked at us like we were, you guessed it - cwazzy.
This morning Donna asked me if I would join her at Dan's Saturday 8 am spin class at the Y. I said no, that I was planning on joining a group mountain bike ride at Grafton State Park at 1 pm. And, you know what she said. The fact that it was 7 degrees out and snowing lightly had something to do with her response. When she told Dan and other members of the spin class why I was not with them, they came up with other words to describe my intentions.
Ice biking is not a familiar activity to even some avid cyclists. Two winters ago I bought a set of Nokian studded tires for my Epic mountain bike. They have a carbide tipped stud sticking out of every knob, all 296 of them, in each tire. You can bike on glare ice and not spin or slip a wheel. After solving that problem it is just a matter of keeping yourself
warm. The only problem I have had with that is keeping my feet warm. It don't have winter mountain biking shoes and my attempts at using Gore Tex socks and neoprene covers with the regular mountain biking shoes, which are vented for crying out loud, have resulted in near frost bite. In addition, the metal clips conduct heat out and also freeze up making clipping in a problem. My solution for this day was to put on the flat, studded Kona pedals that came with my Yeti and wear my GoreTex hiking boats.
There were 10 of us "cwazzies" on hand for the 1 pm take off from the Winter entrance to Grafton. We rode for about 3 hours, a little over 10 miles, on icy hard-packed snow, rocks, roots and puddles. We did a lot of hill climbing which actually helped keep us warm. It was a fantastic day on the bike and despite the sub-20 degree temperature, most of us stayed pretty warm. My foot solution worked very well and I even wore my snowboarding helmet for extra protection, although it was overkill - I could have gone with the regular biking helmet with the hoody underneath. It was just what I needed - 2 hours of hard aerobic effort and probably close to 2000 calories burned off. The woods were beautiful and we even rode out on the frozen lake among the ice fishermen - who looked at us like we were, you guessed it - cwazzy.
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