Rather than do my usual Saturday morning ride with the Cycling Obsession group, I decided to join the Mercury session instead, which departed Sandringham at 7am. Despite starting 30 minutes later, I had to leave home 20 minutes earlier because I needed to ride the 23km to the ride start. My usual Cycling Obsession ride is only 1 kilometre away.
Heading off at 6:10am, the temperature seemed very cold. I was wearing full winter gear - very warm cycling jacket, thermal hiking t-shirt, thermal skull cap, Buff (neck warmer), leg warmers, calf compression socks, another pair of thick sport socks over the compression socks, full inner gloves, fingerless gloves and full winter gloves (yes, 3 pairs of gloves). Knowing that I would come back past my house at around the 46km mark, I put slightly less warm clothes in a bag on my doorstep. The theory was that I would be getting too hot by then and would want to change before hitting the hills.
It wasn't long before my fingers started to freeze. However I discovered that if I maintained a heart rate of around 135bpm, the resulting body warmth was enough to combat the cold. But this didn't stop me from pulling the Buff above my nose so that I barely had any exposed skin - a sight that Clint (the coach) found quite amusing when I arrived at Sandringham.
After a small wait, we headed back towards Frankston. Riding within the peleton resulted in my heart rate dropping and the freezing finger experience returning. Initially my turns at the front raised the heart rate just enough to feel some relief, but this was short lived. The temperature definitely seemed to be getting colder. I quickly realised that I would definitely not be stopping for less warm clothes.
As we rode into Frankston it was so cold I was starting to loose feeling in some of my fingers, which made braking a little interesting. This prompted me to check the temperature on my Garmin bike computer and I saw MINUS ONE degree. I have lived in Melbourne all my life and cannot remember ever seeing a minus temperature (where's global warming when you need it). The temperature hovered between minus one and zero for the next hour. The only positive was that we had now arrived at the hilly section of the ride. A heart rate of 160 brought a little feeling back into my fingers, but I was still feeling very cold.
Once the sun got a little height, the temperature slowly began to rise. I could not believe it when I could feel the warmth of 3 degrees. By the time it reached 6 degrees I almost felt toasty. The last stages of the ride were quite pleasant with the mercury almost reaching 7 degrees. I had taken a packet of Winners Gel Blasts and two water bottles, both containing sports drink. However when I got home, I realised I had only consumed less than half of one bottle. This is nowhere near enough for a 100km ride, something I'll have to improve upon in the future.
Below are the Strava details (a relatively slow ride):
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