Is Winter Over Yet?

I seem to be in a bit of a cycling funk.  It has snowed here a lot.  And it is darn cold too.  Real winter this year.  Yeah, playing around on the fatbike was loads of fun, but it does get old eventually.  And the snow transforms from fluffy good stuff to icy nasty stuff within a few days.  I think I'm ready for winter to be over.

The roads have dried up a bit in the last two days so I've been out on fatbike road rides and even got the cross bike out today.  On Tuesday's fatbike ride, I discovered a bridge completely missing on Stone Quarry Rd.  I had to tip toe my way across deep icy water on slippery rocks to keep my feet dry.   The county engineer makes it sound like it could be 6months or more before the bridge is back again.

Today was a real grind.  I did 53 miles but most of it was painful.  My legs just felt dead today and to boot there was an icy wind of about 10mph for the last half of the ride.  I just couldn't seem to power in to it and so was resigned to two hours of torturous 13 mph average, pushing into the nasty headwind.  Wind blowing over snow and ice covered fields, it feels like standing in front of a huge ice box with a high powered blower aimed right at you for four straight hours.

I seem to alternate really good rides when I am sure I'm ready to go pro with really awful rides where I can barely get the bike to move forward.   Maybe I'm a bit overtrained (I'm doing regular trainer intervals and weight lifting on in between days).   Maybe I'm a bit sick of winter and cold headwinds.

I think I'm skipping Southern Cross.  I just don't want to waste a 3 day weekend, drive 9 hours each way, spend $500, etc.

The highlight of today's ride was finding this little school house perched on a cove of Hoover Reservoir.  I've been in this area many dozens of times but have always missed this road segment.  Glad I found it today, it was just beautiful.