A Good Start

Halfway there.

  

With winter racing coming up and Trans Iowa on the calendar again, it's time once again to set my well intentioned goals that I have a habit of failing to follow through with.  So far I'm doing a lot better this year though.  My TI goal weight is 160lbs, which would be 20lbs lighter than I raced at this year.  Right now I'm on track to hit that by the end of the year, which is a couple months ahead of schedule.  Whoooo me!  On top of that my training is going better than it was at this time last year, and between that and the weight loss I'm starting to see real improvements.  

There's a downside though...  I'm kinda missing that extra fat in this colder weather.  Between the dieting and lower body fat I'm finding that I have to re-think my layers.  Last night over the course of an hour I couldn't manage to get warm despite doing hill intervals.  Temps were upper teens with high single digit north winds and I thought I had dressed well enough for it.  A mid weight base layer, heavy long sleeve jersey and windbreaker vest up top, lightweight tights over long underwear on the bottom.  Wool socks with my winter cycling shoes for the feet, mid weight ski gloves and a beanie rounded things out.  Last year that probably would have been fine after 10-15 minutes of warming up.  Not so much now.  Toes froze, fingers were right behind the toes, and my core was chilly at best.

Tonight I was determined to be warm, even if it meant sweating a bit more than I'd normally like.  I traded the light vest for an insulated soft shell vest, the tights made way for soft shell pants, I added some neoprene covers to the shoes and finished things off with my Cold Avenger mask.  Winds were slightly less and the temps were about 5 degrees warmer.  Much, much better.  The mask ended up coming off less than two miles in since it just wasn't working well with my helmet and glasses (need to work on that) and I was never cold during a 45 minute light spin.  Additionally, the vest and jersey both have full length zippers so temperature adjustments could have been made on a longer ride to minimize sweating.  The kit weighed a few ell-bees more, but it was worth it.  Now I'll just have to hope for some colder temps to adjust my lower temp clothing.

Practice, experience and such.  Can't have enough.