Riding wet, riding cold but still riding....

So as I mentioned no racing for me until November now, with that in mind I have the end of my strength sets before we turn that into leg speed, as with anything commitment is needed to stick to a plan and last week in some ways summed up what you have to go through to try and achieve your goals.

It was a relatively simple week, only 2 days riding the 18 miles to work and back and then some hills and endurance rides with some strength thrown in for good measure, until you look at the weather forecast.... Tuesday brought the back end of a tropical storm, which meant heavy rain, which coincided with a ride to work day.  I don't mind riding in the rain, as long as you dress appropriately you only get wet once, so I consider it character building.

That said the worst thing is that where I work there are no drying rooms for the 200+ cyclists the ride in everyday, so when you come to go home your kit is still soaking wet, this is one of those "lovely" things about commuting in the rain, the joys of wet kit, it takes me back to the days of swimming and using not quite dry speedo's...oh the memories!

Friday was a seemingly more familiar foggy and cold morning, again the right kit means that this is not really a problem, and having the really good lights I am pretty comfortable that people can see me. My light setup below,

Friday afternoon commute was made more interesting by a very full rucksack, packed with presents for the little one and for me, luckily it was a simple endurance ride home so nothing too stressful, but the rucksack performed well and was still comfortable (see other posts for a review).

The present for me is something that I have been coveting for a while now, and thanks to York Cycleworks I now have the ability to ride to power, with Garmin Vector 2 Pedals.  I will be doing a full review on them in the next couple of weeks but I have been impressed so far with the easy of installation and setup, and the fact that I can swap them between bikes really easily which is one of the main reasons I bought them.

Riding to power means that the variables that HR can give are removed a watt is a watt, regardless of conditions.

Also really enjoying spending time with my little daughter, she is, however, growing really fast and you forget how small she was when we brought her home just 9 weeks ago, however she is really starting to engage and its clear that the smiles are proper smiles and not just wind which just melts the heart.

I am going to leave it there for now, not much to update on really, just plugging away at the training and being a dad.