Written By Jason
2007-11-01T14:07:00Z
October turned out to be a pretty good riding month for me. It's gradually been getting colder, especially in the mornings and I've been figuring out some layering techniques and combinations that are doing the job pretty well. I finally came up with some wool gloves that should do the trick in the 45° t0 25° F range ( 7.2° to -3.3° C) and I've also got some thicker more conventional Thinsulate winter gloves for anything below that range.
<img src="https://cdn.10centuries.org/saacki/f8b9fae2f73431bd87643229823929c2.jpg" align="middle" height="360" width="480" />
I still need to figure out better face and leg coverage. I'm okay for the moment, but when the temperatures start to hit the 20° F mark or lower I'm going to be hurting when you factor in the additional wind chill of normal riding pace.
Getting back to my October riding numbers, I was able to get in at least one short ride (generally at least 5km) every day and averaged just under 12 km per ride for 52 total rides. Despite much slower morning rides down the South Hill and doing more night riding I still managed an average riding speed around 21.6 km/h for the 28 hours worth of riding that I did during the month. I didn't get in much long riding (my two longest rides were <a href="http://100km.us/19/80k-day/">80km</a> and 30km) but averaging almost 20 km a day allowed me to reach my second highest monthly total to date of 610 km.
At this point my two goals for the next four cold weather months are to continue riding a minimum of 500 km a month and to get in at least one 5km ride every single day. As of today I'm at 39 consecutive days of riding, so if I don't take any days off 150 riding days in a row should happen midway through February.