Spare a thought in the coming months for the very small handful of Queensland road cyclists who actually live off the coast in the chillier parts of the state. Now I know it's all relative and the guys in Victoria and Tasmania yada yada yada...
But trust me, in Dalby, where I live, it's cold...and it will get colder.
Luckily for me there a small but slightly insane group who like me don't have the luxury of training during the middle of the day AND we want to stay competitive (in either road racing or triathlon) AND we don't want to spend three months of the year on a wind trainer AND we have full-time jobs and families to consider. We HAVE to train in the morning, in the dark...in the cold.
Tuesday is my big mid-week ride. It's a 4.30 am start and I normally squeeze 100 km in before I go off to work. Sometimes, it's -1 degrees when we leave, drops to - 4 degrees and then (thankfully) comes back to a very respectable 0 degrees by 7.30 am. It's great fun! The best part is attempting to do efforts. As you can imagine it takes a bit of work just to get the body moving. If Cycling Queensland ever put on a time trial race at 5 am somewhere in sub-zero temps, bet a few dollars on me.
To be fair though, winter cycling clothing has come a long way and it does the job pretty well. A standard kit for a sub-zero morning includes:
- Helmet
- Ear covers
- Long-sleeve thermal undershirt
- Long-sleeve thermal jacket
- Vest
- Thermal bib suit
- Long leg warmers
- Shoes
- Winter socks
- Thermal shoe covers
- Gloves
The gloves, the shoe covers and the ear covers, 'psychologically' are the most important things. If hands, feet, and ears are warm, you can almost cope with a few other bits being cold.
So there it is, a red hot attempt at gaining sympathy, and the next time you hop on Strava and complain about how cold your river loop was because it was 9 degrees, just think about me with frozen snot stuck to my face.
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