4/28/14 2:23 PM

Thanks Greg. The glowing comments I am reading are from the weightweenies site as well. I just bought a Castelli Mortirolo Due jersey/jacket (for next winter), so perhaps a Gabba jersey is in my future as well.

4/28/14 9:11 PM

quote:

---

I've not experienced "drenching" rain but suspect it'd be fine for short periods of time, the issue then becomes other things.

---

4/29/14 1:32 AM

The coldest I've ever been on a bike - probably the coldest I've ever been full stop - was about 30 years back in a local 150km race - three laps of a 50km circuit. It was a fine pleasant Spring afternoon when we started, so every rider was in short-sleeve tops and knicks. And being a fairly local amateur event, there was only a single support vehicle, stuffed full of riders' spare wheels. As we started on the 3rd lap, some very black clouds started rolling over, then the wind really picked up, then the rain started, became really heavy, then turned to hail. After a few minutes of this hail, the temperature had dropped to what felt like somewhere near freezing, and the road surface and verges were covered with a thick layer of hail. The rain and hail were so heavy that we could barely see a hundred metres down the road. I don't think many people pulled out, because there were minimal support vehicles, and standing at the side of the road without rain-gear would have been just as unpleasant as riding.

My wife had to pretty much prise me off my bike at the finish - I was shaking so much and my fingers were so cold that I couldn't undo my toestraps - I just came to a halt next to some grass and fell over sideways onto it. I wasn't even capable of getting myself out of my wet clothes - she had to do that for me as well. Even the winner and place-getters were so shattered that the presentations were held over until the next race-day.

5/4/14 5:39 PM

I can't top Nick's story, which is reminiscent of Hampsten and Breukink (and Bobke) on the Gavia Pass, but I have a couple anecdotes. One was a previously mentioned Kancamagus Highway Hillclimb Time Trial, where it was pouring rain at maybe 39F at the start, and turned to snow on the way up the Pass. You were soaked before the start, and it got worse. When we finished, I made a snowball from wet snow stuck on my handlebar. The weather caught me by surprise, but luckily I had tossed a pair of full finger gloves into my bag just before leaving. Even so the first mile or so my fingers were freezing on the fronts of the aerobars. Got to the finish OK, soaked, cold, glasses fogged and in my pocket. I've done this tt a million times, and I always have ridden back down, and I don't accept change easily, so I turned around and rode back down. As mentioned, I had to stop, clean my glasses and put them back on because I couldn't keep my eyes open due to sleet. Got to the bottom OK, was eating the complimentary spaghetti lunch at Fire 21 with I think my buddy Mike, Rick Hardy and Steve Cruickshank, when my hands started shaking and I could barely hold the silverware.

Then one year I was nearing the finish of the Death Ride in the Sierra Nevadas, a little jaunt of 129 miles with about 15k' of climbing. It had been about 85F all day. A couple miles from the finish, a hellacious hail storm broke out. I got to the finish, it was hailing hard, and the wind was blowing so hard the tent/ awnings were turned inside out, so there was no shelter. All of a sudden I got hypothermic and was shaking like hell. My car was maybe 2 miles away. After a few minutes with no relief, I figured riding can't be any worse than standing there, so I got I on back on the bike, rode to my car in the storm, turned the heat up full blast, drove back to the hotel, took a hot shower, got in bed under every blanket I had and shivered for awhile. Man, things can turn around pretty fast!

5/4/14 6:37 PM

Actually, the one time I had to abandon a ride was when the rain came, dropped the temperature about 30 degrees (going from 80 to 50!). Still, I was quite ready to continue riding after the SAG took us off the top of (a different) Mt. Washington (the one between MA/NY). I wasn't going to risk a wet descend on a rather steep and curvy road with a lot of broken pavement.

The final nail on that ride was the rest stop had no food!

A victim of good weather at the start, much larger proportion of riders were doing the longer routes. They ran short of food at their rest stop at the far end (shared by 75/100 routes) by the time the century riders started coming in!

Warm drink and simple PB/jelly sandwich would have provided enough energy for many of the riders to continue on, myself included. Instead, cold and hungry, many of us decided to ride the SAG all the way back to the finish.