This past Sunday a friend of mine invited me to ride with him in Colroado Springs. He is a big mountain bike guy that I have always struggled to keep up with. He is now riding a single speed mountain bike and I am amazed. Anyways—that’s another story.
So we drive “down the hill” to Colorado Springs. Colorado Springs is around 6500 feet so usually it is much warmer that our little hamlet in the hills–We live at 8500 feet. The temperature is about 40 F where we are so all seems fine. For some reason I decide to throw in my cold weather stuff—and boy did I need it. It turns out that I needed even more.
We meet at the entrance to Cheyenne Canyon. We are planning on doing one of the classic grunt rides in the Colorado Springs area. There are four of us. When we get out of the cars we realize that it is much colder than we expected. So on goes the booties, the winter gloves, the beanie hat, and the neck gaiter. Instead of a wind jacket I have brought my real winter jacket.
We start up the hill and I realize I can’t feel my fingers. They start to hurt. I stop. I blow into my gloves and pray that they will warm up. I consider turning around—but I decide that the other guys are going so… My camelback freezes… O this was going to be an interesting day…
Eventually we climb enough and I feel somewhat warm. And when we get to a certain altitude I realize that I am downright warm. We comment that the wind seems even warm. I take off the winter gloves and put on my spring gloves. All seems grand and we are having a great grunt-fest. After all was said and done my GPS told me that we had climbed 3500 feet in 8 miles. It was very hard.
We then decide to turn around and roll back down the hill. I have my jacket loosened and my camelback is now filled with cool refreshing water.
After 10-15 minutes of the descent it hits me. It was as if somebody dumped a bucket of ice on my body. It was unbelievable. I now realize that we are in some sort of freakish temperature inversion where the lower elevation is much much colder than the higher elevation. At 8500 feet it is still around 40 F. At the lower elevation it is like 8 F. And now we are descending with a headwind.
I stop to blow into my very heavy winter gloves because I can’t feel my fingers. They hurt. I realize that we are not really in a safe place. I am now praying for warmth and to somehow make it to the car so that I can warm up. My eyes tear up only to freeze. I can’t hardly move my jaw because my face is so cold.
And then I make a wrong turn at the bottom of the hill and add 2 more miles to the ride. O what a day. When I finally got to the car the heater doesn’t want to really warm up—After all it is 8 F and every cell in my body is shivering.
I really didn’t stop shivering until probably 8 pm that night—and the ride ended at 3pm.
Next time I will stick to my trainer.
Have a great day
Jon