Riding In The Rain

It is official. I have abandoned good ship Marathon in favor of rainy ship Bicycling. I don't know how you triathletes do it. I lost just a little ground in marathon training, due to riding my bike on those nice days back in February, and I was hooked on cycling again. Or maybe I was looking for any excuse to stop running. It never really has been my thing. The big problem with all this, though, is that running on an indoor treadmill was my cardio upkeep exercise during all the cruddy weather. If not running, it is either significant cardio fitness degradation, or I need to ride in the rain... Hence, the fenders.

First 17 Rides
Stat Total Ride Distance: Average Ride Distance: Total Elevation Gain: Average Elevation Gain: Average Moving Speed:	First 6 Rides 237 miles   39.46 miles   13,587 feet   2,265 feet   15.21 mph	Next 11 Rides 472 miles   42.91 miles   23,357 feet   2,123 feet   15.52 mph	All 17 Rides 709 miles   41.72 miles   36,944 feet   2,173 feet   15.41 mph

Before I get into that, though, I've done a bit of updating to a couple of our ride maps. Our 2009 Ride Map now includes "pushpins" at the start/stop locations like the later years' maps. Also, since it wasn't working for some reason, I generated a new Ride Map of All Years. I suspect the previous version had too much data what with all of the tracks being included. So this new one has very few (if any) redundant routes shown. Instead the duplicate routes are merely listed in a nearby pushpin. Seems to be working, so far.

Of course if you have Google Earth installed (desktop or Android phone/tablet) you can look at these or any of our rides directly by going to our page containing KMZ Files For Google Earth (also in the Links section on the right).

Okay, back to Riding In The Rain.

Over the years we have learned that the biggest drawback to riding in the rain is getting road crud all over yourself. Getting wet is an issue, yes, but I was convinced most of the "wet" was actually coming up from the road and not necessarily directly from the rain drops. I figured this issue could be drastically alleviated by adding fenders.

So I tried some RoadRacer mk2 fenders by Crud, shown on my front wheel in the photo. They seem to be working so far. They can be a bit noisy as they are flexible plastic and move around a bit with all the wind and rain, but they actually do a pretty good job of keeping the crud-laden water off of my body. We'll see how long they last, as they seem a bit flimsy.

Of course fenders are only part of the story. You also need some rain apparel. We have the toe-covering "toesties" from Performance, shown closest to the shoe in the photo. While they work well when it is dry and not too cold, they are almost worthless if it is really wet (particularly without fenders!). So we now have what I call "footsies", also by Performance, and also in the photo. They are neoprene, sort of like a wet suit, and cover your whole foot and ankle. So far they work great!

I also picked up some fully insulated water-and-wind-proof gloves. Previously as fair weather riders we would simply use our regular fingerless cycling gloves with stretchable (knitted?) gloves over the top, and these worked well on cold, dry rides. Plus they are small enough not to take up much space when you put them in your pocket on those days that actually warm up. This glove combo is not great on a wet ride though. On wet rides your hands get completely wet and can become difficult to shift and/or brake if it is cold enough. Not a good situation!

As for a jacket and pants, I am using my 15-year old REI rain pants if I know it will be really wet and/or cold. They are somewhat baggy, so a little less than ideal, but they do the job. If I'm not expecting a downpour I just use regular cycling tights. My jacket is my original basic wind breaker cycling jacket that I have treated with Nikwax. In a rain dump it doesn't work all that well, but on most of the rainy rides I end up sweaty anyway, so I figure if it keeps me from getting completely drenched it might be good enough.

So far so good. My coldest/wettest ride of the year was before I had the fenders, gloves and footsies. Had I been equipped with those items that ride would have been much more tolerable, probably even enjoyable.

By riding in the rain I am getting a big jump on mileage compared to previous years, as you can see here. In fact, last year our total cumulative mileage was exactly ZERO by this same date, since we didn't start riding until March 20th. By being willing to ride in the rain I also hope to avoid loss of fitness as has happened on particularly rainy stretches in all prior seasons. I would get relatively fit, only to experience a couple weeks of rain, and then have to re-train just to get back to where I was fitness-wise. No more!

Of course I could always just go to spin class like Amy does. But I just don't have it in me. I'd quite rather ride in the rain, thank you very much.