Off-season over Nose Hill

I've started my off-season training with some weight lifting. I also had the urge to go for a ride and it was nice enough to do today. A number of paths have been added to the top of Nose Hill so I decided to see how they link up. It took me an hour on my cyclocross bike with knobby tires to complete a 20.3 km loop. I needed the knobby tires because there were a few sections with ice and coming down off Nose Hill was packed snow. It was enjoyable to descend on the snow but it was much bumpier than when I used to ride through the snow with my mountain bike with its front shock. The path on Nose Hill has also been inlaid with small rocks. It makes it a bit rough for slick tires but I imagine it's better for grip when walking in the winter when there's a little ice on the path. I averaged 149 bpm because I wasn't trying to go fast but there were 275 m of climbing and I'm not a climber.

Midweek Mayhem Finale

28 October and the last Midweek Mayhem cyclocross race of the year marked the end of my season. It was a race I probably shouldn't have entered since I hadn't ridden for three weeks before the race and I hadn't exactly been in good shape all summer. The course was fairly good with a few tricky elements. Still there were the usual climbs just to make people climb. In the weeks before, there had been a few cyclocross events on flat, twisty courses. I'm sorry I had missed those because I think they would have been more to my liking. With my bad conditioning and the sun setting early, I managed two laps before deciding to drop out. The winner did about six laps before the race was stopped. I probably would have managed about four in that time. I rode for 13:39 and covered 3.13 km for an average of 13.75 km/h.