Fat Can Freeze

Here we are, back in the depths of winter, with that 60-degree weekend about a month ago seeming like it was just a dream.

Here’s what happens when you try to ride a bike in 20-degree weather: First, you put on so many layers that you look like a sausage stuffed in a wet suit, and you pretty much feel like one, too. The disadvantage of the layers is chafing – and the chafing happens in a place where you’d never want any chafing of any kind, ever. Ever.

Next, the water in your water bottles goes instantly cold, and later in the ride, you are drinking slush. So, you are forcing yourself to suck down the an ice cold drink on an ice cold day.

Dwight, one of our coaches, gave me these little hand warmers called Hotties, which I stuffed into my gloves on the palm side. I honestly didn’t notice them, it was that cold.

While you’re expecting your hands and feet to go numb, that’s not the worst of it. It’s your nose. It doesn’t run. It sprints. And reaching for a Kleenex at 15 mph with cars whizzing by just isn’t recommended. So, you aim low, and hope some one isn’t sneaking by you and gets caught in the blast. After the first 10 miles, you get an expert at this on-the-go act of turning your nose into a mobile mucus cannon.

Maybe the worst of it all is the humiliation. For about a week and a half, I’ve been going nearly every morning and spending a half hour doing the “Hill” version set at level 15 out of 20 on the exercise bike at my gym. So, I had thought, and quite incorrectly, that this would somehow prepare me for actually getting out there and getting up those hills. Well, every person in our little pack of five left me in the dust when we hit our first real hill. I was huffing, and they were getting smaller and smaller on the horizon.

But I toughed it out, through the cold, humiliation and the chafing (which I would discover later), and we got through the 15 miles of the ride in about an hour.

As I thawed out on the ride home, I tried to remember what I was doing in all this – raising money to fight leukemia. That’s what it’s about.