That's how Drew summed up the snow ride yesterday.
The weather was ideal, but the trail conditions were not. We ended up being able to ride the fire road only, as there had been enough atv traffic to compact the snow into a ridable layer. Still it was real tough going.
Typical or traditional cycling training theory says you should only start on hill rides after you have pedalled around 2000km on flat terrain, it's called your base. Well suffice it to say we were riding hills a little too early yesterday.
The fresh snow had this kind of squishy squeak, or scruntch as you rolled over it. It was very hard to get the bike moving and once you were momentum-bound it was even harder to maintain enough effort (not to mention steering control) to keep with an ongoing forward moving action. Quite a workout indeed.
I experienced a lot of cramping in my hands and forearms. My fingers wanted to maintain a full on grip on the brakes once we had pointed the bikes back downhill. this was from all the tension that had been forced into them gripping the bars on the way up. Less coffee; more electrolites???
Speaking of coffee, we finished off the ride with coffee (fresh brewed lattes) cake and a little snort of scotch (to give a little warming effect).
We didn't make it to the top of the access road to reach the summit of Rougemont, but we were close to 2/3 or maybe 3/4 of the way up. I'd like to say next time...though I know I won't want to climb that road until I have a much more established base. And that won't be for quite a while yet.
2005 is off to a good start for cycling as we got in our first outdoor ride in January. 8 week couse brings me to the end of April, if I ride the rollers and keep on with some level of outdoor riding I might get fit for the summer riding.
Might take a while to get the photos...used the 35mm camera and didn't finish the roll...