The cycle.

Much of the summer, I look at my little box of unused cold-weather riding gear – tights, leg warmers, arm warmers, shoe covers, helmet cover, long-sleeve jerseys and a couple of very expensive jackets – and lament the amount of money I've spent on such a short part of the riding season. Then I have to remind myself that without that fancy gear, I wouldn't get out at all in November, or December, or January, or February, or March. And when I'm out there riding on a cold (but sunny enough to keep the frost off) day, I never regret being warm and getting that cold weather ride in. In fact I've had a couple of gorgeous rides already this season, despite the fact that when we wake up it's still below freezing. Hoping to get a couple more in this weekend as the temperature flirts with 50. If the sun's out to warm me and the wind is low, I can hack it.

Starting the season just a couple of pounds up from where I left off last fall, which was ridiculously thin. I was about 155, thinner than any time since high school, and my clothes were just falling off. I don't worry much about my weight, but I can tell you there's a real difference between what I can do on the bike at 155 and what I can do at 170, which is the top of my acceptable weight range. Between training and weight, by the end of last fall I was flying up hills that had eaten me up in the spring.

Of course, that's part of the cycle of cycling. I don't know how people do it in the warmer climes, but here the seasonality is part of the beauty. You've got to bundle up and take a rested, unfit body out onto messy, flat-inducing roads for the first few hundred K of the season, trying to stay warm and rebuild some strength. (And you've got to endure a month or more of rain that keeps you from getting where you want to in your training.) But then you hit that summertime groove where your body keeps getting better, the rides are nearly always great (even when there are hailstorms), and all is right with the world. You find some new challenges and beat them. Then as you start to get bored with it all, it starts to wind down, you get in a few late-season rides where you can feel the heat leaving the earth and telling you to get inside for a while. Nothing wrong with that.