I haven’t been out on many longer rides lately. January is always the toughest month here for riding. Temps get pretty cold for a week or two (as they did earlier this month), and we’ll get a couple of good snows (as we did earlier this month). But we have the occasional warm spell too, and today it got into the 50s.
So it was a decent day for a ride, even if it was a bit cloudy at times. Got to do a bit longer work with my new setup, and I’m still quite pleased with it. The Crank Brothers pedals took a bit of a hit though. I’d rated them 8/10 on my first ride with them, but now they’ll drop to a 6. I discovered that when they get wet, they don’t have enough hold. But I think it might have been the shoes I was wearing — they had quite the hard sole. I’ll have to take a look later or maybe try some softer-soled shoes and get the pedals intentionally wet.
But speaking of getting wet — I also discovered (and it can’t be a surprise) that my lack of clearance on the new tires means it doesn’t take long for any mud to pretty much clog up the brakes, bringing my front tire to a halt for a bit until I cleaned it out.
So both the tire clearance and the pedals were a wet weather thing. And I can prevent that too by staying out of the mud and not riding in the rain — which is usually the plan, but even more so now.
There were moments during the ride I wasn’t in the best of shape, but that’s been the case lately anyway, and of course, it’s still January. I’m not putting in my usual 400 miles or so a month. I’ve done less than 150 miles in the last 4 weeks. We’ll see how I’m doing in another month or so. I didn’t take any pictures today either, so the video only shows the route. It was kind of a dreary sky anyway…