Spring has sprung! The grass has riz! I wonders where the flowers iz?
Now that the doggerel is out of the way, I celebrated the turn of the seasons by biking to the train. It was between 25 and 28 when I was biking, and they said it ‘felt like’ 21 with the wind. I can’t really argue that one, it was a bit nippy!
Being Friday, and being the first Friday I’ve been in the office since November, it was nice to get to wear jeans. Warmish athletic socks (black, so I don’t have to change them), my Keen shoes (which are proving to be the only ones that don’t make my knee hurt at the end of the day – see left for my work version) and my fleece weren’t going to be enough, so I put on my peacoat today. “They do it in Coppenhagen!” I cried, and went off to the road.
Since Lunt is a piece of crap road with the potholes, I took Pratt today, and took advantage of the bike lane. A guy on a road bike lapped me, as it were, and I actually had to stop for a moment going up part of the long, low hill. I couldn’t fathom why it was so much harder today than it was three days ago. Even taking into account the muscle strain (minimal) from Tuesday, I didn’t feel bad, I was just seriously under-performing.
Many thanks to my high school science teachers, Lori Munger and Mary Fahning, as suddenly it hit me. Working out in warm weather is easy. Your body is warmer and muscles are warmer, so it’s all easy to get lubed up, as Taffy would say, and go. In cold weather, your body is cold and uses its energy to keep you warm. You breath in cold air, which has to get warmed up some, and basically you end up working harder. Stupidly, it took me until I got into the office to figure out what the heck was going on! Lori, I know I was never your best student, but apparently some parts of bio stuck with me!
Actually I have to do a special shout out to Mary, as while I was biking, I couldn’t figure out why the gears were so weird. The physics problems she used to toss out at us in AP Physics (yes, I took AP Physics, don’t remember why) suddenly came to mind. Mary had once given us an example with bicycle gears, which got my brain in gear and I figured out how the shifting worked and made it easier on myself. I was doing word problems in my head thanks to her. Mary was also my chemistry teacher, and more phun in science, I never had.
Time Check: 30 minutes from door to door, counting bagging the bike and chatting to people. 17 minutes of biking.