First Road Ride of 2012!

This has been the oddest winter in Northern Alberta in my 5 winters living here.  I managed to get out yesterday for my very first road biking ride outdoors of the season!  I had a little “convincing” and by convincing, I mean when I posted on twitter that I was going on the trainer, a buddy posted back that we should ride outside and I said yes.  It was a little chilly, about -1 celsius.  But it was mostly beautiful out!  The sun decided to peak through the clouds as well.  We did a loop that included one moderate climb and it was definitely easier than at the beginning of the season last year.  I was still, of course, the slowest, but I was biking with two insanely fast guys.  The only downer of the ride was biking downhill at the end into a massive headwind.  I checked the weather network after and it said winds were 35 kph with gusts of 50 and I believe it since we had to peddle going downhill in order to keep moving forward!  In the end, we did an hour and about 26 km.  I was pretty happy about that.  Only downside was that my feet were FREEZING at the end!  I need to go buy some booties to cover my shoes.  We’re going again this afternoon…. really hoping it will warm up before then since right now it is -14 celsius and “freezing fog”…. yes, that really is a type of weather!