Just flew round today (by MAMIL standards). 8 minutes faster than a month ago, and RPE lower. Maybe this training stuff actually works? 
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We had 8-10cm of snow yesterday then it dropped to -6C, maybe a little lower, overnight. Decided to head out and make the most of it. I’d got Andrews scheduled for today so set it to outdoors and pushed it to the Garmin. Basically did the same loop as I did last week - it’s local so Covid friendly.
Why can’t walkers all use the same line? Even cows and sheep can manage it! I’ve been using this steady (less than 5%) climb for some outdoor workouts recently but today I had to walk nearly all of it. 
10cm of soft snow over soft waterlogged ground, hmm. I’m heading into that grey band of fog.
Maybe not sunny but quite pretty.
One big climb to get back over to home finishing with some snowy roads.
I thought this was a hard ride, maybe RPE7 rather than the RPE6 that Andrews asks for. No power data on the fat bike but my HR data showed just 56 seconds in Z3 
so maybe frustrating rather than hard.
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No riding here, sadly. We had a load of snow fall Thursday and a bit more Friday. A lot of failed trees and branches created an occasional obstacle course. I don’t know how much snow fell, but these picnic tables give an indication.
The dog and I went for a run this morning and saw no one but these horse riders. Sometimes there was a slightly trodden path.
Well before the half way mark of the sort-of loop, it was clear the dog was over the run. I can’t blame him. At least half of the 90min to cover 5mi was like this. A good time in 20F/-7C weather.
Further posts for the foreseeable future may be found in the What Workout Did You Do thread instead of here
Looking forward to more posts from @bbarrera and the rest of you.
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We are in a foggy mornings and warm afternoons weather pattern. I’ll try and get some pics on today’s 4 hour ride.
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Good pics again 
Our hills were like that but fortunately the main roads were mostly clear and I got out for an interval session. I was tempted to stop and take a photo a few times but I didn’t fancy wading though the foot of pack slush at the side of the roads.
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50 mile outdoor ride today. I wore everything I had, but damn it was cold. -5C might be not so cold for some, but especially in the head wind sections, my face almost froze off. Right now everything is better than the turbo, I guess.
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Road bike? I wouldn’t ride in those temps on the road 
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Love the picture of the horses and your dog!! Your dog is so cute and such a good sport!
Suppose to be a 4 hour ride of mostly endurance work. Started out with a few fireworks:
That third one felt good, like I finally starting to remember how to stand up and kick. Best 5 and 6-sec power since starting structured training 3 years ago. On the right track…
Hit the Folsom South Canal and my favorite Strava climb:
Here is a pic of Strava’s cat4 awesomeness:
In some alternate universe there must be a 300’ waterfall or a set of locks Well, in this universe the base elevation is 150 feet above sea level, not 1152 feet. Second, its pancake flat. I’ve filed more than one support ticket asking for Strava to fix the segment. Should I file another?
Apparently cyclists like to ride nice roads, not the crappy windy roads in the delta that I share with wildlife. Started seeing cyclists everywhere, here is a guy working on his TT form and doing some easy miles like me:
It happens to be the ‘hill’ where I bagged my best ever 5-sec power just 4 years and 10 days ago. Gotta fix that this year and reset the PR clock on that short-short effort.
Well eventually I started climbing up into the foothills of the Sierras and found a legit cat4 climb:
Trying to do endurance pace at 2.6W/kg on 34x34 gearing, well that wasn’t happening and it turned into upper tempo effort. Also the warmest part of the day at 70F / 21C. A lot of people hoping we get more than 3 weeks of winter this year. What happened to the rain? When is the next El Niño?
Anywho, a pic of Folsom Lake near the top and its looking a bit parched from the lack of rain:
No real wildlife sightings on this trip, had to settle for a late afternoon winter sun pic over Lake Natoma:
The haze is low levels of fog (not smog), it had just lifted off the canal when I rode up. Heading into a recovery week, which is good because I think the bike shop screwed something up because the bottom bracket started squealing on the last climb. Sigh.
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Hmm, that was interesting.
Went for a “ socially distanced, local, my house is over there and much less than seven miles away officer ” ride on the hardtail. i.e. a quick loop around the village. 18km with 480m of climbing (that’s near flat for round here 
). 28 mins was mid HRZ2 and above with just 5 mins in Z4. Here’s a grab of the HR distribution:
It actually felt pretty easy, I held back on the initial climb (it’s 200m of altitude gain) and takes about 20 minutes only just getting into Z3 on the 20% section at the end, then thought I’d push it.
My guess at the pace was tempo but with so much up and down it’s not easy to keep the pressure on and when you’ve a 1km descent you might as well let gravity do its thing - I spin out at about 46km/h anyway. Strava’s guess at my average power was 226W which is smack in the middle of my Z3/tempo band. A couple of segments (generally rolling and of reasonable length) it guessed I was at threshold or thereabouts and that also felt a reasonable assessment in terms of RPE – that “ I think I can hold this for a while ” sort of feeling. Intervals.icu gave the load as 77 so given that I was out for an hour is effectively an IF of 0.77, sort of Ericsson/Monitor/Antelope type intensity.
Averaging 18km/h on a mountain bike ain’t bad
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A similar route to yesterday for me but I came back over the local hill as it had been mild for two days in town. It’s only 364m (1194ft) but it still looked like it had froze overnight.
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After around 250 miles now on winter tires (200 of which were on the Contis and 50 on the Pirelli Pzero), I can really recommend using them.
Although rolling noticeably slower, they give me great confidence through corners and over light gravel/ dirt plus they do not change in performance over a longer sub zero ride. Really happy!
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Those are the ones I used year-round in Bergen (Norway), really solid in wet conditions 
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Another closed-to-cars parkway ride today. Kept it mostly z2. Turned around at this icy patch, I’ll bring the MTB next time. Beauty,
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I ran the Conti 4 Seasons last winter. Now running Pirelli Cinturato Velo TLR as my year round training tire and according to BRR comparing the Cinturato vs 4 Seasons the Cinturato has higher puncture resistance and lower rolling resistance. Perception wise the Pirelli’s feel better than the Conti.
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Interesting test.
As always with BRR, these numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt, since their testing is very much suboptimal.
Firstly, the results are ALWAYS lower crr for higher tire pressure, which, as we know, is not applicable to real life too much.
The difference BRR measures is 3.0W at 6.9 Bar (which isn’t really a realistic figure for a winter tire).
Secondly, the Pirelli is 1mm wider nominally, which in it of it self makes the test a little fishy. Since all 3 tires they tested had a 28c variant, why didn’t they just use that instead? Now we have to assume, that at least some of the 3.0W advantage of the Pirelli is due to a little more width.
Furthermore, the Pirelli is a tubeless. Not only do these test faster generally, but it is set up in a way I‘d argue is very racing focused set up (only 20g of sealant, for a winter tire mind you), while the Contis are set up very conservatively (heavy 100g butyl tube).
The MUCH heavier weight of the Pirelli TLR might also be the explanation for the better puncture resistance (on paper). After all, they are a full 42% heavier than the Contis…
If you used a much lighter tube on the Conti (I use the 49g Schwalbe Aerothan tubes) you‘d be 100g lighter for the pair than the Pirelli, and likely also faster than the Pirelli in this particular test (Aerothan tubes or Latex tubes test around 2 to 4 watts faster PER TIRE than a standard, heavy butyl tube).
Lastly, I doubt anyone on earth could reliably feel (likely not even measure) a 3Watts difference in efficiency at 29kph (say 200 Watts, so 1.5%, which is the margin of error of a high-end power meter).
Waaaaaaaay too many words for this rather unimportant topic (we are talking low single digits watts for winter training rides after all), but these are just a few points I wanted to mention.
Conclusively, I think it is personal preference and you can‘t go wrong either way. My Pirelli 4S (non TL) are great, too.
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Its a small advantage on paper, you could have just said its a wash
FWIW I didn’t want to like the Pirelli tires because of bad experiences with tires coming from Hutchinson factories. But they have been indestructible, subjectively feel better than the 4Seasons, and I can run tubeless.
Dropped in on the Roadkill Cafe this afternoon:
Skunk 
was on the menu at that one, and opossum at another cafe. Think I’ll stick with my bananas and fig bars.
First day of summer at 70F / 21C so of course I wore my summer kit! First time with bare knees in months…
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