A rare confluence of events meant that I had a few hours without any obligations during a warm spell in January!! Being that several days previous had also been warm I took the chance that the streets and paths would be mostly ice free and I was mostly correct!
It was a 40 degree day and I dropped the kids off at a birthday party and had 3 hours until I needed to return. I took the opportunity to ride to St. Paul and actually ended up doing some routes I had never been on. Minnehaha Creek was the worst shape ice-wise that I rode on (though I skipped parts of the Lillydale trails). And a little section in St. Paul was rough, but overall it was easy riding. One thing I realized too late was that I was riding out with a tail wind which meant, yes a head wind on the way back when I was starting to feel my overall lack of riding! And feeling squats from the other day!
I saw a decent amount of riders out on a mixture of fat bikes, road bikes, and cyclo-cross bikes like me! In St. Paul I got to ride on the end of the Polar Dash race’s closed roads which was pretty nice.
All in all a great ride. I stayed mostly warm, I wished I had my foot covers as one foot got a little wet and didn’t stay warm then!
Totals were 26 miles in 2:22.
