Cycling during winter (Nov ’20 – Apr ’21)

The last time I was cycling throughout the winter was in 1988 when I was still at high school in Hanko. The distances were short, like 1-2 km, and cycling was mandatory to get from one place to another, definitely not for exercising. I remember that it sucked, but now after this winter I would say that it was a piece of cake at that time.

Sometimes the weather was really nice – a panoramic picture from the bridge of Kivenlahti, Espoo (5th of March ’21)

I have usually used my exercise bike during the winter – from October to April – but it has always been extremely boring. Even if I watch movies or series at the same time, it is still pretty much impossible to continue over 45 minutes (or even 30) on the bike. What I did was checking every 30 seconds what time was if I could already stop.

Last fall I decided that I’ll try to continue my outdoor cycling as long as possible. Christmas came, new year was passed and suddenly we had cold, a lot of snow and I was cycling in the middle of the winter. Surprise, this was a pretty long and cold winter with lots of snow compared to the previous years. There were some days when I had to skip cycling either due to too cold weather (below -20C) or too much snow that they didn’t had yet managed to plough away. With -20C it was not completely impossible, but fingers and feet started to get cold at that temperature quite quickly. I tried it a couple of times, but I had to shorten my normal route.

In general in Espoo area the roads were quite well ploughed. However, sometimes I was just too early out (6.30 am) and the ploughing had not reached those roads that I used. There were also some roads that were clearly not high priority and they were not ploughed when I was cycling there. But I’m not complaining, it is impossible to clean all the roads immediately in the morning, especially the smaller ones that are not in heavy use.

My plan was to cycle on four mornings during the work week before starting my remote work – yeah, due to Covid, we have been working remotely already over one year now. From the summer’s ~30 km route, I shortened it first to 25 km and then to 20 km when it was getting colder. Now when the weather is getting warmer, I’m getting back to the longer routes. What I noticed was that it was really refreshing to do cycling in the morning and I felt much more focused and energetic when I was back at home, opened my laptop and started to work..

From November ’20 to the beginning of April ’21

Now, the spring is here and we are quickly moving towards summer. I think it is a good time to summarise this winter. During the past five months since the beginning of November, I have been cycling 1723 km of which most of the time with temperatures below zero (or then in a very wet conditions with 0C to +5C, but those mornings were rare) . Snow or icy roads have not been a big problem as the roads are quite well ploughed.

The mandatory purchase for the bike was a spike tyre in front as with the normal tyre it would have been way too slippery. Otherwise, I didn’t do anything special for the bike, but continued from the autumn towards the winter just doing some basic regular maintenance. The gears were mainly frozen during the winter and I was using only the center sprocket of the cassette. It was quite ok also on uphills. Brakes were not working properly before I bought new brake pads. The old ones obviously didn’t like it when the temperature went below zero.

Rapala boots

For clothing I was using my existing long underwear and I took my old downhill skiing jacket again to use. I never bought any warmer pants, but it seems that with the additional underwear, the summer pants were enough. Maybe next winter I’ll buy something warmer, mainly to block the hole between my legs and boots. I was using ice fishing boots that were really warm but there was a few cm gap, where the cold air got in (and sometimes also snow, which is really annoying). The boots cost something like 20€ so they were really worth the money.

The biggest problem with clothes were gloves. My fingers tend to get white and cold already at below +10C temperatures (Raynaud syndrome), so I was using my downhill skiing gloves as they were the warmest that I have. However, at -20C even they were not warm enough but I could not find any warmer ones that were not big and clumsy. Under helmet I was using a balaclava for motorcyclist. A cheap one, though, and that I need to replace next year, maybe with a slightly warmer one.

Short summary: this winter was a really positive experience. If nothing big happens before next winter, I will do the same.

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