60 Minute Bike Ride (Outside)

I view of the trail I was on at my turnaround point today.  Cloudy and cold, but gorgeous.

Cloudy.  43 degrees.  19 mph wind with gusts up to 26 mph.

That's the craptastic weather I rode in this morning.  I was outside, so I was excited about that.  However, I was outside purely because I am stubborn and had my mind set on an outside ride today.  In hindsight it may not have been the best idea.  I was slow and cold pretty much the whole time.

A few notes about the ride:

• Riding through a puddle and getting your legs wet when it's already 43 degrees with 20mph of wind only makes your legs colder.
• Do not try to take a drink while going downhill.  You will drop your bottle, be forced to stop and walk back up the hill to find said bottle.
• I dropped a chain for the first time on this bike today.  It was off of the front derailer.  Fixing that in the cold with gloves on was not as easy as it should have been.
• I have almost resigned myself to the fact that I will be much slower than I want to be on the bike during my race.  I'm just not that fast.  Yes, it's disappointing, but it gives me something concrete to work on, so I can hopefully do this for a long time and keep getting better all the time.
• Riding outside, even with all the complaining that I did about the weather is infinitely better than riding inside.  Nature is fabulous. 
• The picture below is a blue heron I saw in one of the lakes along the trail.  it was probably 5 yards from me but by the time I got my camera ready it had flown further back into the brush.  It was awesome.

The Heron was so close at one point I could practically touch it.  Awesome.