Monday started with a pickleball session in the afternoon, followed by an indoor soccer game. It was only the 2nd game of the season that I could attend. It was a tough game; we did not have enough subs. Personally, I played better than last time and even scored a goal. Still, we lost by a large margin. Again, I sustained some injuries and decided to stop playing for now.
Tuesday, NCC had organized a bonus Hillclimb time trial, this time on the Zwift Ventoux route—a replica of the real Ventoux climb. With my lack of fitness, I decided to start easy around 240 watts, but after a half-hour, I felt I could not keep it there and slowly dropped power. It was my slowest time up Ventoux. I finished in 1:38:45 with an average of 217 watts, which seems unlike me. My fastest attempt, from 2021, was 1:23:56 with an average of 256 watts. Earlier that day, I had taken the Seven for a spin to get some milk at the CSA.
The next few days, the weather was crappy, and I wanted to take a rest from the Ventoux effort. But on Friday, it was good enough for a quick spin on the Mudhoney to check it out for the Natchaug Epic ride on Sunday.
Saturday had a major storm, and everything got soaked. In the morning, I played pickleball and did some openers on the trainer for the next day's big ride. However, when I looked closer at the forecast, it was going to be freezing until 11 am, and I did not feel comfortable riding on icy roads and gravel conditions without studs. I had hoped for an email update from the organizers with more information, when it did not arrive, I decided not to ride the event. Later, I saw they had posted an update that they had delayed the start by an hour. I'm not sure if it would have changed my mind.
Instead, I decided to ride my Fat bike in DAR. The storm had turned into an ice storm overnight, and all the ice-covered tree branches were hanging low. I was able to ride the access road and some double track. With lots of fallen trees to get around, over, and under. When I rode to the Fire Tower, I was joined by two other fatbikers. We climbed the snow- and ice-covered tower and at the top gave a good view of the carnage the storm had caused.
My new found companions knew the trails very well; actually, one of them built the first trail we rode, followed by another trail. It was not always easy to see where it went, but we found our way through, pushing curtains of ice-covered branches out of our paths. But surprisingly, there was little hike-a-bike. All in all, a nice little close-to-home adventure.
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