Last week the temperatures dropped in Ontario, but without the normal accompaniment of the white stuff, made for interesting conditions. Certainly the terrain was perfect for riding, however the environment made for some interesting conditions. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to head out on a cold weather Tour Divide gear test. Although I doubt that during the Tour Divide we will experience -19deg Celsius (-2deg F) I did want to experience the impact of cold on my Tour Divide setup. How easy is it to access bags, impact on batteries, food etc?

So I headed out just before 6am, the conditions  - pitch black, a slight wind chill factor. Its was good to see that all of my lights fired up as normal, with no impact to their performance.  I only managed to fit in a 2hr ride so I was not able to see what the cold drain impact was on my light batteries, but the Garmin certainly seemed to drain quicker, but that was possibly due to another issue.  As with any ride in cooler weather, it took a few miles to gauge how my layered clothing selection was working, cause initially I was pretty cold! I was dressed in a synthetic wicking base shirt, fleeced Cape Storm arm warmers, fleeced Endura full-length tights and my winter balaclava under my helmet. I work a Salomon fleeced soft-shelled jacket too. I had my winter gloves with hand warmers, actually feet warmers as I had run out of hand warmers – but they did the job! Overall I would say that I was perfectly dressed for the conditions – achieving the status of ‘comfortably cold’ after a few minutes which meant that I would not freeze, but more importantly would not sweat excessively resulting in hyper-cooling. After about an hour of riding my legs were beginning to cool – so next time I may put another layer of wind protection over my tights such as my Gore Bike rain pants.  I had a pair of Endura neoprene covers on my regular Shimano shoes that did a good job at keeping my feet warm. I would just love to find a pair that would still work if I get my shoes wet during the race – as the neoprene ones would certainly act like a sponge and end of with a critical situation in the feet area.  Any suggestions anyone, leave a comment on my page?

Some of my other observations on the ride – shifting at colder temperatures was not as smooth. My derailleur, although clean and oiled was making some interesting noises into the ride – but ultimately continued to do its job throughout the ride. My SRAM XO hydraulic breaks worked with no issues in these conditions.  I forgot to use my thermal bottle – resulting in no water for my ride after about 20-minutes, although filled it with warm water. Having ridden in cold before, the Camelbak thermal bottles do a much better job at keeping things liquidy!  The screen on my Garmin 800 also started to play up towards the end of my ride (2hrs) and would not cycle out of the backlit display after some time.  Once warmed up in my pocket it did not have any issues. My Android LG Nexus 5 also did not fair too well in the cold conditions and although in one of my outside pockets switched itself off after 10-15mins of cold exposure.  One thing that got me thinking also was the efficiency of Stans fluid in my tubeless tires – Would it still perform if I had a flat in these conditions. Well luckily I did not have the opportunity to test that out – but it did get me thinking…

Accessing things in this weather conditions was almost impossible – but I think that is the tradeoff you get from wearing waterproof winter gloves – and to be honest one that I am very happy to make.  I used a pair of Gore Alp-X Thermo gloves and had no issues with coldness and even with these low temperatures I was able to have full mobility with my gears & brakes. 

Overall, I was very happy with my setup for cold weather riding. I have toyed with the idea of leg warmers vs. winter tights, but generally my experience with winter leg warmers are that they don’t hold up to a full day of riding and generally you have to remove your shoes anyway when taking them off. Plus winter tights have the additional benefit of keeping your man-bits warm too, which is pretty important!  But it was reassuring that on my current setup I am covered for any cold weather eventualities, so got no excuses for not logging more miles…