Yesterday at UW-La Crosse I finished up my midterm exams, meaning that today was the first day of spring break!! Woo Woo!

Although the weather certainly doesn’t seem anything like spring. Currently there is more than 2 feet of snow on the ground and the temperature is bearly hitting freezing. There will be no trips to Cancun for me this year (sniffle), but I willl be trying to get some extra training time in and I also picked up some more hours at work.

I kicked off my training with a solid 3 hour ride in the Northern Kettles with Tristan Schouten, a long-time training partner and Pro Mountain Biker. Since we were riding cyclocross bikes today we headed for one of the “rustic roads” of the area which is a gravel road that was icy and snow-packed. It is nice to ride this time of year while it is still cold enough before it gets really sloppy.

Even though its pretty cold, there is a fair amount of snow-melt run off which required some bike modification. If you are like me and don’t want to spend money on fenders, the old-fashioned gatorade bottle trick works quite well. That was the longest ride for me so far this year, so we will see how the legs recover.