[sandyrs]

I've been riding the trainer- less than I should- and getting out on the weekends for 2-3 hours either on my road bike with fenders or my cross bike with studded tires. At this point there's so much snow that the studs don't even do anything meaningful on any surface except the Minuteman, so that option's basically out the window unless I just want to ride to RSC for coffee and commiseration.

That said, my girlfriend and I leave for five days in Austin tomorrow. It's not a cycling-specific trip but I plan to ride in the morning there. It'll probably be the first time I get over 10 hours of riding in a week since cyclocross season was at its midpoint. I'm anticipating light cycling traffic there- it's going to be overcast and in the 30s in the morning, which is about as bad as it seems to get in Austin, but that sounds like heaven to me right now.

I went to college in the Northeast too, and raced in the ECCC my junior and senior years. Those first couple weekends were always a total disaster in terms of fitness- the higher-level racers I know from college would basically just use the ECCC season as base for the summer, and the slow guys like me would thank Joe Kopena that the Stevens road race was only 19 miles long.