When you can’t feel your fingers and it’s time to descend

Typical, isn’t it? Just when you really, really need your fingers, that’s when they pack up and abandon you. You’ve slogged your way up the biggest hill of the ride, rocking from side to side and chewing the stem as you go. All that stands between you and a nice warm cuppa is the last descent. Now if only you had some way of operating your brakes…

Getting ready for a ride in your Flandrian best

Base layer, check. Jersey, check. Gilet, check. Rain jacket, check. Bib tights, check. Overshoes, check. Gloves, check. Cap, check. Snood, check. The list goes on. Sometimes getting ready is the hardest part.

Getting lost

You know how when you’re out for a ride on a balmy summer’s evening it’s actually kind of fun to get a little bit lost, kind of like an impromptu adventure? Well it’s not like that in the winter at all.

Getting home, or at least back to the right roads, quickly becomes a grim race against time, the setting sun and the elements.

Bus splash

Bus splash is when you’re peacefully riding along, minding your own business, when all of a sudden you get coated in grimy water and grunge sprayed up by a whacking great double-decker. It can be a HGV, let’s not get caught up in the terminology, other vehicles can create splash too, but buses are the worst.

When the winds are so strong you get blown off your bike 

Scary, painful, and more than little embarrassing – getting blown off your bike is a bit of a nightmare. Still, we can all take solace from the fact that it happens to the pros too. Remember when Geraint Thomas got blown into a ditch at Gent Wevelgem?

The moment water seeps through your overshoes

“This winter will be different. This year I will be prepared for what the elements throw at me. This year, this year I will invest in proper overshoes. None of those flimsy lightweight things for me. I’m getting serious this time.”

This is the conversation we have in our heads every autumn, before spending a ludicrous amount of money on a pair of ‘100 percent waterproof’ overshoes. Then what happens? Well the blooming water manages to find a way through anyway doesn’t it.

You seize any moment of fine weather to go out on the bike

“Was that a single ray of sunlight I saw shining over in the next valley? I must get on my bike and take advantage of this glorious weather immediately!”

This will become a recurring theme of the winter, with your efforts to take advantage of any period of time longer than ten minutes when it isn’t bucketing it down with rain, or worse snowing a blizzard, getting more and more extreme. It’s not unheard of for cyclists to sneak out of the office at lunchtime in the hope of grabbing an hour of daylight riding time.

CYCLO-CROSS!!!!!!!

Woohoo! Winter means it’s time for cyclo-cross, and all the fun, mud, grime, guts and glory that goes along with it. If you’re anything like us though, your enthusiasm for ‘cross lasts about as long as it takes to wash the bike after a ride.

Feeling like a badass when you go out riding in a storm

You know when you’re out on your bike in winter and there’s a flash of lightning somewhere off in the distance and in your head you’re like, “I am Thor, God of Thunder aboard my two-wheeled chariot! I fear not these piddling storms – I have battled the might of the Giants in Jotunheim.”

No? Just me then. Ok.

The first signs of spring

There comes a time towards the end of every winter, with seemingly no light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, when spring suddenly shows the first sign of finally springing and you can bravely venture out without gloves or ditch the leg warmers. Those first golden rays of spring sunshine are enough to bring any winter-worn cyclist back to life.