After holiday travel spread the team from Guatemala to California to Florida, followed by a serious cold-snap rendering the proposition of any outdoor riding ridiculous, the squad reassembled this past weekend for the 1st real team ride of 2018 and with it our first weekend roll.

Despite forecasts of plummeting temperatures, the thermometer stayed in the low 30s throughout the ride - meaning that with our winter kit choices we were perfectly equipped for the conditions. The bike of choice for the day was Garneau's new D-1s, disc-road bike, even though the snow and salt was washed clear with the night prior's rain.  

Despite the year's snow accumulation vanishing in last weeks late 'heatwave', River Road was littered with rocks and fallen limbs, highlighting the confidence and stability of 28" rubber wrapped around hydraulic discs on our D1 demo fleet from Garneau.

We're putting in plenty of miles on the bikes. Unfortunately a fair number of them have been on the trainer to date but the forecast for the coming week looks promising and we are aiming to have a comprehensive D1 review coming to the To Be Determined Journal in the near future. So far our initial impressions are positive, making for a hard choice when it comes to rim brake vs. disc brake for the 2018 road season that looms on the horizon. 

But back to the ride: for the first time in years most of the team is on the same training plan for 2018, and benefits of having common objectives and fitness for a team ride are already readily apparent with a newfound cohesion in objectives for the ride and an understanding of the bigger training picture when it comes to a fairly cold weekend (keep your mental sanity). 

Other than being .5 miles short of optimal ride distance, the day was all any New York cyclist could ask for in January.  We even broke the winter no-stop rule to grab espressos in Nyack.