You know the deal: when the days grow short on you, daylight savings reverse steals another hour of light, snow covers your favorite trails in the mountains and it's freaking cold outside. Your bike is rotting in the basement and you put on christmas holiday flab... the off season blues hits you and you are about to go into a winter depression... Then you need to get your ass up and do something!
Here are my favorite things to fend off the blues:
1. Find an off-season activity or project to dwell in. Make it big - learn something completely new or start a time-consuming project. Want a new homepage? Clean out your garage? Learn how to properly handle your DSLR? Or be more productive at work?
2. Review the old season. It's time to dig up all your pictures, throw a bike-friends party and have a slideshow. Then share the wildest stories of the season. This could be done after a night/snow-ride together (see #5)
3. Think about what you liked and didn't like this season. What mistakes don't you wanna repeat next season? A face plant? An injury? Overtraining? Telling yourself it was too hot to ride until in September you realized you had only 1 month of bike season left? - You might want to write the main points down. No use in making the same mistakes again!
4. Start planning your new season and get all excited about it.
5. Just keep on riding. Seriously, it's not as bad as you think. Wear more clothes, throw on tougher tires, get some decent lights (there are far more foolish ways to spend a $150) and just keep on riding!! Learn from wearing too little or too much clothes for your next ride - you will find your comfort zone pretty soon!
6. Decide on what things you want to learn before next spring. Still can't Wheelie but always wish you could? Now's the time to crack out some training hours! Can you imagine the look on your friend's faces next Spring if you can manual past them? The good thing about snow is: it makes for a soft landing. So find a parking lot or football field and practice those skills.
7. Work too much and desperatily believe that the extra hours you put in this Winter will come off the clock in Summer.
8. Buy new gear. Or at least dream about cool stuff you could add to your collection.
9. Find yourself a Winter sport you like. Cross Country skiing, indoor climbing, swimming, jogging... find something that will be "your sport" in Winter. It should be fun and motivating to do it, whenever you don't want to or can't bike.
10. Fix up your bikes. Give them a thorough cleaning, a check-up, tighten all the screws, replace wear-and-tear parts - make it spanking and ready to hit the trails as soon as the snow melts.
And before you know it, the Winter is over.
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