After Further Review...

I had arthroscopic surgery on my left ankle a few years ago to remove some loose cartilage. Everything had been fine since then until late last year, when I was subject to spells of extreme pain that was preventing me from putting my weight on the ankle.

MRI revealed that, well, there's missing cartilage on top of the ankle bone, and there is some deterioration in the ankle bone. Doctors told me that I must've done something to injure the weak spot, but other than biking, which really doesn't bother my ankle, I haven't done anything that traumatic to my ankle in the past year....except for that incident that broke my toe....hmmm....

The toe was so painful that I probably didn't notice how hard I came down on my ankle when my foot slammed to the ground. Anyway, this means more surgery, a cast, six weeks or so on crutches, and quite a bit of time off the bike.

Brrrrr.

I was spoiled by the December weather that was in the high 30's and even peaked into the low 50's at times. Since about the first weekend of January, Michigan has been hit with ice storms, then extreme cold, then snow, then some more extreme cold and so on.

So, seeing a relatively clean road surface, and temperatures that seemed survivable to me, I started out this morning in 19 degree weather. After 40 miles, my sweaty hands got really cold, my legs were shot from 6 weeks off the bike, and my toes were numb. The forecast doesn't look promising with another batch of snow coming tomorrow, so I'll take what I can get when I can get it.