CALGARY -- Gabrielle Heine hasn’t missed a day of her cycling commute all winter, even with extreme cold warnings that have almost become routine affairs for the entire province over the past eight days.
She does admit she has gotten a lot of stares from people sitting inside cozy, warm vehicles.
“I think someone filmed me from their car too. I’ve definitely gotten some looks,” Heine told CTV News.
Two days ago the biker posted a video to Twitter detailing how she gears up to get out on her bike in the dead of winter.
The video has now been viewed more than 17,000 times.
“I was really surprised. I have people from all over the world sharing photos and their experiences with winter biking and also people asking questions about how to get started," said Heine, who hopes to encourage others to give it a try.
Heine took up biking four years ago and following the encouragement of her partner, who is an avid cyclist, decided to extend the number of months she rides.
“I was really nervous and the first couple of times I went out," she said. "I was definitely a little tentative on the snow and the ice,”
The key, according to Heine is to have ‘bar mitts’ which fit over her bike’s handlebars, neoprene boot covers, and to ‘dress for skiing’.
There are a lot of advantages to winter biking, according to Heine.
“You save a lot of money on parking (for one)," she said, "but the main thing that I find is that getting out, if you're a really busy person and you don’t really have time to fit a workout into your day, kind of blending it into your commute kills two birds with one stone “
Calgary is also the home of winter cyclist Tom Babin, whose book Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling is considered the bible of winter cyclists everywhere.
