When the Weather Outside is Frightful
A cyclist will define a “good” friend as one that convinces them to do things that ordinary people would never do. Today, that thing was showing up to a ride when the weather conditions were 38F with 20mph wind (gusting up to 30mph). In parenthesis, it said “feels like 28F”. It took me 4 clothing changes before I was ready to brave this one. Selecting clothing is so much more than the temperature. A sunny day can feel 10 degrees warmer than a cloudy day and a windy day can feel 10 degrees colder. I finally decided on tights, knee warmers, shoe covers, bibs, short-sleeved base layer, jersey, arm-warmers, and a long sleeved jersey. I was worried about my selection until I saw that SG was dressed almost the same as I was.
We headed out into the headwind and averaged about 12mph. The pulls were awful and with only 10 of us, pulls came often. It was painful and most of me was numb. We joked that we must be nuts to show up to such a miserable ride. We all joked that were kept warm by the love of our teammates. Somehow we managed to laugh and enjoy ourselves. On this ride we didn’t have too many extra breaths to waste but when we had them we spent them laughing. When we were about 7-miles from home, one of the girls declared she would have to stop and pee. We didn’t have too many options so we stopped at a school that had a big stone sign that hid the girls from the waste down. Then they popped up, in only sports bra, DS snapped a photo. It was pretty funny.
This was a really hard ride for me being my first ride in 4-weeks. My HR was high but I think that was to be expected given that it was such a windy ride.