The Wind Is Not My Friend!

I love riding, and even though long rides can be uncomfortable on my backside and make my legs burn, I still love it...I guess I'm just sick in the head. Today was the first time I can ever remember getting mad during a ride.

I wanted to ride the bike course for the Taylorsville Lake Triathlon that I have coming up, so early in the week, I made plans to get up early in Saturday and head down to the lake and ride the route. About Wednesday I started to pay attention to the forecast and it looked inevitable that it was going to rain...a lot...on Saturday. So I changed my workout schedule and did tomorrow's ride today.

I typically always ride and run early in the mornings. So heading out at 2:00 this afternoon in 80 degree heat wasn't ideal, but it was the only way I could get this ride in. Something that I didn't see in the forecast was hurricane force winds!! As I was driving home from work I noticed that the wind was blowing my car around a little bit...which was not a good sign. If the wind can blow your car, imagine what it does to a bike!

The wind was horrible today. As if the course wasn't hard enough with all the massive hills, I also had to battle what seemed to be a constant wind. It would gust sometime and literally blow me 3 or 4 feet in one direction or the other. I wasn't able to get down in my aero position very often because I had to keep both hands on the handlebars to keep control of the bike. It also seemed like every hill I went up I was facing a headwind, making it twice as hard. About half way though my ride I started to feel myself getting angry at the wind. I may have even cussed it once or twice!

I got started a little later than I wanted and since we had a big 60th birthday party (you know who you are) to celebrate tonight, I didn't get to do the entire 56 mile course, but I cut out a few miles and still managed to get in 43.50 miles of it.

Here's the elevation profile of the route I did today:

The route ranged from 486 feet above sea level to 846 feet. I climbed a total of 1014 feet!
That gigantic, long hill around mile 33 was not fun, but the huge downhill before it was. I got up to 38.5 miles per hour coming down that hill and then almost instantly, I was going 9.

Total Time for the 34.5 miles was 2:17:20, for an average pace of 19.0 mph (which isn't bad considering the elements).
Avg HR = 148 (zone 4 - a little too high, but I was pushing it pretty hard)
Max HR = 167