into the wind...

So today is friday, which during a normal week would mean i was reveling in my day off, but today, i took one for the team ( and by team, i mean me) and I trudged through my saturday monster workout today, so i could make a necessary trip to ikea/the mall in leiu of working out. ( i have priorities)

I woke up today though and realized the weather was playing a game with me. i spent most of the day tryng to figure out what weather.com meant by 'afternoon' when they said that the severe thunderstorms would hit around then. Maybe if i left work ontime i can do my ride out side?

now that the weather is warm i am very resistant to a trainer ride, but i didnt want to get stuck out 20 miles from my house in a thunderstorm so i decided to play it safe. I figured, if i could kill atleast 1 hour on the path, i coudl do another 1.5 on the trainer and then do a short run.

As usual, the way up north, riding with today's gusty prestorm winds was a piece of cake ...getting back though was a different story.

the winds were blowing alot harder than normal because of the storm, and more than once i found myself almost launched sideways into parked cars. As i hunkered down and used my most areodynamic position i tried to think of other ways to increase efficiency and i realized i frequently forget the most obvious one; pulling up while i pedal. The reason cyclists wear clips is so we can efficiently pedal both down and up, but usually, i am pretty lax about this, and therefore, not the most efficient cyclist ever.

The moral of the story is that difficult climate/terrain /weather present diffrent problems, but in the end trying to figure out a way to combat them, can potentially help us focus on our problem areas and get back to the basics..... unfortunatly for me, after my slight victory over the wind, i came home in anticipation of storms in the afternoon... which didnt arrive will aboubt 7. oh well. cant win em all.