Yesterday's Ride and I Had One of "The Dreams"

I got EIGHT HOURS of sleep last night!!!! See, I was so exhausted and sore yesterday, I figured I'd sleep well, and I did. Even though I woke up at 12:30AM to a lot of lightning and thunder, I fell back asleep pretty quickly as it was a quickly passing storm.

Yesterday I was planning on driving north to do this ride called BCLC Ramble. I enjoyed it so much last year that I thought I'd repeat. But when I looked at the weather forecast, it called for a higher chance of rain up there (pretty much due north) than by me, and then I thought how nice to not spend 3 hours driving, so I bagged it and decided to ride to Fermilab from home.

My legs were fucking tired at the get go. But I thought that with a nice 1 hour warmup they should come around. They never really did. About 2 hours in, I started having the thoughts of gee I could just bag this--if I only rode 4 hours it would be enough. But then that little HTFU guy was sitting on the other shoulder telling me that I needed for this to be a huge training week. So I pressed on, even though I wasn't riding particularly well.

And then the winds really picked up. I mean REALLY PICKED UP! Look at the graph below and notice what starts happening around 9:30AM:





On Saturday, the winds were around 15MPH, which is still pretty good wind for working hard (and I did), but when this shit started, I was like OMG! When I was riding east, the cross winds didn't bother me, but riding west or south were crazy! Since I wasn't feeling too great anyway, at first I didn't acknowledge that it was the wind causing me to suck so much, but as I came on other riders, I'd ask if it was worse than yesterday, and they said hell yeah!

I pressed on, planning on doing 4 loops, which would give me 94 miles. When I was midway through the last loop, the sky began to look a little menacing, but it looked like it was to the north. Still, we've been stuck in this thunderstorm factory for about a week now, and I decided that with all the wind, even if I didn't do a full loop I'd still get in plenty of riding.

As I continued around now, I cut out 2 east-west sections, as I just couldn't face riding west into the headwinds anymore. As I neared my exit, the clouds began gathering above me now, so it was time to hammer the hell home.

It's been a few years since I've done rain sprints, and good thing I hadn't been riding too hard because I had plenty of giddy up in my legs once I got through the 1/2 mile south leg before I turned east.

And when I turned east, it was all good. I just put the hammer down because now I was trying to beat a storm. At one stoplight, I was next to a car and a little girl was smiling at me. Dad rolled down the window and told me she had said, "That boy is going really fast." Well, from the back, it's hard to tell. I took it as a compliment because I was riding really fast. They did, however, notice that I am a girl, and I said to the little doll, "See? Girls can ride really fast, too!" She smiled, the light changed, and off we went again. More hammering.

About 7 miles from home, 3 roadies (not FRP's) came up on me at a stoplight, and we chatted about the wind, etc. I asked them how much riding they'd done and they were at about 80 miles. One of them looked at my Ergomo and saw the time on there and said, "Oh, looks like you've been out for awhile, too." Yep. So I latched onto their wheels for about 3 miles, one of them split off, and I stayed with the other 2 for about another mile.

Then it started raining. I'm 3 miles from home now, and the rain is coming a little hard. I made an executive decision to duck into a parking garage, and it was a wise move. Then the deluge began. Rain dumping down going every which way, but I was all safe and snug in my parking garage. I even did a few laps in there! The clouds looked to be moving fast, so I knew I wouldn't have to wait very long. I didn't time it (I no longer wear a watch while on the bike; the Ergomo has a clock, but I don't bother making intervals), but I figure it lasted 20 minutes? Thing is now when I have to wait like this I'm pretty relaxed. Actually I was glad for the break, but I wasn't too happy about riding on soaked roads, but what are you going to do? I figured I had to make a fast break because there would probably be more rain coming.

I made it home pretty filthy from all the road spray, and I took everything off Bitchie and wheeled her into the garage to clean her off a bit (full cleaning sometime today).

When I showered, there were bugs all over me as well as some nice road grime, and then bike grime since I'd wiped down my rims and that stuff got all over my hands. As always, though, it was the best shower ever, and then I made myself a big plate of nachos, and decided I wasn't into the Endurox R4. I mean, how can you drink that with nachos? So I cracked a beer, and it tasted, well, great.

I noticed pretty quickly than in stopping exercising that my legs were pretty fucked up, and that I would need to lay down. I checked the TV listings (no, still don't have cable; I barely watch TV anymore as it is), and saw that Jackie Brown was on. But on network, meaning they would need to censor pretty much every line. Still, I wanted to make it without passing out to the scene where Louis shoots Melanie. Below is a funny scene and then a summary of the movie with all the shit that got censored from the movie.





And I pretty much laid around and then stretched and then passed out for good. When I woke up this morning, I had just had a dream that I was doing IMLP and I had just got my bike to go ride. My legs felt bad, I couldn't pedal, and then I look down and notice my power meter is gone as are my aerobars! In the dream I then stopped and was sobbing uncontrollably. And then I woke up.