overheard yesterday at Collegiate Cycling Nationals:

"I've never seen wind like this before!!!!"

Welcome to Looneyville kids! This is the real windy city.

I think everyone around here gets a kick out of everyone coming in for nationals, thinking they are facing an EASY course, seeing as this state is "flatter than a pancake". What they are quickly realizing is that this part of the state actuallly does have hills (although nothing too dramatic), and we also have plenty of the one thing that is worse than hills .... WIND!!!!! Yesterday at the Team Time Trial the wind was 15-25, gusting way higher than that. Today for the road race it was only supposed to be 15 mph, but when I left for my ride this afternoon it was at 18 ... gusting to 30. For tomorrow's crit we're scheduled for another 15-25 mph day. Ahhhh .... ya gotta love it.

Ok, so today I was most certainly NOT loving it. Having not ridden long the last two weeks due to weather and illness, I NEEDED to get my long ride in this weekend. Lately I've been starting my long rides out solo and then meeting up with the boyfriend for the last few hours. But today he was stuck working and I had to go it alone. I should note that I am not a fan of doing long rides by myself, but I really had no choice. This afternoon it was just me and my ipod* and the open road.

This is definitely not the first time I've done a windy long ride this year, but this is the first time that I had the headwind on the way BACK. OUCH OUCH OUCH. I kept trying to tell myself "this is what will make you tough" ... it was much easier to believe when I had the tailwind. When I turned for home I watched my average speed drop significantly as I tried to "spin" into that damn wind (probably turning 60 rpms ... yeah, my knees are SHOT at the moment) in my easiest gear. Ooooooh it hurt. I pretty much crawled home the last two hours, fighting back tears and wondering why the HELL do I do this again????. Now that I'm fed and showered and home on my couch, I'm pretty proud of myself for toughing it out. This ride was very much a mental battle. Managed to get in around 85 miles, by myself, on a freaking windy day. Averaged around 16 mph which is a little slower than what I've been doing, but considering how nasty it was out, I'm pretty happy.

So now I must attempt to study so that tomorrow I can go hang out at the crit!!!! I'm SO looking forward to this!!!!!!!

* Yeah, yeah ... I know its not the smartest thing to ride with headphones. But I keep the volume very low so that I can just barely hear it and only wear one earbud. I'm not stupid ... well, not about this at least.