Earlier this week I wrote about my Sweetspot win on the trainer. I had a second Sweetspot workout scheduled for this past weekend as well. I honestly did not have the energy to do another trainer workout. Therefore I waited around for a window of no rain. Yes, it was still raining here to no end. That window never happened on Saturday. So I had to get this done on Sunday.
I was only 30 min into my ride, right at the point my Sweetspot interval was going to start it started raining. It was light and I figured I’m already here. So I went for it.
The bottom of the hill was a slog of messy mud. Slowly navigating through that section, I started the interval after the mud. About 30 minutes I noticed it was really starting to rain and not letting up. I wasn’t going to quit the interval since I was ⅔ of the way through. I went ahead and finished it up. It started absolutely pouring. I was drenched through everything: my gloves my socks, my shoes, my long sleeve jersey, my helmet. It was all wet.
Once I got to the top of the climb the interval was over, slightly under time but good enough. I stopped at the top to regroup. I found myself in a quandary. Wanting to ride for 3 hours, but I was so wet and really starting to get cold. I knew I needed to get home and dry out. My long sleeve jersey was so wet I took it off. As I didn’t think it would help keep me warm on the descent. I put the jacket on I had in my pack hoping that would keep me warm since that was still dry. It didn’t.
I descended as quickly and as safely as I could considering the wet conditions. My hands were unbearably cold and my gloves were sopping wet. I could barely brake. I kept moving my hands and figures around to keep some blood moving. Once I got to where the dirt met up with the pavement I took my gloves off. That actually warmed my hands up a bit.
I was thinking to myself: I’m so good at dressing for cold weather and keeping myself warm. But I am absolutely horrible at dressing for wet weather. I didn’t bring the right gloves, I should have put the waterproof booties over my shoes and none of my cycling jackets are equipped for this much rain. If the rain wasn’t going to stop this week I probably would have made a large investment on better rain riding apparel. But honestly, we don’t get a lot of it and I don’t ride in it often so I’d probably wouldn’t get much use of it. However, if we get anymore atmospheric rivers in the future I’m investing.
Anyway once I hit pavement I pedaled as fast as I could to get home. One to try to warm up and two just to get out of the wet. It was one of those days you’d want to make a SOS call for a pick up. But I didn’t have anyone to call and in reality even if I did it was warmer just to stay moving. So I froze for the entire hour from the top of the climb to back home. Twenty minutes left in the ride, I was really embracing the suck. I was getting road spray all in my face and my face was freezing. I thought: Well, I guess this is character building. For what who knows. A wet cold sloppy race, I guess. At least I know I could push through it.
Later the next day, I realized I got the workout wrong. I was supposed to do a 60 minute Sweetspot. Not 45 minutes. Oops… Failure for attention to detail. Note to self, more attention to details next time.
Fueled By TheFeed.
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