Storm Chaser

19.75 mile ride

Since I was completely unable to get out of bed early, I took a risk with the weather and decided to wait until after work to ride. It looked pretty threatening for a while, but by the time I actually left work, it didn't seem bad at all. In fact, it looked like everything had passed over. The sun was out and the winds had died. There went my only excuse.

I somehow managed to talk Matt into riding with me. Neither of us were really motivated, but I figured we'd both more likely go if we went together. I told him the weather was fine. I'm sure he was ready to kill me by the end of the ride.

We met up at Valmont and Foothills and headed north on 47th to Jay so we could cut over to 36. The plan was to just do the Neva loop since it was already getting a little late. Technically I was supposed to do a brick with a 15 mile ride and 3 mile run. But I was also supposed to do a 25 mile ride yesterday and only did about 16. So I was actually hoping to do a little bit of a longer ride if I could squeeze it in. Once we got onto 36, the dark clouds that had been hovering over Lyons, suddenly were on the move. There went the sun. We turned onto Neva and kept glancing to the north. The sky did not look kind. Then the winds came. So much for staying aero. I was now doing all I could to stay upright. So much for Z2. Let's just say that I was a little more than nervous about the wind and the likely storm. My HR spiked. Since I couldn't keep it low, I decided I might as well fly as fast as I could in the hopes that I could outrun it. Matt was right on my rear wheel. I'm not sure how I got stuck leading, but I did. There were several other riders struggling and we flew past them. One of them managed to jump on Matt's rear wheel and got a free ride for a few miles. At least he waved/nodded/somewhat acknowledged us when we parted ways. Once we started heading south, with the clouds behind us, my nerves calmed a bit and now I was determined to just outrun it. We averaged 20.2 mph from just before the turn onto Neva all the way back to Valmont on 63rd. The wind helped somewhat, but we had to deal with a nasty crosswind for what seemed like an endless amount of time.

We lucked out. Despite the wrath of its warmup routine, the storm never quite materialized.
There were a few drops in the last 2 miles, but they were so slight that they could have just been drops of sweat. The ride ending up taking a little more out of me mentally than I was prepared for and once I got home, I knew that I wasn't going to head out again for a run. It just wasn't going to happen. I will just have to hope that my hamstring will continue to feel better and that I'll be able to pull through the run on Sunday.