Week 34 - Day Four: Windy City

BIKE: Mike
TIME THERE: 24 min.
TIME BACK: 29 min. (damn headwinds!)
WEATHER: A few clouds, 10C, 22 km/hr wind there; clear, 10C, 35 km/hr wind gusting to 50 km/hr back.
WHAT I WORE: yoga pants, t-shirt, sweatshirt
NOTES:

I am not a fan of the wind. First of all, I have to say that ONE DAY after writing about expecting to be able to bike faster than people without helmets, I was passed by two helmet-less cyclists on the way home today! Perhaps I simply wasn't as aerodynamic as these fit-looking young men were, and biking into the wind ranks up there with biking uphill in the category of things-I'm-not-good-at, so I should have taken some consolation in that. Regardless, my ego was just a little bruised by that. At least I had a friendly conversation with one of them when I caught up with him at a red light, which helped to heal my little ego bruise because it turned out he was a nice guy. Nevertheless, I've never loved being beaten by anyone, even gracious people.

Second of all, my fair city took it upon itself to save some money on snow plowing this year by plowing less and sanding more. This has left massive amounts of sand piled up along the sides of roads, directly where cyclists usually bike. Some of this sand is deep enough to make my tires lose traction, so for the most part I try to avoid it. However, when the wind is gusting up to 50 km/hr directly into my face, it's hard to avoid the sand that gets blown up and tossed violently into my eyes and mouth. Since we're past the freezing cold temperatures now, I've put away the ski goggles that protected my fragile eyes from freezing solid during my winter-biking days, but maybe I'll just have to break them out again to protect me from the hazards of sand storms!

Ahhh, well, the good news is that as much as I didn't exactly enjoy the ride home today, and I had to work harder over a longer period of time to go the same distance, by the time I got home it didn't feel like that big a deal. Yeah, it took longer, and yeah, I swallowed some sand, and yeah, my thighs hurt like a used hooker, but really it was just what I had to do to get home. No big deal. And at the very least it was one hell of a workout: using the equation I've mentioned before that every 5 mph of headwind is equivalent to biking up ~1% grade of hill, I was biking up the equivalent of 4.35% to 6.2% hill grade the whole way home!

Regardless of the bright side: here's just hoping that the next ride won't be so damn windy.