Wind training

To start with, I wimped out this morning. I did NOT join my training buddy in open water swimming practice. Mainly because it was 50*F outside and blowing steadily over 25 mph and gusting higher. I did, however, put on my wetsuit bottoms just to stay warm while I spotted from shore! Nope, swimming in whitecaps makes me too nervous. Frigid whitecaps? Forget it! David bravely did about 20 minutes and said he swallowed a lot of water, but said the water temperature was bearable after a while out there.

Then we went out on the bikes, and it was going wonderfully - for the first half of the ride, that is, when we had a fantastic tailwind pushing us along.

Then we had one of the toughest slogs back against a headwind that I've yet experienced. My hands were cramping from gripping the aerobars so tightly to keep the bike under control! Buttercup is a little squirrely under the best of conditions, and she loathes wind like the Devil. She tried to scamper out from underneath me several times. We did a lot of granny gear. I kept thinking that it was just hill training for me on the flat.

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Update: I found out later that it was sufficiently windy today to cancel the Chesapeake Bay Bridge 10K and Bay Bridge Walk today. So it's not just me being a whiner.

It seemed simple enough starting out

All I wanted to do was ride 20 miles and maintain a cadence around 90 rpm. A nice little ride, right? Is that too much to ask?

Apparently it was. The wind was blowing and gusting up to 20 knots and things got a little ugly there for a while. Then I remembered this was Madame Pele's way of making me strong for whatever Eagleman is going to throw at me in June. Thank you, Madame Pele.


I'd still like to see a little more of that blue line up above the 20 mph level. OK, a lot more. I want to be fast like Linae one day.

I can account for that one big dip in speed and heart rate after the turnaround in the middle of the ride. That was when I was riding slow enough to snarf down my entire little bag of Nemo gummy fish. Yum, yum! Replenishing critical carbohydrate reserves is important!