Let The Games Begin

The biggest problem with riding in the rain is that you can't see.

Sunglasses or no sunglasses? When it's raining really hard, you can't exactly go without them, because then the water is pelting you in the eyes. But if you wear them, they're all fogged up and being hit by those same water drops. It's kind of a lose-lose.

I guess the good thing about the 25 mph winds today was that the squalls of rain passed as quickly as they came on. At one point today, I looked off toward the ocean and saw a massive rain storm out at sea... before I could even comment about it to my training partners, we were soaked. But 2 miles later we were back on dry roads, so all was right in the world.

Most of the ride today was pretty easy. Just put the miles in. One of my training partners is just coming back from a stress fracture injury in her foot, so the idea today was to just cruise. But she knows her husband well enough to know that when we get to the rolling hills section of the route on the way home, he's itching to pick up the pace. She gave him the green light when she said, "Hey, don't worry about me if I back off through this section..."

Mike gave a silent nod and I knew that he was gonna go. I was feeling strong and wondered how long I could hang on to his pace? Mike checked his heart rate monitor. Then he took a peek at his computer. How long he was planning on going hard? It didn't matter. Let the games begin! He picked it up gradually, but we really got going and held a super solid pace for probably 5 miles. Awesome! It was so much fun to actually work on the bike today.