I hate my bike

Ok, that's pretty dramatic, but today.. I hated my bike, I hated my legs, my hips, my knees. And most of all I HATE WIND!

I had planned out a great route that had a group of 7 of us meeting at various places and times with those of us training for Tour de Tucson getting in about 65-70miles. A much needed training ride for me. But, lets just say things didn't go as planned... for some of us.

As I was checking weather.com yesterday I saw that evil "windy" sign starting at about 12:00. Prior to that the wind showed like 15-18mph. I decided to keep this to myself so no-one tried to bail on the ride. Particularly a certain someone who decided to make this her first ride back since CDA.

I knew it was going to be a struggle when I was woken up (not that I'm sleeping much lately anyway) sometime in the middle of the night with the wind smacking our sunshade against the sliding glass door in our bedroom. I have NO idea how Shane slept through all of this. Must.Be.Nice.

I actually started to think, maybe it was a good thing. Maybe the wind storm had come early & would be gone by the time we started riding.

NOT-SO-MUCH

As I started to walk out the door I could see that the trees were being blown south, so the wind was coming from up North. Too bad 50% of the ride had us first CLIMBING up north. I yelled back inside that he should give us an extra 10mins before meeting us (he was meeting point 2 for a shorter route).

The first 10miles was pretty good. Of course I was heading South. I felt good. My legs felt good. I was rested. My neck was hurting a little bit, but all in all I was hoping for a good day. Until we turned NORTH. We were going about 13mph. Finally we got to turn East. We were going like 14mph. We usually go 20+ on this road.

This is going to be a LONG day.

We finally got to Shane & Momo about 10mins late. On top of the extra 10mins I gave us anyway.

I have to admit I was totally impressed she came out. She showed up for her first ride back. In this CRAPPY weather. I don't know that I would have shown. Especially knowing now how bad it was.

As we headed further up North, my body just started to give up. I was struggling. I went from pulling the group to the back of the line. My hips were throbbing... I had nuthin. I got a bad attitude. I think I had made a bad decision the night before to lower my saddle. I recently put a new saddle on and when my IT bands started hurting (last week) I was hoping for an easy excuse and blamed it on the saddle being high. I think all moving the saddle position did was take away some of my power & make me kind of scrunched up. Bad move. The saddle is so going back up, and I am SOOO going back to evil.trainer.Daniel.

I was wishing someone else would say they didn't want to do the hard part I had mapped out. I wanted someone ELSE to be the one to quit. To turnaround early. Unfortunately THAT didn't happen... Even AFTER I suggested it. However after a little break heading further East, followed by the last turn before the big hill I had planned, we were going 9MPH heading North. And this was considered the FLAT part of this portion...

It didn't take long for 4/8 of us to agree to call it a day. To bag the challenging part of the ride and take the easy way out, heading DOWNHILL with a tail wind....

Guess which 4 bailed? The 4 CDA IM finishers. 2 of which were 2 time IM finishers

Guess who rallied up the monster hill? The guy who did a 70mile Bike race last week, our friend Matt. AND, our good friends Stacey & Dave who have only been riding since January.

I just couldn't do it this time. I couldn't pull the IM card. Or, maybe in a sick twisted way we did pull the IM card. Maybe this time instead of pushing ourselves, we used it in the opposite way by letting ourselves off the hook....

Usually I would be mad at myself, or pissed off about quiting. Not this time. I actually think it was the best decision for me. I was hurting. Not just in an out of shape way (cause I just ran a marathon for Pete's sake, I can't be out of shape!). My neck was throbbing.. my legs, everything. I actually listened to my body.

Maybe I am getting smarter? Or maybe it was just an off day...

Either way, please stop by & give our newbie friends props for their achievement today. If they survived today's wind (25mph, gusting up to 35mph, and HARD hills) & ~70mile ride, they are superstars!!