Saturday, December 1, 2007

Ride Before the Storm

I guess, I was being a little closed minded in my last post. I somehow forget that I live in Wisconsin. (If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes and it'll change), or in my case, wait about 30 hours and it will change for the better.
I got out of bed this morning thinking I really want to go for a ride, but I kept thinking about Thursday's ride. Finally, I jumped online to look at the weather because it looked nice out. To my satisfaction, weather.com showed 21 degrees and 2 mph winds... Not bad at all. Excited to get out again, I started cooking some good 'ol pancakes and getting stuff together, got dressed and off I went.
The weather was great! I knew there was a snow storm on its way so the plan was to go past the hill on Silver Spring Dr. and turn back. On the way out I was amazed. I stayed warm and didn't get the feeling of fluid in the lungs like last time. I hit Silver Spring and then the long hill just a little further. As I hit the hill I could feel my body starting to struggle a little, but I kept at it and worked to keep my breathing slow and steady. As I reached the top, I realized I am still at a good fitness level, given I have not been on the bike much and have not raced in... almost two months.
I went a little further up the road and turned back. I realized all to quickly that the wind was mostly to my back the whole way out, so it took a little effort to get moving. As I came back through Silver Spring the snow began to fall and the winds picked up. Thankfully the snow did not get worse until the last five minutes of the ride. As I look out my window now I am quite happy to get out this morning. Over the last hour the snow has really started to fall.
Here we see the progression of snowfall between 12:10 PM and about 1:20 PM. Again I say, I am happy that I got out this morning.