Such A Tease

Well, Mother Nature was teasing us yesterday with some beautiful weather but now it's all crashing down on us again with temps back in the low 30s and snow. Looks like we'll only have temps in the high 20s this week, we are supposed to be averaging 39-40 degrees, but those kind of temps are nowhere in sight. This weekend is supposed to hit mid-30s maybe on Sunday, only 28 on Saturday but that's a long ways off, maybe it'll be better, who knows with our crazy weather. Anyways, this weekend was very good on the bike, although I got cut short yesterday by a 2 minute downpour which had me flying back to my start point only to taper to a sprinkle and then to nothing as I was trying to get out of my wet clothes. I could've gone back out but I was already getting chilled and had forgot my rain jacket so I was wet and cold. Let's start at the beginning I guess before I get too far......My intention this weekend was to ride 3.5 hours Saturday and then do 4.5 to 5 hours of hills on Sunday, what I like to call the Trifecta...Lake Geneva, Alpine Valley, Spring Prairie State RR course....lots of hills and very steep ones at that. Saturday I had some afternoon commitments so that was going to be my short day of the weekend and after letting the temps warm up to all of 27 or 28 I hit the road and went from New Berlin to Big Bend out to Waukesha and did a loop out there and then back, a tad over 3 hours and 30 minutes. I felt really good and although I was a bit cold, the lack of wind made the 28 degrees temps feel just fine once I got warmed up. Saturday evening I recovered with lots of food and water in anticipation of a long ride on Sunday morning. My plan was to drive out to my mom's in Burlington, leave on the bike from her house and ride to Lake Geneva, do a lap of the lake, then ride over to Alpine Valley, do a lap of the race course there, then ride over to Spring Prairie and do a couple laps of the race course there, lots of hills and lots of fun. The day started out well with a 10 a.m. departure and sunshine as I made my way to Lake Geneva but shortly after I got to Lake Geneva and was doing my loop there the clouds started rolling in. From Lake Geneva I made my way over to Alpine and it got cloudier still and I felt a few sprinkles falling but kept going on my loops anyways. I finally made it over to Spring Prairie and had gone up the big hill the first time and was starting my loop when it started raining really hard, I made a quick u-turn and was flying back to my mom's, only about 2 miles away and was almost there when the rain tapered to a sprinkle. I was chilled now and made it in to my mom's driveway and of course the rain stopped. I thought about going back out but was shivering and my clothes were wet so I thought the better of it, and changed in to some dry clothes. So yeah, it only rained about 5 minutes total but it was enough for me to get wet and divert my ride and mess up the plan. I did get ALOT of hill climbing in though and 3 hours 45 minutes of riding before I had to detour home. I looked at my data after the drive back to New Berlin and I had two hills that hit 19% and the Spring Prairie hill was not far behind at 16%, and I had about 3500 ft. of climbing. Most of the hills were short steep power climbs, so obviously that was alot of up and down for the duration of the ride, nothing too long. I did some recovery last night, basically just kept hydrated and laid around, nothing too exciting and I'm feeling good today, the legs aren't sore at all and I'm ready for another hard week of training before a 4 day layoff next week as I head to Florida for business. Some of the other team guys did a ride yesterday as well and I wish I could've joined them but I wanted to do some pretty specific stuff yesterday and doing the group ride would've been counterproductive to what I'm trying to accomplish. There will be plenty of opportunities to ride with them yet this Spring though. Well, that's it for now, until next time........hope you all enjoyed the one nice day yesterday!