It was in the 80s all day, but the wind and the humidity were up and down. In the early afternoon, I mowed the lawn in tropical conditions, then in the evening before I drove to Leroy I took the dog around the block in pleasant warm, dry and breezy weather. From the square in Chardon, though, I could see a black wall of thunderstorms and rain over toward the Arboretum, and a few drops of rain hit my arm, but the sky overhead was still blue.
I drove up toward the fire station around 5:15PM. A thin line of thunderstorms was moving toward us from the south, but on the radar, it looked like it might just slide north over the lake, and the sky was just a bit gray toward the west.
Robert and Rudy and Mark were getting their gear together to ride out for a warmup and Larry pulled up just as I was pumping up the tires and getting set up. It was a good turnout considering the weather was sketchy.
I headed out on the warmup ride. The sky didn't look so bad toward the south east. I turned around to head back to the start. The western sky had turned a mean looking blue black. Since Leroy is right at the edge of the slope heading down to the Lake plain, and there are open fields, bad weather is spectacular and intimidating.
It looked like we might beat the storm, though, so we lined up quickly, and started at 30 second intervals. Even though I drew number 5 to start, I just had enough time to get my glasses off and in my pocket and reset the bike computer before the start.
The first few drops hit me as I started, and the pre-storm winds kicked up directly out of the west. It felt like riding a motorbike into a mountain tunnel, the evening light dwindled to twilight and the colors of the fields and trees went from shades of green to gray. I stopped pedaling about 50 meters before the turn to slow down enough to take it safely. (Jan Ullrich's crash in the 2003 TdF popped into my mind.)
Usually my internal mental dialog during the TT is muted by the effort and limited to thoughts like "must... go.... faster....", but flashes of lightning a loud report of thunder, and rising winds fired up the adrenaline and lit my thoughts up and I started debating turning tail and dashing for the car. Intellectually, I thought the odds of getting hit by lightning are slim, and I was already out in the storm, if I turned around, I'd only reduce the time I was out in it by a couple minutes. But my limbic system was shouting at me to seek shelter. But the cycling part of my brain won out, I might get a really good time with the extra adrenaline kick!
A hundred variations on that theme of thoughts rattled around in my head in just a minute or two. Those were quickly replaced by "oh shit!" On the uphill section where the road emerges from the trees, there was a white wall of wind and rain draped across the road, and it hit me in the face like a wet slap. (The iBike wind speed gauge recorded 37 mph headwind at that point!)
I was pretty stunned and had trouble seeing and slowed way down as I got completely soaked. Larry passed me at that point, so I got back to the task and followed his pace most of the way up the hill. I made the turn around and flew down the hill.
I finished pretty strong. Unfortunately, the rain knocked the power meter out, but at least I could see how fast I was going. I finished with a 20:46, only 3 seconds slower than last week in totally different conditions. That's probably my worst performance on the uphill section, but my best, by far, on the rest of the course.
2 comments:
I wondered how your Ibike fared but forgot to ask. I think the answer must be "not well". However, given the weather, I will give it a pass.
After the heavy rain hit, the wind sensor stopped working and the power readings were way low. Once it dried out the next day it was fine.
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