Mother Nature is a PITA

"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."

Accuweather.com is back on my list...

I laid out this well thought out training plan. Four century rides. The last two would be on back-to-back weekends, with a fair amount of mid-week riding. I was going to cover over 300 miles in a 9 day period of time, then I'd start tapering off before the start of the trip. It all made perfect sense.

Last Saturday was the Tierra Bella ride from Gilroy to San Jose and back. It's notorious for "unsettled"weather, anything from rain to blazing heat with winds thrown in. The weather report looked dicey for last Saturday, but accuweather said the rain wouldn't start until 1:00 p.m. and it would just be showers. I figured I could handle that.

Bev and I drove down and got a shower in San Jose, but by the time we started riding the rain had stopped. We met her friends Wendy and John and rode most of the day with them. The first 25 miles were actually nice. A little cold maybe (about 48 degrees), but tolerable. Then the rain showed up.

By the time we pulled into the second rest stop we were soaked to the bone. There were a couple hundred people huddled under a tent watching the skies unload. The cup-o-noodles helped to thaw us out, but the idea of climbing Metcalf Road and its 16% grade in these conditions wasn't too appealing. So we made the "adult" decision and decided to shorten the ride.

I kept hoping that we'd return to "showers", but that was not to be. Mother Nature just kept on giving. As we rode to the cutoff point on Bailey Road the conditions just stayed uniformly miserable. We coasted down a freeway overpass and a gust of wind blew us both a full lane sideways. We couldn't do anything about it. The bikes just slid to the side.

We took another shortcut at Santa Teresa to avoid the remaining hills. Our shortcut brought 2 flat tires to the group, including a thumb tack that embedded itself into my rear tire. Frozen hands made that repair a "challenge".

Bev developed a moderate case of hypothermia at the last rest stop. She just shook uncontrollably. We sat her down by the heater and a couple of the ride volunteers covered her with towels and sweaters to try and warm her up. You can only do so much when you're soaking wet and it's still around 50 degrees outside. We only had 13 miles to finish this thing, so we figured riding on was the best choice.

Bev smelled the finish. She took off like a bat out of hell and we just latched on to her wheel. I think the thought of dry clothes was an inspiration. Just to taunt us, the rain stopped about 2 miles from the finish. We remained in good humor all day, which was no minor feat considering the conditions. The war stories over the post-ride meal were pretty entertaining.

So I didn't get in the 100 I was looking for, and I blew off the Sunday ride I'd planned. Mentally I just wasn't ready. Of course the weather was nice on Sunday.

Now I have another organized Century Ride planned for this coming Sunday, and the weather is going to be miserable again. ugh.