There's the wind...

Ok, so for anyone that knows me even a little bit they know I hate the wind.  A light breeze is one thing but wind of noticeable strength is really really really annoying.  Well Red and I went up to Bellefontaine this weekend for my sisters graduation party and decided that we would also get a little training in.  My mom lives in the middle of no where which is AWESOME.  I love it out there.  It's not crowded, noisy, or busy.  It's nice, quiet, you can see the stars at night, and not feel like someone is always watching you because they live so close to you.  I love being at my mom's.  The only downfall is that there is a lot of wind.

For my sisters graduation party we had great weather to play outside or hang out inside.  We played frisbee, sat out on the front porch, and just enjoyed the company of family being together.  Then Sunday was Mother's Day but my mom had to work which meant no Mother's Day breakfast for her.  Red and I took advantage of the fact that she was going to be gone all morning and went for a nice bike ride.  Last year Red had mapped out and trained along a route that's 37 miles when he was training for Ironman Georgia 70.3 and it is a very nice little route.  We decided that we would go out for a nice training ride along a similar route.  My mom's house is a few miles away from Indian Lake so we decided that we would ride from my mom's to the Lake, around the Lake, then back to her house.  Well on the way out things weren't too bad, I thought I was doing a great job keeping about 20-21mph seemingly effortlessly.  Later I realized that I had a very tiny part in that speed capability.  Anyway, we enjoyed the scenery, and the not so busy roads.  Most of our ride was bordered by farm land because that's about the only thing out there.

There are some cute brick houses, some that look like old one room school houses, and fun scenery.

Most of our ride looked a lot like this though.  Fields still waiting to be planted with beans or corn.

Well last year Red stayed on 117 which is a rather busy road with the occasional semi roaring next to you.  Now most people are very considerate when they come up along you and they try to get over some and give you some space.  Other people, not so much.  There have been multiple times that a car has come so close to me that I know I could easy rest my elbow on its side mirror and catch a ride.  I don't mean reach out and touch a car with my hand, I mean just extend my ELBOW and tada! Instant car lift.  Anyway, Red didn't like how busy 117 could be last year so we decided to take a slightly different route this year.  The wind on 117 was also ridiculously brutal, I didn't notice it too terribly much because I was drafting off of Red which was VERY nice!  When we turned off of the main road Red decided he wanted some more company rather than a drafter so I came up next to him for a while to chat.  That wasn't too bad because the wind was coming from the side, well we then had to turn back into the wind in order to get home and that was ROUGH.  We went from a happy 17-20mph to a lucky 15-16mph into the wind.  I was cursing the wind and commenting on how Ironman Florida is going to suck, it is notorious for being windy (a fact I didn't know when I signed up), when we came upon a pleasant surprise!

A one lane covered bridge!  

I think covered bridges are really neat so this made what was turning into a crabby ride a very fun surprising ride!  Red and I road up the hill on the other side of the bridge and decided that we both wanted a picture of the bridge so I rode back down and took a picture of our pleasant surprise!  I was quite happy with this and then realized that we were still about 12 miles away from home.  

The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, very very windy, but not too bad.  At some point Red and I decided that since he had let me draft during the middle part of our ride that I would pull on the way home.  I am a very ineffective puller.  First off, I'm tiny therefore I make a terrible person to attempt to draft off of, second off when wind is involved I am stopped in my tracks.  I was lucky if I was going 16mph into the wind, there were multiple points on the way home on 235 that we were going downhill and I was pushing to go 15mph and if I attempted to "coast" I actually started slowing down, going downhill.  Last I checked if you're going downhill you should be able to pick up speed, not slow down.  Meh.  I did impress myself though with my mental gains from a couple years ago.  I used to get very frustrated and want to give up and make Red let me draft the rest of the way home.  This time I didn't ask once for him to let me draft, and even though I was incredibly frustrated I didn't get angry, I started thinking of ways to get stronger.  I can't change the wind, and a bike can only change so much in your power output, but if the power isn't there from the rider there isn't a lot else that can happen.  So now I'm going to start doing more actual lifting exercises for my legs.  Oh, and speaking of new bikes....I am getting a new bike at the end of this week!!!!  I'm so excited!!  I promise pictures of my new bike when it comes in!

Happy Monday!