Electrically charged!!!

Not my personality, I know this. The air was though along with being water saturated. After almost the right amount of coffee I looked to the left of my house, clear, to the right of my house, grey, and straight ahead it was somewhere in the middle. Screw it I'm going as I jumped on the TCR and headed out for a long ride with the hope that I wouldn't be alone for the whole thing.

I flipped my training again this weekend so that I have the option to race this morning and this also gave me the chance to ride with the Midland crew so as I headed west I was in a happy spirit of long miles. Now with my looking around what I should have done was looked way right and also listened closely. Awww that low rumble and the wonderful look of black clouds. Not really knowing what direction they were heading I figured that I may get lucky and ride around it's potential mess. An hour into my ride I found out that was not an option. I went from dry to soaked in 2.98 seconds. Of course the lighting that I was seeing in the distance kept me repeating the mantra for the day. Carbon is not a conductive material.

I was a little ahead of the 10 am meeting so a quick stop at the local coffee shop that is not Tim Horton's blah for a quick warm up drink. The nice thing at this point was the fact that I was wet and not shivering, it was warm out. A few minutes later a few more brave souls showed and my potentially long ride alone in the rain went away. It was off to the beach and back, a great ride at this time of year but in a few weeks the route to Wasaga Beach becomes a little nuts with all the kids and their cars. The rain continued to be an on and off thing but it didn't seem to bother us. A few lake size puddles were the only thing that we seemed to be concerned about.

As we got a little closer to home on the return trip I noticed the pace had dropped and I still had a couple hours of riding to do so I ventured off alone, like usual, riding alone. The beach route is pretty flat so at the 3 hour mark I started to find as many hills as I could along my return route to home. Managed to find 2000 feet of hills in the course of 2 hours. Again there were just random dumping of rain but I was in a great mood and enjoying the ride to much. Of course anyone in ear shot was probably not enjoying my singing as i cranked up the music again.

As I rolled onto the rail trail for my cool down something strange seemed to be happening, it got brighter. The sun started to break. Figures as I pulled in the driveway at the 5 hour mark it becomes instantly summer like. I needed to get one of those rain rides in the body though. Even after all the races last year in the worst conditions the body still needs to have small reminders that it's not that bad being soaked for hours on end.

I promised pictures and here they are. Nothing of riding since I was not brave enough to pull the camera out on the ride. With a strung out Molly Monster at home I thought I would take her on one of her favorite things, a canoe ride. First paddle of the year and it was nice to be on the water. Still chilly but Molly didn't care and I dropped her off on random rock islands so she could swim and cause havoc to the birds. More than one goose was not impressed with the dog.

This is Molly saying lets go chase that bird

This is Molly looking unimpressed with the speed I was paddling at as the goose got away.


Random thoughts on the road race this morning, roads are damp at this time. My thoughts are more concerns of unknown riders at race pace in the rain. The Shake'n'Bake twins have changed their minds on the race. I'm not fully decided at this point. Still have nearly 2 hours to make a decision. The couch is very comfortable at this point but intensity must be done sometime today. More on that tomorrow.