Clearing Showers

It was rise and shine early today so I could get in the scheduled 190km on the bike. I ate breakfast outside, keeping company with the puppy. The weather was overcast, and a bit warmer than I expected. Looking like a good day for a ride. I checked the weather on the internet just to be sure:

18-21 degress Celcius. Clearing showers in the morning.

Nearly perfect, but a few light showers should be okay. Rain coat tucked into my jersey pocket and I was off. Within five minutes my new saddle bag broke. For some reason the clip snapped while I was riding along. A quick rearrangement of the necessities into various pockets, a quick dump of the broken bag back home and I was off again.


Then in only five minutes (again) it started raining. Not heavy, more of a pleasant light mist. The kind of rain I am happy to ride if it is warm enough. It was warm enough, especially after I put on my rain coat. Out of town I headed, down and up through the Gorge. The rain didn't look like it was clearing, in fact it was doing just the opposite.


The clouds were thicker and darker. The temperature was dropping. I had now just discovered that my trusty rain coat had lost its water proof qualities. Which was about the only quality the coat had. Now I am not a fan of cycling in the wet for two main reasons:

1. I have Raynaud's disease which means I tend to lose circulation in my hands and often my feet despite wearing plenty of clothing and conditions still being relatively warm. This puts me at a descent risk of frost bite.
2. Safety.

Now that I'm into my hard training I thought it best to actually try to live by the Go Hard or Go Home motto. I continued riding and the rain got worse. I lasted only another 15 minutes. The turning point was when the water running across the road suddenly became so deep it was up to my wheel hubs and shifted my bike a good distance sideways. At the same there was a flash of lightning overhead. The drains weren't coping with deluge and combined with all the dirt and debris from the nearby road and building works I had no idea what was beneath my wheels. I turned around and headed back home, knowing I wasn't going to get what I wanted out of the morning training.

A bit under 2 hours completed in the wet was a long way from the planned 190km. This afternoon I hopped onto the turbo-trainer for a solid 3 hours to salvage a good portion of the day. In the end my legs were finally struggling to turn the cranks. Exactly how they should be feeling.