Sometimes It Just Blows

and blows and blows and blows…the wind, that is.  Sometimes it even manages to change direction in tune with your ride, because Mother Nature says there’s no such thing as too much headwind.

When I woke up this morning, I knew the weather would be different than the last 2 months, because the sky was clear and the sun was out.  We’ve had weeks and weeks and weeks of cold cloudy/foggy mornings with no sunlight till nearly lunch.  Sweet! I thought, we’ll have some warmth on this ride.  What I didn’t expect was that we’d also have this new north wind as we headed south, before the shift to our normal south wind as we headed north.  Nearly 56 miles of headwind is bound to annoy even the most optimistic person, unless she is my coach in which case she’s delighted I got a good tough day out there.  Still, at least I had wonderful companions (who let me hang on their wheel when I was supposed to be riding easy in between intervals) and beautiful scenery!

They re-paved Watsonville Road just for us!

Thank you, trees, for providing some small shelter from the wind.

We had Day Road all to ourselves!

No shelter at all from the wind coming back up the valley to San Jose

Typical Northern California summer scenery – dry hills studded with oaks and farm fields in between

Post-ride/run recovery eating at its finest

TLC for tired legs

And so ends another big week, with one more to go before a rest week!