So It Was Kind of Windy Out There

On Saturday Tim (on his fixie), Danny, and I took our cyclocross bikes out for a nice, although super cold, ride on the roads south of town. We didn't really end up needing the cross bikes as the roads were great and more or less clear of snow. Following this successful ride Tim organized another one for Sunday, but this time on road bikes since we expected the roads to be in great condition again.

Holy cow were we in for a surprise.

GPS route of Sunday's ride

The forecast was calling for some wind, but we weren't expecting it to be quite that windy! We encountered a wicked west-southwest wind that was unrelenting. According to the Weather Channel the average wind speed was 24 mph with gusts up to 33 mph. This made the first half of our ride a brutal slog through crazy winds. Oh, and it wasn't exactly warm with highs in the upper 20's.

We had a pretty good sized group to help fight the wind, but that could only help so much when facing a 30+ mph cross/headwind. We fought back against the wind the best we could and ended up averaging a blistering (/sarcasm) 14.8 mph  over the first 26 miles. It's pretty safe to say that that's probably the hardest any of us have ever worked to go less than 15 mph. To make things worse, the wind had thrown the snow back onto the road and created some pretty sizeable drifts. No one went down, but they commanded some extra care. Clay managed to snap a picture of the snow flying over the road, but it really doesn't do it justice.

Fighting the wind

Eventually we finished our death march and it was time to turn into the tailwind. After much rejoicing and a quick gas station stop we set off back towards Ann Arbor, this time with the wind at our back. And oh how glorious it was. At times we were gliding along at around 25 mph without putting much effort at all in. I noted to Tim that "This must be what it feels like to be Tony Martin all the time."

Eventually we were back to Ann Arbor Saline Rd and all that separated us from home (warmth and food) was the climb up Wagner. On paper it's not a terrible climb by any means, but its position at the end of a hard ride makes it a tough little bugger. And to make things worse, my shifter cables had gotten covered in snow from the road, froze, and became quite dysfunctional. Since they were frozen they couldn't really let out much cable tension, so I got to climb Wagner on tired legs in the big ring. Fun.

Overall it ended up being a fun, yet tough, ride. I've definitely never ridden in winds quite that extreme, especially combined with the snow. It was also great to get out there with a bunch of guys from the team. Just over a month until Lindsey Wilson!