Whether and the Weather

These days I feel like I live by the weather forecast. Sometimes it's fairly straightforward, as in when it's mid-30th's and rain all day I'll just make a date with the gym. This makes time for working on core and hamstring strength, running to build the tendons and just gives the cycling muscles an extra break.

Today however, was far from straight forward. Other commitments had me busy in the morning, when it wasn't too cold and plenty dry. Checking www.weather.wrong showed a massive storm swirling around Philadelphia, but not over the city. It seemed to be inching ever closer, but they can't tell any more than I when it will rain and how bad. A few drizzles I can live with, but no one wants to freezing cold, wet, dirty and have to deal with slippery descents for two or three hours on the bike.

So I waited.

I zipped up my rain jacket, went to the food co-op, bought most of a weeks worth of food, came back and still no rain.

Ok, I'll put my fenders on and if it's still not raining, then I'll go out. Of course, the fenders were off the bike because the rear mount broke and thinking I didn't have a spare I removed both. Naturally, I didn't look in the right crevice of my room because a few hours later I found my spare. Removing and installing fenders is a pain, but I've got it down to 15 minutes or so. The biggest challenge is removing the rear brake bolt because my allen key is so long I can only get 3/4 of a turn before hitting the seat tube.

With the last turn of the allen key, and the last brake adjustment complete the rain began to come.

Two hours.

It was two hours since I got back and could have gone out for rain free riding.

Oh well, off to the gym. More rowing, back work and now some hamstring work. I'm definitely coming up short for my February mileage goals.