Stupid Radar!

Had a really bad day yesterday. I blame it on the stupid radar.

I was planning to go on another Inside Out Sports training ride. I wrote about that in an earlier blog (item #3 on that page). I was really looking forward to riding in a paceline again, and really pushing myself to ride with a fast group.

At 4:30 pm, the radar looked like this:

The weather around here is fickle, so it might have cleared up by ride start time. But it’s a 45 minute drive out there, and I didn’t want to get there only to find it was canceled due to weather. So I bagged the idea.

At 5:30 pm, the radar looked like this:

Damn! Ticked me off.

I needed to do a brick and just didn’t have it in me to ride on the trainer. So, I went out for a solo ride. I needed to do something hard, and lately have felt like I can’t get my heart rate into the right zones for my bike workouts. So, I decided to do a heart rate test: Warm up. Ride 30 minutes all out effort. Hit lap timer on HR monitor for the last 20 minutes. The average HR on that 20 minute effort should be my LT, which will then give me my training zones.

Things didn’t go so well on the ride…

Lot of traffic on the roads that time of day. Makes it hard to concentrate on an all out effort!

My HR monitor crapped out on me. Well, actually it was operator error. I just messed up hitting the buttons later in the ride, and cleared out the heart rate data from the test portion. bluh.

My bike was making a rattley noise the whole ride. I think it’s from my Menora water bottle cage. It’s always working it self loose. grrrr.

The computer on my bike ran out of batteries. So I couldn’t see my speed or average speed. crap.

Riding solo in the evening sucks. Too many cars and less visibility…I just don’t feel safe. Even tho I have a blinky halogen light on my handlebars and a dorky orange flag attached to my saddle bag. Still just doesn’t feel safe.

Idiot drivers honked at me and yelled obscenities at me. I really hate that. Why do some drivers honk at you? Do they think they are being kind by alert you to their presence?

On one climb, my chain kept slipping out of gear in the back. WTF?

On a more positive note, the run went well. I felt strong and in a really good groove. Guess I need to look at the bright side of things. Felt good to vent. Thanks for listening.