Rain Rain Go Away

Cycling is a hard sport. It requires you to push yourself beyond reason to reach your full potential. You have to ignore the pain in your legs and explore the depths of the unknown to maximize your performance. The sport is full of hard-nosed athletes that are willing to brave the elements no matter what Mother Nature has to throw at them. I’m not one of those…ha ha.

Sure, I like to push myself to the limit, and I know how to dig deeper than the next guy to get the most out of my body. I love the thrill of competition and that dog-tired feeling you get after a super hard ride or workout. But…ahhhh…well…not if it’s raining. Yeah, I’m definitely a fair weather rider.

I am comfortable with my reputation as a wimp in bad weather. Most of my teammates know that I hate getting wet on the bike. I love this sport as much as the next rider, but I do this for fun. And it’s not fun for me if it’s raining. Especially in November when most of us are not “training” yet and we’re just riding for the pure enjoyment of riding. So, when Sam and I were heading downtown for the 2011 Ride with George Hincapie to raise money for new MTB trails to be built in downtown Greenville (near the YMCA and Cleveland Park) and I had the windshield wipers going on the Suby, I knew it was going to be a miserable day in the saddle. We quickly decided to donate our money for the trails and do an indoor workout on the computrainers at the Edge.

Brian T. and Debbie S. joined Sam and I for our indoor hammer-fest at the Edge and we had a nice time. We tried to get in touch with Giselle and Mel who were both scheduled to be at the ride, but we were unsuccessful. Thanks to some help from Debbie, we were able to load up our bikes and start pedaling on the computrainers.

If you’ve never done a computrainer class, you should check them out this winter. You plug in your weight and functional threshold power and the computer does all the adjustments for you during your ride. You hold your cadence and the machine varies the tension on your bike to match the action on the big screen TV. We chose a “Spirited Club Ride” for our session, and with almost 2 hours of zone 3-4 work, it was definitely spirited. I think we had fun, but I will say that it was a pretty hard workout.

After the ride, we headed over to mingle and eat lunch with those that braved the rain. There was a silent auction, food and beer from Thomas Creek Brewery. Big props to Brian Myrick for hosting and executing the ride and celebration afterwards. If you still want to donate money to the fund to build trails on city land downtown, send it to Brian.

If you braved the rain on Sunday, I commend you. If you didn’t, I certainly won't make fun of you. Thanks to Sam, Brian and Debbie for helping me get my ride in without risking the rain. Give the computrainers a try if you want to really tune up your performance this winter. It’s never raining inside at the Edge Endurance Training Center.