A Wet One

Because you asked... here is THE PURSE.
It's a beauty, eh?

On Wednesday I went for a long ride. Or I was supposed to go for a long ride. Thirty-five minutes into it I looked down and observed my front tire. Was it flat?
I stopped. Usually I'm wrong. Usually a tire I believe is flat is totally fine and I kick myself for being so damn paranoid.
Not this time.

I changed it. I got really dirty, because, I need to add here, it was pouring out. Kurt's favorite little adage about riding in the rain: We are not motivated by the sky....

Well now. Honestly, I'm not motivated by the sky. It's also fair to say, however, that I can be extremely un-motivated by the sky. The forecast for Wednesday was not firing my motivation, but it was definitely dampening it. The hourly forecast looked something like:

8 am rain, 9 am rain, 10 am rain, 11 am rain, 12 pm rain, 1 pm rain, 2 pm rain, 3 pm rain

and so on. Still, I went out bravely into the cold, wet misery.
And now I here I was--alone, cold, soaked, dirty, and changing a tire on the side of the road as cars drove by me mercilessly, splattering me in muddy guck.
BTW, does anyone know a trick for not freezing your fingers off when you use the Co2? I find I have to hold the canister firmly in place or some of the Co2 leaks instead of going into the tube, but when I hold it my fingers FREEZE. It's awful. Anyway.
After changing the tire I put everything bike into my little pouch and headed on my merry, dirty, wet way. Two minutes later I observed my front tire. FLAT AGAIN.

I admit I got a little weepy. It was one of those moments during which I really wanted a knight in shining armor to ride up and throw me on the back of his steed, bring me home, put me in front of a warm fire and give me hot cocoa.
Alas, not to be. There were no knights riding around on Washington St in Walpole on this sad, rainy day.

I changed the flat, and then observed the grim reality. I had no more tubes and no more Co2. Additionally, I was just forty minutes into a five+ hour ride and I had lost a good 25 minutes fixing flats. Here is the thing: to get in a five + hour ride I have to leave immediately after the kids get on the bus. Once riding there is no fucking around taking breaks to have a snack or take a long piss. Every minute counts if I want to get home and also get the transition run in before the kids get off the bus. Losing a half hour was not good.  Not good at all.

And so I headed home. I worried the whole way I would flat again. Clearly there was something embedded in the tire that I had not found while changing the tube in the pouring rain.

About ten minutes before I reached my house I looked down at my front tire, and I saw..... not a flat. I saw a BUBBLE. My tire was bubbling! I stopped and examined the bubble. Slowly, slowly it was expanding to form a rip.

Okay, I did cry. I cried and walked home in the rain, in my cleats, muddy, dejected, alone, pitiful. WHY hadn't I changed the tire? I knew it was old! I knew it had very little life in it!
It was truly sad and pathetic.

When I got home I checked into Training Peaks to figure out what I could do instead of the ride. The long run. I'm racing Sunday, so the long run was only an hour. Still. An hour. In the cold rain. I almost burst into tears again.

But of course it was fine. Running in the rain isn't bad at all, really, and there is no chance of getting a flat when running, which is one of the reasons I will always love running MORE than riding.

The  next morning I woke ready to RIDE, BABY! But okay, I admit, I was a little bit leary of going out because the forecast looked surprisingly familiar:
8 am rain, 9 am rain, 10 am rain, 11 am rain, 12 pm rain, 1 pm rain, 2 pm rain, 3 pm rain
I decided to ride the first few hours on the trainer--safe and comfy in my little home as it poured outside.
Naturally I felt guilty. And wimpy.
So I decided to make my ride on the trainer the toughest mother fucking ride ever.
I turned the heat to 87 degrees. I did not use a fan. I rode the watts I was required to ride outside.

OH MY GOD.

I contemplated putting a bucket underneath me just so I could see how fast it would fill with my sweat. A bonus would be I could use it to barf. I have never ever sweat that much in my life. Nasty. Nasty x 1,000,000.

After three hours of sweating like that I went outside to finish the ride. It was still raining, of course, but at least I only had 2.5 hours left, and wasn't staring down 5+ in the pouring rain.
I made it. Granted, Mrs. Z and I were covered in grit and slime and gravel and mud by the end. But I did it.

And today it's sunny out. It's sunny because on my schedule I just have AN INDOOR SWIM.