The lost summer

My cycling year has been little to write home about, hence why I haven't written about it all year. With the birth of our second child on the day I was meant to enter my first race of the year, plans changed. And that was OK. There's few things in life I'm happy to take a year away from racing for but that's one. Ever happy to skip an evening ride for the sake of a trip to the park. It's the beauty of the recreational cyclist, the weekend warrior (or after work warrior as I've become), you're not paid for it and you're not going to be riding the Tour so you can ride when you want and play when you want (eat what you want too!).

In June I did the 24 Hour Summer Solstice MTB race for a second straight year. A superb weekend of riding on a superb track and this time I had decent quality lights to properly enjoy the night time riding, though doing back-to-back laps at 2 a.m. was a bit of a grind. Still, I'll go back to it again. But that was the only time I've raced the bike in anger this year after doing 30 plus races over the past couple of years. Again, OK by me.

Riding on the road for purposes of fitness and pleasure has dipped too, reduced mostly to riding home from work on a stretch of road that's probably a little busy to ride on during rush hour and which leaves you waiting for another car to sweep past you far to close resulting in hand waiving and cursing and wishing you had a helmet cam from which you could get their license plate to pass onto the authorities only for nothing to come of it anyway.

Weekend rides have been few and far between this year. I've been gladly too busy at parks, water parks, zoo's, or simply avoiding the bad weather. That said, nobody minds skipping a ride for the good things, but when it's because of the weather it's frustrating. After the most miserable winter in recent memory for those living in Southern Ontario and certainly the worst in the years I've been here, everyone who rides a bike had to be looking forward to the summer months, but frequent rainy days and many threats of thunder storms has reduced the summer to one of disappointment from a weather perspective...only from a weather perspective, I must emphasize.

On one ride home from work last month the weather forecast told me there was a 'thunder storm warning' in the area, but I rode on anyway, determined to get ahead of it before it was due to hit. And yet there I was on the road, surrounded by dark clouds and when I seen a flash of lighting in the direction I was headed with the wind having turned from the tail to the head I changed plans and changed direction and headed for the bus. Before I could reach it the skies opened and down came the lighting, I ducked into a Starbucks for some shelter, but 90 minutes, two tea's and two lemon raspberry loafs later I was still watching lighting crash from the sky, and on one occasion, onto the roof of the building I was in. I don't cycle in that.

When it did ease I got myself across the street and into a pub before it eased completely. I made my move to ride the 2km to the bus but halfway there another dark cloud loomed and more thunder came down. At one point I tried for a short-cut but ran into a bog of mud on the edge of a building site which was a lot thicker than it looked and it threw me over the bars. I landed on my feet, somehow, but looked as though I'd spent the day mountain biking rather than riding on the road and by this stage I had changed back into my regular clothes. I eventually flagged down the bus from the cover of a building and thankfully he stopped despite me looking homeless. I got on board, avoiding a bolt of lightning, and got home. The kind of day that summed up the years riding...a lost one with too much dodgy weather.

All is not totally lost though. I won't race again this year but we're only in the dying days of August and at long last the weather appears to be picking up in a more consistent basis. The dog days of summer may become the best days of cycling. A good month of September riding would be good and if I can carry some fitness into the winter, into my basement and onto the turbo then that would be a bonus.

This weekend I have some big miles planed so here is hoping this week of summer weather holds up. It's worth getting some miles in now when time allows because soon enough there will be snow on the driveway to shovel and the longing for a warm day and dry roads with which to go for a gentle ride will be haunting my thoughts as the forecast calls for another week of snow.