Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Love/Hate Wind Relationship

Sunday was unusually warm for this time of year, and also unusually windy. The winds were close to 30 for most of the afternoon and never died down much. I finally decided late afternoon to go for a short ride anyway.

Now, understand that we South Dakotans on this side of the state are VERY used to wind. It's a fact of life: If you are going to ride with any frequency, you WILL deal with wind. Usually between 7-15mph on a pretty regular basis. Once it hit's 20mph, it's a pain though.

I mashed the pedals out to Hwy 12 in Nebraska, often cussing my decision to go on this ride in the first place. Then, I turned around. Once I could feel my legs again, how quickly I forgot the pain of climbing into the wind. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee down the hill. There is a short steep drop right before you go across the bridge that says I hit 44.9 on my Garmin (although my bike computer read 46.2...go figure). Below is the graph that shows speed vs. elevation. Kind of a telling story of the wind.



Check out the average wind speeds. It was just plain nasty!

3 comments:

thE_kErnEl said...

my wind relationship is mostly hate/hate with a dose of disgust

Anonymous said...

I did this organized ride once that bragged about never raining on that day (an autumn ride). It had about a 30 mph wind during the ride. I asked if it was unusual, and the person said "no, it's always windy about this time of year".

I haven't been back...

Phil

Michelle said...

Wind....Love it at my back...that's the only time. Sounds like wind there is like wind here, it's always there, no matter what. Here, it's a cool wind on the hottest days and cold all other times. Wind chill is below freezing on my morning rides now.
I was just reading about "GG". Kevin uses bath "puff" :)