Sunday, September 20, 2009

Aarghh, scary wind!!

Yikes, that was a ride and a half today. Headed out nice and early to do hilly long bays again, this is probably one of my favourite rides, nice hard climb up to the Kiwi, cruise along the Summit Rd to Coopers and then done Gebbies around the bays up Evans and then home. Last week was great, I cranked out a PB to the Kiwi, that hurt a lot! Spent about 5mins at the Kiwi trying not to throw up while waiting for my legs to stop wobbling before cruising round the rest of the ride. No PB today, my legs were a bit fried and there was a head wind for a good amount of the climb as well plus I figured I was going to need some oomph left in my legs for the rest of the ride today with the wind kicking in. And boy did it kick in!! Heading along the Summit Rd it started to get very cold and foggy, ick! I never even saw Coopers Knob today thats how foggy it was. Other than that I was having quite a nice ride until I got to the Sign of the Bellbird where the wind really started to whistle along the top of the hill! Aargh, tis ok I figured, this end of the Summit Rd is less exposed than the Sumner end. Umm, no its not and its blimmin' scary up there! I think I pretty much screamed, cried, whimpered my way from the Bellbird to Gebbies!! I did think about turning back but was so far along the road I figured it was quicker to keep going forward and get off the hill. Coopers to Gebbies was just plain frightening, I was either yelling 'Nooooo' or whimpering out 'help' while clinging to my bike for dear life!! The wind just about biffed me across the road many many times, I think the only thing that would have made it worse/scarier would have been if it started to rain! I was hugely relieved to see the top of Gebbies Pass so that I could stop for a breather. There were a few guys there umming and aahing about whether to go up to Coopers or not, after I told them how hairy it was up there today they still headed on up so hopefully they had fun! One of the guys is Andrew who Jo from Complete Performance coaches, he is also training for Wanaka so that was cool to meet someone else heading to Wanaka. The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful luckily cos I was pretty much over the wind by this stage! Yay for an easy week this coming week :)