In looking back at the last week, I’ve done some pretty silly things. All to “get the training in.” I sometimes wonder if being dedicated to triathlon is dangerous to your health, and my answer for the past week was: yes.
1. Last Thursday: Needed to get a semi-long run in. In order to not have to do this alone, I waited for my friends to be able to join me. It was to start at 3:30pm. It was 98 degrees outside with a heat index of 115. Not smart.
2. Last Sunday: Need to do my long ride. Forecast shows 60% chance of showers, but clearing up fast. Temperature was warm enough, what the heck? 30 minutes into the ride, we see that we are riding into a huge dark cloud. We didn’t turn around. Lightening, thunder then pouring rain. We pulled off the road into a ditch under a tree. Still getting poured on and, unprotected from the winds, became cold quickly. We waited over an hour for a guy with a pickup truck who gave us a ride back to the cars.
3. Wednesday: Need to get in a semi-long ride. Forecast shows 30% chance of thunderstorms, but not until 2pm. We’ll be done long before this. 20 miles into the 56 mile ride, it starts raining. We keep going. Lightening. We keep going. Rain comes down so hard, can’t see the road, glasses fog up and no brakes. We still have 20 miles to go. We pull over into an abandoned garage where we waited for over 90 minutes until the rain stopped. Hands and feet numb, absolutely freezing, we get back on the road to finish the 20 miles.
Thankfully, no accidents or incidents to report, but really not smart training. I wonder why I sometimes think a workout is more important than the safe thing do to. It’s easy to know what’s right and smart and sometimes hard to do it.
