Better than expected

This weekend's weather was supposed to be pretty crappy.

I got rained on riding home from work on Friday. It was a light rain and wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

Saturday was a write-off.

Sunday was supposed to be more of the same, but when I woke up this morning it was sunny. The weather forecast was calling for thundershowers later in the morning and afternoon.

I decided to take a chance and see how much cycling I could fit in before the rain. I headed west, toward the darker clouds. The logic behind that was if it started raining, I'd turn around and come home, and hopefully stay ahead of the rain, or most of it at least.

I expected to be out for about an hour, max.

2¼ hrs, and 53½kms later, I made it home, still dry (aside from sweat). As I was putting my bike away, it began to rain. The timing couldn't have been better. :)

One of the highlights of my ride was as I drove along the Rockliffe Parkway. Instead of turning off, to ride the side streets home, I decided to continue along the parkway to Montreal Rd since it was closed for the "Sunday Bikeday".

As I rode along, into the wind, another cyclist, hunched over his handlebars, passed me. That's not unusual. :) After passing, they pulled in front of me about 20ft away. My brain must have subconciously increased my pace (or maybe they slowed down?) but I managed to keep up with them. The wind was nasty, so I leaned down on my handlebars to reduce the resistance. I soon realized that I was slowly closing the gap.

I took that as a challenge. I stayed with them for the next 3kms or so, slowly reducing the distance between us. We had a pretty good pace going.

I decided to push harder and regain my lead. :)

And I did. I passed them and pulled back in front of them one I had a ~20ft lead. I think I managed to keep it for a km or two. I had no idea if they were even still behind me, until the wind picked up and started to take its toll on my new found energy.

My mystery competitor passed me.

He pushed pretty hard, and I noticed that he looked over his shoulder a few times. I think he had the same idea. Again, I stayed inline with them, this time about 25-30ft back and they were slowly increasing that gap.

The wind was brutal and we were on an incline. But I was having fun. This guy was setting a pace, and giving me something to strive for.

I did regain the lead one more time, but not until he pulled over about 1km before the end of the parkway. :)