Growing up in England we had a saying .. “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight – Red sky in morning, shepherd’s warning”.  As dawn broke this morning, the sky was red!

With the advent of weather radar, I no longer need to rely on the color of the sky, to forecast the potential weather for my long bike rides.  This morning, having looked at the weather radar, I knew that there was a good chance, that I would see rain on my five and a half hour ride.  That turned out to be true; the first half of my ride was dry and the second half was wet.

Even though I knew I would see rain, I still did the ride outside. As long as there are no forecasted thunderstorms, I will typically go ride in the rain.  Why would I do this?  The answer is … because it might rain during a race, and I need to be prepared for that.

It ended up raining a lot on my ride today and that was a double-edged sword.  The rain meant that the temperatures stayed much cooler than they have been lately, which was a big plus.  The downside, was that roads were wet and that made them a little more tricky to navigate.

My ride today included four, high power, higher speeds efforts.  I was able to do three of these efforts before the rain arrived, but chose not to do the last one, because of road conditions.  When the roads are wet, you just have to be a little more cautious.  You need to watch out for puddles. You need to take corners more slowly.  You need to allow for reduced braking efficiency.  It’s just a case of adapting.

I ended up enjoying my ride.  The cooler temperatures were great and I was still able to put in lots of hard work, by choosing a route that included a lot of hill climbing.

So please don’t avoid riding in bad weather.  You can’t predict the weather on race day, and if it turns out to be bad, you will be glad you made the decision to train in bad conditions and gain the valuable experience needed, to adapt.