A very good friend of mine recently posted about a 13mile run she did on a really cold, wet day last week, when it threw it down with rain all day. That was the day when I had already wussed out of doing my scheduled training ride for exactly those reasons: cold and wet! Her post photo was full of life, smiles, rain, dampness, mud and exhilaration – oh boy, did I want some of that?!
It was such a wake-up call to me; you get out what you put in. If you put in nothing – you obviously get out nothing! No matter what the reason you give yourself for doing nothing. In my case, I just didn’t want to get cold. I knew I would get cold because I hadn’t got around to sorting out my winter bike with mud guards on, and for the past couple of rides that week I’d got a bit of a road-splatter-soaking, which I had actually quite enjoyed, but wasn’t in a hurry to repeat! To my shame, I even managed to miss the following day’s ride because this time it was snowing – and I still hadn’t sorted my bike out!
So, now I have! It turns out that I am actually much keener to go out now that I know I’ll be road-splatter-free (to a greater extent than before!) and I also do much better if I remember to wear my cycling cap which keeps the rain from streaming down my face. It also turns out that now I remember why I was so reticent to sort out this bike – it’s a proper old donkey!
So, lessons learnt:
- Getting cold and wet is still better than wussing out – especially if you have friends who will most likely go out themselves and then make you jealous that you didn’t go out yourself!
- I love it that my friends spur me on!
- I need to know where my bike wheels live in the plethora of wheels we have in our garage, so I can identify them myself when I suddenly decide in the depths of winter that it is time for my winter bike.
- The time has come to do my own bike maintenance.
- I still hate my winter bike!
- I need my winter bike because I’d rather be drier than wetter!
What about you? What gets you out in all weathers?