The Looming Double

It's the week before Solvang Spring.  Every year I feel in equal parts excited and anxious as this double approaches.  This year it seems these feelings started bubbling up earlier.  Maybe it's because I was training well a month ago and felt optimistic.  Then I got sick and it took me two weeks before I felt normal and another ten days before I felt normal on the bike.  So I was nervous that I may have a bad ride or DNF, god forbid.  For the past week, I've been training well, albeit doing mostly intensity work.  But this training has returned the optimistic outlook.  Then there's the weather.  We have had a very dry winter until ten days ago, when it started dumping daily, just as I had hoped to do one last endurance ride to prepare.  I've been checking the forecast for March 24, the day of the ride and it's been changing daily.  First it was showers the day before, then showers the day of the ride, and for the past two days it's been partly cloudy the day before and the day of and showers the day after.  Since it's now four days before the ride, I hope that forecasts become more precise as the time to the ride shortens and it remains dry for the 24th.  Of course no one told Mama Nature that it wasn't supposed to rain on the day of the ride last year, when it dumped for the last 100 miles of this ride.  But even a cyclist very well prepared for louse weather doesn't look forward to riding in the rain -- at least one doesn't.

In other good news, my Llewellyn frame has been repaired and I'll have it built up and ready to ride at Solvang, if I choose to ride this bike.  I think I will.  I'll have to do a shakedown ride or two to get used to the bike again and for the bike to get used to me.  I think we can work together well.  Unless the forecast changes.  Then I'll take my fendered Spectrum. 

Hmm.  Just checked the forecast for Morro Bay, the north-most point of the ride and it has 30% chance of rain on the 24th.  Glad I looked.  Plan B is becoming Plan A and I will be taking more rain gear than anticipated... unless the forecast changes again.

 .