Today's Workout Brought to You by

wind, rain, (no)sense of direction and hairspray.

This is sort of how the last few days have been.  Saturday I escaped the rain and actually got in a few hours on the trail. I even survived driving Lil' Dave's car after my workout despite needing to do some serious seat adjustments.

No, I am not sitting on the floor.

Sunday was a different story. I headed to Murphy hoping to ride the trail, only to arrive just as the gate was closed. I decided to do a road ride from there, knowing I'd lose my motivation if I drove all the way home in the rain. I planned to start the week off with an easy 1 1/2 to 2 hour ride so I stuck a single bottle on my bike and some Chomps in my pocket. At the last minute I stashed a 20 in my pocket (just in case I ran out of water and found a gas station) and headed out.

I don't really mind rain if I'm warm enough so the ride went by quickly- so quickly in fact that by 1:30 in I came to a road I recognized and thought I was nearly done. Just a right turn and I'd be headed back to the car. Thirty minutes later I wasn't back at the car. Confused, I finally consulted the map on my phone, at which point I discovered I'd been riding straight south when I'd thought I was riding straight north. Thankfully, I'd finally stopped because I was almost in Iowa, which meant I needed to turn around.

My only excuse for this complete and utter lack of direction is the wind. I was sure it was from the west. Turns out, it was coming from the east and of course, I was not only just south of my car, but west of it, which made for quite a fun ride back. I arrived back to the car 3 hours and 30 minutes later with an empty bottle, an empty Chomps wrapper and my 20 bucks. Apparently there are no gas stations on the back roads to Iowa. Or drinking fountains.

The upside to Sunday's ride and bonk was that yesterday's ride was only an hour and a half. The trails were still too wet to ride, but I lucked out and had a work break right as the rain stopped but before the Memorial Day partiers hit the roads, allowing me a rare city ride without traffic.

The pouring rain returned today, which meant that my mid-day hair appointment would be followed by a run in the rain. Normally I'm a "leave my hair wet" kind of girl so I figured this would be no big deal. I don't own a curling iron or hairspray. However, on the rare occasion when someone cuts my thin, straight hair and is actually excited to try to do something with it, I say yes. So, I ended up leaving the hair salon like this:

I had to take a picture for Big E so he knows it's actually possible for me to have decent hair.

just as I was preparing to go run in the rain.

Since I haven't used hairspray since 1988, I had no idea what would happen when it mixed with the rain. Let's just say this- my ponytail ended up becoming a whole-head dreadlock. I managed to comb it out after about 15 minutes and throw it back into my usual wet ponytail just as my next client arrived. I guess I'm just destined to be a ponytail kind of girl. At least I had an hour of good hair.

Despite Big E's encouragement that training in crappy weather is good for me, I'm looking forward to some drier days. I want my trails back. I'll trade the hairspray for bugspray any day.