Its been a fairly busy week juggling workouts around work, weather, and life in general. Anyone who lives in the Great Lakes area, Indiana, or Ohio (and many parts of the Northeast) have been dealing with torrential rains day after day after day. Not the drizzly stuff that gets annoying after a while but which you can still manage, but the heavy-duty, flooding deluges.

Catching up, the swim workouts have improved again, thanks to tweaking the form, following the Total Immersion method. The runs are improving, once again tweaking the form, following the ChiRunning method. But the bikes aren't happening, so maybe we should tweak the weather?

All the Iron Athletes here should be commended for doing their long bikes (100+ miles) week after week in this rain and cold sometimes too. Friday was one of the worst days, with heavy rain and high winds, and yet they persisted, getting another 100 miler in and then another Sunday, even though Sunday it had quieted down to just a steady drizzle.

Sunday, though was Mother's Day. Even though my mom is gone, I wanted to spend the day with my sister and daughter, and my son and grandsons. Two of my kids live out of state (Montana and New Jersey), so it was surprising to hear from my son and surprising to almost not hear from my daughter. It was a nice day all around however.

So tonight was finally a bike night. Its been several weeks since it was a Tuesday bike night. There have been Tuesday spin nights but no outside biking. Since rain has been the forecast for days, I did check the weather and radar and saw nothing to worry about.

With all the rain, the trees have blossomed into lush, green canopies along the river bike path. The path was littered with a lot of debris again, but no big obstacles until I reached the low land area. I knew immediately that the bridge would be washed over and the rest of the trail flooded when I saw the boat ramp under water and the first part of the trail submerged as well.

So I had to cut the route short again. Its likely to be another 10 days or 2 weeks before this clears, so I was disappointed to not go the whole 15 mile route. Its a good route for speed, and I like to do my own time trials on this route, but that's not likely to happen for a while now.

Heading back, I decided to take the route the opposite way, toward town, to make up some of the distance I had to forego because of flooding. I took it to the deadend, noticing the darkening skies and thought to myself of all the times I had rode in the rain and that really it wasn't that bad riding in the rain. No sooner had those thoughts formed when I started feeling drops. You've got to be kidding! But yes, it was starting to rain. Oh well, another rainy day in River City.

I picked up the pace as the rain picked up as well. I was surprised at all the people still out walking on the path, and even came upon 3 young people walking their bikes. While it was raining fairly hard, no puddles were forming. I have biked in the rain more times than I have fingers, sometimes getting caught in pop-up thunderstorms with lightning, and while it isn't really that bad riding, I have learned to respect the weather, knowing full well my visibility and drivers' is reduced, knowing I can wipe out on a puddle (and did before), and knowing the dangers of lightning. While Iwas not wasting any time, I wasn't racing to get done either.

And as to be expected, the rain stopped within a minute after arriving back at my car, having rained long enough and hard enough to get soaked. A few others I knew were now heading back as well. And of course, a beautiful sunset followed the rain. I got done what I wanted for the night, so I wasn't disappointed.