Carnage

First ride of the season on the "A" bike. A tough 15 mph wind out of the north is never pleasant, but early in the Spring? Actually, it's another week before Spring springs. About 8 of us decided to take it on. There was the usual moaning and groaning at the ride start. A couple of, I'm-hung-overs, and I-got-in-bed-at-5:30-this-mornings. You can never believe a cyclist. They are always playing mind games, you know, trying to get the edge.
Up to Wayzata was all well and good, then we got into some open country and turned directly into the wind. It got tough...grinding away at a relentless foe. We were sharing the pain taking turns up front, and working a paceline.
Finally we turned for Rockford no longer having to take the wind on directly, but this is where the carnage started. Rollers are a bitch and they were merciless today. Four of us gapped on the hills, just kept rotating, staying away into Rockford. We regrouped there. Now with a tail wind we all stayed together into Delano, where we refueled and tried to dry out. We'd been working hard and I'm sure we'd out sweated a bikram yoga class. Took a few minutes to warm up once on the bikes again, and we made short work of the 7 miles to Watertown, which is where things started getting ugly.
The cross wind we encountered out of Watertown joined forces with the rollers on County Rd 6 and was brutal. Again we started a paceline and echelon trying to keep ourselves sheltered from the onslaught. Slowly guys started falling off as the wind and rollers took their victims. Eventually three of us were left to work our way through the invisible quad and lung killer. After about 6 miles of this we stopped and waited for our comrades. Another mile or two and we turned South brokering a treaty with the wind that put it on our side.
A very hard effort today. It was a head down grind it out kind of ride, but it felt so good to be out in mid March acting like it was June. 80/19.9