Hot night at the races

It's been really, really hot here in the Lehigh Valley. Tuesday was the cool day, with temperatures in the 90s. Today, it reached 100, or possibly hotter. The kind of day where you break a sweat walking from the office across the street to our workshop. It was certainly a hot day for a bike ride, let alone a bike race.

And yet, it was Thursday, so I rolled over to the training crit with some others from the Emmaus crew. The ride over was really, really hot. I was kind of prepared for it, having shoved an extra bottle of water into my pocket. It was a good thing, as I ran through a whole bottle during the 7-mile ride to Trexlertown.

Riding through the hot air made me feel like I was trying to push my bike through a swimming pool. So, we started racing, and now there were 50 of us trying to push our bikes at high speeds through the thick air. It was not a super awesome feeling. We all did our best to race our bikes, but the speeds felt markedly slower than in previous weeks. I can't speak for others, but for me, it was the kind of night where, no matter how hard I thought I was pushing the pedals, the speed didn't seem to go above 22 mph.

Once the race was over, I stood around with the others from Emmaus dripping sweat off the tip of my nose and watching a pool of sweat form on the blacktop beneath my bike -- a sight usually reserved for the indoor months of winter (or of broken wrists).

Mercifully, it had cooled down during the race, and the ride home was more pleasant. I'm grateful for the opportunity to take a dip in Bill's pool afterward, it was sorely needed.

Tomorrow's not looking any more promising, with temperatures again forecast to hit the 100-degree mark. It makes me grateful that temperatures for Saturday's Tour of the Hilltowns are *only* going to be in the mid- to upper-80s. That certainly puts things in perspective.