It was a rough day at work today. They are repainting the exterior of the building, so all the doors and windows are covered in plastic and taped up from the outside. A very loud compressor has been sitting just outside my window every day this week. Today it really started to get to me. I work from my home office, so it’s not like I can escape the noise, paint smell, and heat (no breeze with everything shut) by simply “working from home” for a day. No, I either work through it, or leave and get nothing done.

At some point I realized I would get more done by not working. I needed to get away from it to clear my head. A nice long ride sounded like just the right solution. It was.

Like yesterday, there was a lot of wind coming in off the coast today, but it was coming from the west north west. I thought it might give me a boost climbing Torrey Pines. Nope. The road is cut out from the cliff and almost completely shielded from the wind on the way up. It was torture seeing the trees just across the street whipping in the wind while I felt none of it. The trees on my side were calm. I managed to push through it and get a PR anyway, so I’m not too upset. But I really did not like coming back down on that rough road into the gusty headwind. It wasn’t fun.

Heading up the coast was almost like riding into a headwind the whole time, since the coastline goes sort of north north west. I figured I would just ride up the coast until I got too tired, then turn around and let the wind push me home. That’s pretty close to what I did, except that I couldn’t stop myself from pushing hard on the way back too. It turned out to a be a pretty good ride for me, but I’m really sore now. I think I might need a real rest day tomorrow.