Damn it was cold

this morning at the Cuyahoga Valley Circuit Race aka the Covered Bridge Race aka the Akron Valley Race etc.......what is the official name of this race anyway? It drizzled and rained the whole time on the drive down from home and we knew it was going to be nasty. It quit for a while during registration but it was cold and windy. Brad sent us off @ 9am and the backside of the course was wet and slippery and my ass end slid out a couple of times on on the sharp corners and even once on the sweeping fast left on Everett and I was thinking I do not want to go down on the first road race of the year, I dont ever want to go down but especially on the first one, so I tried my best to be careful and race conservatively, which is almost impossible in the A race. Then it started raining again and then even harder for about 1/2 to 3/4 of the race with the temperature hovering right around 40 degrees. By the time the race was over my feet were numb, my hands were numb and the tops of my thighs felt like they had needles sticking in them, I even had hot rub on, not to mention I was soaked, but then so was everyone else. I finished the 35 miles with nothing to write home about, but the idea was to stay out of trouble, get some fast work in and see how the legs are and do a brick run afterward.
Tony and I changed into dry socks and put on a dry hat and took off on our run. We couldn't even feel our feet for about the first mile then they warmed up, that's always a weird feeling to not be able to feel your feet when your on them.... We ran to the parking lot near Szalay's Farm on Bolanz running the opposite way of the race course and back which is 4.3 miles and the run felt pretty good after a fast race. I kept my HR at a steady 160 while we averaged 7:15 miles, which wasn't too bad, a decent tempo run.
Overall it was a good training day. I wasn't pleased with the bike race, but that was to be expected, they'll get better and I'm also going to be racing primarily Masters road races this season, I'm just doing the A races in the spring races and at Westlake.
Nice job to all that raced this weekend in the cold wet and windy conditions, true Belgian hard men I say!!

The picture is not of our race, but you all get the idea.