Rain, Rain Go Away !! Or I'm off to the Azores !

The wet stuff is really beginning to be a pain. I understand that we need a bit of rain, to keep things ticking over, and hopefully to avoid a hose-pipe ban. But really it's getting beyond a joke now. I keep on missing track sessions and track meets. My local criterium race at Crystal Palace has been cancelled a few times given how technical the course is, and how dangerous it gets in the wet. They even had to cancel the national road race champs in Beverley (North Yorks) due to flooding in the north of England.

In fact part of my family lives up there. Luckily their house wasn't flooded, but the neighbours across the street were affected. After a certain point the drains become overfilled and the water just rises upwards through people's homes. So imagine all the crap that you flush away or pour down the plughole basically coming back up into your home. Ugh, recycling in the extreme !! So the council now have a mammoth job clearing the place up and getting rid of the awful stench.

Apparenty we have just had the wettest June in the UK ever. I know that because I have spent more time on my turbo trainer than any other June I can remember ! For God Sake, this is meant to be summer. All the good stuff happens now. Barbecues, summer parties and concerts, cycling in the sun. Was our summer those couple of weeks in April ? It seems like it. Forecasters say the rain will continue at least into mid-July, as currently there's an area of high pressure stuck over the Portuguese island of the Azores. While they're basking in soaring temperatures, we've got this mass of low pressure hanging above us causing storms on an almost biblical scale.

So we will have more wet races to look forward to - maybe I should fit my racing bike with mud guards !
We can only keep our fingers crossed that there's a 3 hour window this Saturday for the Tour de France prologue when the riders can at least have a dry and safe ride.

Stanley (aka Him Indoors) is in Wales mountain biking this week. I think his holiday's gonna be a big wet one.
As I look out of my window and see yet another shower beginning I can say that Crystal Palace will be cancelled again this evening. Another hot date with my turbo trainer beckons ! I will be at Hillingdon cycle circuit tomorrow though, come rain or shine. Naturally, I prefer shine.