Originally Posted by
robertkat
Don't worry yourself Patty. I think you did right. There is a loss of the fee, but you would probably hate it even more had you paid to suffer. Like Dante said, don't second guess yourself. If you aren't comfortable with wet weather, you would have been miserable. That and the wind. I know how much you hate the wind, and we had a head wind all the way from Fallbrook to Capistrano. There were a couple times I nearly pulled out myself.
I personally have never DNS'd a ride, but I have passed up on some, or I wait until the last possible minute to register if I'm unsure. I skipped on our local 300k a few weeks ago as I had a bad feeling about it. I can deal with wet and some light rain, but not what was forecasted. It was much worse than expected and over half the riders DNF'd.
That wind that you mention is the prevailing wind. When I commuted 3 times a week going north from Encinitas to Huntington Beach (69 miles each way) after 5pm it was always a "headwind". Granted sometimes it was stronger than others.
I'm probably the worst person to chime in on a thread about DNS'ing and DNF'ing a ride because of inclement weather. I did the 300km you mention in your post. I was miserable. I was soaked to the bone and freezing cold. But I am much stronger mentally for it. Yes half the field DNF'd because I just don't think people like to suffer. Bike racing is about suffering and the person who can endure more suffering prevails especially in Ultras. Sure some people wouldn't call brevets, climbing centuries and double centuries races. I say to them if there is more than one of us there and it is a timed event -- I'm racing it. People just don't like to suffer. I make myself suffer while training and many times my training is tougher than the event itself. So when race day comes I am not going to bail just because it isn't perfect weather.
I did the
2005 Butterfield double century or Butterflood as it was called because of the rains, floods, and tornadoes. Just look at the list of DNS it's appalling. I was happy with my time of 12:29. Yes it was miserable. But I wanted to test my personal limits and that I did.
I did come back in 2008 and bettered my time to 10:46 under better weather conditions.
Here is the race report for the
San Diego 300km mentioned above. 12 hours was a good time considering the constant rain and cold temps at altitude. I was cautious on every descent and worked hard on every climb.
People just need to HTFU.