Hang tight! Or something.

A nice, straight track like this is what I could not manage this morning. There was a pretty stiff wind, 17 mph, with gusts up to 23 mph.

Outward-bound, I did fairly well. The wind was behind me; and I tried to hit 25 mph again, the way I did day before yesterday. Maybe I wasn\’t ready for another such effort; I got up to just over 22 mph.

Coming back home was another story. The wind kept pushing me around, especially when I needed to ride one-handed while I got a drink of water. The gusts were unpredictable. Once I got so frustrated with it that I stopped when I needed to get out the water bottle.

I\’m glad it wasn\’t raining. Precipitation with a wind like that makes for a miserable ride. When I wear a poncho on the road bike, it: one, flaps all over the place and creates a lot of wind resistance; two, makes bike control even more difficult; and three, causes visibility problems when I try to look behind me. That\’s when instinct makes me hang tight; but a death grip on the handlebars, so I\’ve read, can actually cause your track to be more erratic because of the tension; so I try to avoid it.

But I wander from the point. What can I do so that I\’ll be able to hold my line better, even when the wind is trying to shove me around? More core training, maybe? 

Even if I won\’t be able to ride like I were on a rail, I\’d like to be able to keep from wavering so much in the wind.