Blowin' in the wind

How many roads must a man (or woman) cycle down before they get a tailwind? Quite a lot it seems.

Since we started our trip down Africa, we have become experts in wind (of all varieties). However, never have we paid so much attention to the bearing of prevailing winds and wished we had anemometers to garner both the speed and direction. In Egypt we were spoilt by tailwinds that were so strong, water coming out of a bottle would instantly stream horizontally. This meant we were able to average speeds up to 40km/h for a day. This wind favoured us all the way south to Khartoum, where we sadly had to bear east to Addis Ababa and suddenly our friendly tailwind became a brutal crosswind; it hasn’t really been our ally again until recently. 

Like false flats (see our blogpost on Mindset), you can cycle along with a tailwind considering you are having a great day and thinking “wow, my legs must be strong today”. However, when cycling into a headwind, it can feel like the world is against you and the day might take forever.  It is the unseen nature of the enemy that makes it so mentally challenging.  One of the frustrations about wind is that it is not a constant – whereas you can quantify and define a riding day of 160km with 800m of climbs, and this will be the same for whoever does it, whenever they ride it, the wind is more fickle. Tacking on “into a headwind” at the end of the stats does not seem to do it justice, and you know that had you done the ride a day later, it could have been infinitely easier if the wind had been less.

Cycling into a 30mph headwind. As with the stats frustration, wind strength doesn’t transfer to photos…

We have learnt a lot about responding to the wind, mainly from the Dutch in the group who, it seems, were born with an innate talent for feeling wind direction and forming appropriate shaped pelotons to mitigate the effect as much as possible. Due to our movement forward when riding, crosswinds can just feel like a headwind to the uninitiated (i.e. us), due to their apparent direction. However, we have now learnt to feel for subtle differences of the wind between one ear/thigh/elbow and the other, to work out the actual direction and shelter behind the lead rider accordingly. This really makes riding into the wind easier.
 

Having had southerly (from the south) winds as we headed south from Addis to Lilongwe, the long promised and dreamed of easterly wind that should have materialised as we headed west decided to flip 180° and laugh in our faces. A few days ago though, we turned a corner in Botswana, to head for Namibia, and we suddenly had the most beautiful tailwind. You have never seen so many people smiling and laughing as they ride along at 35km/h, feeling like they are hardly trying. It was wonderful. Concerningly, we have just reached Windhoek, which means ‘windy corner’, and that terrifies us…