How much wind can you endure?

[bmccasland]

It's almost always windy on the Mississippi River Levee in the afternoons. And the wind switches directions. The river is curvy, so you know every ride will have a head wind, a tail wind, and cross winds. I find I look forward to the river stretches that have large trees growing on the river side of the levee, they break the wind; and I brace myself for the stretches that are more wide open.

I don't know how fast the winds were blowing, but one afternoon the office flags were snapping in the "breeze" and we rode anyway. Thought we were hot stuff with that tail wind, but knew we would pay when we turned around. Instead of our usual 13 mile out, we turned around at 10 miles, and then had to switch leads of the pace line every mile to survive the wind. Did pretty good until about 2 miles left. The gal leading, tiny little thing, speeded up! That's when I fell off the paceline. I just couldn't go any more. Was sooo happy to see the office.

We don't ride when there's lightening.

[Geonz]

Around here our club ride routes are determined by the wind - we ride into it. That doesn't work for supported rides like yesterday's century (welp, 43 miles of it were supported but my bike is my transportation so I rode there & back), but it rather helps on the weekly ones.

[GLC1968]

I'm not a fan of riding in the wind. Luckily, the last two places we've lived have enough different types of terrain that we can kind of choose where we want to ride based on the weather. If it's super windy, we pick wooded routes and greenways for most of the ride (same routes work in extreme heat). For cold days, we opt for the farm routes where the sun will keep us as toasty as possible.

But yeah, wind sucks. I'll take mountains to climb over sustained winds ANY DAY. At least mountains have tops, right?

[7rider]

Isn't that one of Murphy's Laws of Cycling: "You will always face a stiff headwind"??

I never really thought about at what mph I'd weenie out. If there's a wind advisory posted on weather.com, I'd probably look around the house and see what other tasks I could do instead of going for a ride.
That said, I have done a ride during the dying gasps of a tropical storm where winds were gusting up to 45 or 50 mph (72-80 kph). That was...um...a challenge.

[MomOnBike]

When you tour the Midwest in Spring if you don't ride in the wind, you don't ride. Therefore, I've ridden in winds I really shouldn't have.

I don't know how fast the wind was on that trip, but at one point I found myself heading down the road at 35 mph, not pedaling (why bother?). The tailwinds were my friend that day - the rain they contained weren't.

Another day (again, I have no idea how hard the wind was blowing - somethings I just want to remain in ignorance about), I discovered how much I hate crosswinds in combination with the windbreaks planted around farmhouses. The wind shadows behind tham are dandy, but there is a viscious wall of wind coming out of the shadow. Ick.

Now, I was riding a faired recumbent with panniers, so the effects of cross-and tailwinds were magnified greatly. Headwinds are nasty no matter what.

Here at home, on basic errands and commuting, about 35 mph is my limit. I don't claim to enjoy wind that strong, though - and sometimes I wimp out.

[aicabsolut]

I really hate gusts over 30mph, but I've ridden in something around 40mph winds. That was miserable.

I do enjoy a nice tailwind, though. It just seems like whenever the winds are pretty high, they seem to come from ALL directions.