This is a screen grab from weather underground for the wind speed for Prestwick Airport, and hence the Troon area.
If you guessed 11:30, when the wind speed decided to suddenly reverse trend and increase with the 40mph gusts, give yourself 10 points.
Funny, the only gust recorded is the one that almost blew me off the bike.
And you never get as much assistance from the wind as you get hindrance.
I pace myself at about 15mph (2:30 for 1km) since I had managed to hit this level back in July. I then keep a running total of how much above or below that total I am each km. (It distracts me from laboured breathing.)
Today I was 7s short of 4 minutes for a km along the sea front, with that 25mph headwind. This was 80s slower than my target time. In order to recover this time I would have to be 80s faster on the next km, which means over 30mph. More realistically, and without worrying about flashing blue lights, it means each following km being faster than the 2:30 target, so I can reduce the deficit. But thats only for 1km, what about the others?
But its not that easy.
You have to go faster to recover the lost time. So, you would think that by averaging 15mph I could do a set of 14mph, 15mph and 16mph, but that would still leave me with a deficit. I would actually have to do 14,15 and 16.2 to make up the loss. It gets worse as the difference builds.
So, today was a slow time for me. Almost 2:30 slower than my target. Or almost a km less in the same time. Kills my month's stats too.
