Bad Weather for Race - Bad for training?

I should've stopped at the 42 mile drop. It was way before sunrise. I was taking the team to the 64 mile drop for the benefit of the 3 late arrivals who have not raced. Their first race was to be this week - 165 miles. Now it looks like their first race will be 225 miles. That worries me (for them). So, I really wanted them to have the extra depth and the conditioning. Boy did they get conditioning! I knew at about 50 miles the overcast sky and fog was getting ugly. At 60 miles it was pea soup - I started looking for a place to turn around. Didn't find it until the exit. Hmmm, it was better here. They'd just have to plow through 3 miles of fog then it'd be fairly clear... Stupid idea! I knew better. It seemed to get foggier as I let them settle. Visibility was better than a mile, I thought. Not great. They use their internal compass at this distance anyway - right? I couldn't wait - the weather revised on my way down and the area's likelihood for rain spiked and was suggesting they might get rain at 8am instead of 9am. The 42 mile drop was predicting rain at 11am. It was 7:30am. If they could just plow through a bit of fog ... I released them. They circled for a long time. I thought they were gone and left and ran into them east of the drop. They were still circling. Ug! Not good! I stopped at Wal-Mart and killed a good 30 minutes then and to do a huge round about after running into the "Race for the Cure" crowd downtown. So, it was nearly 2.5 hours before I got home. "They're not here yet" my loft manager informed me as I pulled up. Oh no! 105 km and they fly about 1 km per minute (it's easier to do the math in metric don't you think?) They should've been here! Really bummed and fearing I'd lost some or all of the birds, I started putting away groceries. As I came back for the 2nd load, I looked and there they were! I ran up to see. 11 of 16! I was waiting on 372, 363, 366, 396 and 376. Not bad! About 30 minutes later, the late silver bar 363 came in alone. Another 30 minutes, 396 and 372 came in together. A good hour or more later, the puny blue bar 366 and 376 came in. These two were late hatches and 366 is lucky to be here at all. I fostered her out when I thought she was a goner. I was pleased to see her nest mate doing so well. Their father, a silver bar, produces good birds (so far). Not too bad after all - just gotta remember to NEVER do that again.

WHY DO I DO THIS? Do I think it is compelling reading for others? Maybe for another racer. But I really just do it to keep track of all of the little details from training. Who was late, when, why, etc. If you find it useful - that's cool too.

Foggy morning wastes my morning

I was hoping to get the birds out to the elementary school 18 miles south and trio toss them (toss three at a time). I don't guess I'll get to. It was a very foggy morning. It had cleared up quite a bit until 2 miles before the drop (ain't that always the way?!) Then, suddenly, it was about 1/4 mile visibility. So, I started back tracking. I was going to go to the river, straight across from my 12 mile drop but I stopped off at the community college. It's a nice place to drop from. It's probably close to 15 miles. 70 minutes to get a 15 mile toss in AND I'm still 25 minutes from work! Ug! I could see the smoke from power company stacks which were 6 -7 miles away so that meant the visibility was pretty good from here. I used to let them settle 30 minutes, 2 years ago. Last year I got it down to 10 minutes. Now I just let them settle until they stop rotating their heads looking at the sky and start bugging each other for space and cooing. That was a bit over 3 minutes this morning. They did a semi-circle and took off straight for home.

I dropped them anyway

What's with the terrible weather forecasting lately?! I checked the Weather Channel on my Blackberry and it was supposed to be clear at least until 10am. Instead, after I box the birds, it starts pouring down. It let up but it was slightly foggy and overcast. I was going to take them out 12 miles for the 4th time anyway but chickened out and decided to drop from 5 miles NE instead (a new, odd drop designed to show them off to the scouts). I decided it was not a good day to drop from a strange direction and turned around and headed toward the 6 mile drop and then chickened out again and just dropped them from 4 miles. They circled once and headed straight home.