Great Little Ride Last Evening

Triathlon Forum
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Arrived home dog-tired from work last evening. To ride or not to ride, that is the question? Look at the clock and figure I have about an hour-and a half of day-light left. It’s my only real chance to ride/train all week. I chose to ride! Scramble to find assorted clothing and gear including knee-warmers and booties as it’s cool. In 5 minutes I am out the door. Feel like crap, but after 10 minutes legs are feeling good. I notice very dark clouds to the south that are threatening rain, but to the west the sun is peaking out from behind the clouds. It’s going to be a great sunset!

I choose one of my favourite 90 minute routes. It has a bit of everything - some rollers, a couple of short steep out of the saddle honkers, a long straight stretch with the wind, to really open it up, a few long false flats to make you really work and a couple of high speed twisting descents to test the reflexs.

Cycling is an amazing activity because, you can often start off feeling lousy but then get into it and feel good. You can absolutly max-out going up a really short steep climb in a big gear, recover and then hammer at tempo pace for 10 minutes or more. Last night in 90 minutes I did it all - touching every key bike training level/parameter in one relativly short ride. It felt good.

The rain started to fall, as I rolled back in the driveway just after 8:00 pm.

Fleck

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"Cycling is an amazing activity because, you can often start off feeling lousy but then get into it and feel good. "

Went for a run on the trails with the dog yesterday at lunch. My legs felt like lead. I stopped and walked a few times. After work it was a group ride. My legs felt like lead again but after a few kms sprung back to life. A couple of young guy Cat 3’s showed up so I got dropped off the front group, but still had a great ride.

That could never happen with running. If a start a run feeling lousy I’ll finish feeling worse. Not so with cycling.

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I totaly agree. The hardest part about riding while feeling lousy is getting yourself on the bike. After that, you just can’t believe that you had seriously considered vegging at home.

I rode to work through the winter this year. Everyone was asking me if I was cold or something. I always tell them that I’m guaranteed to feel miserable (cold) for the first 5-10 minutes. But once that’s past…It should be illegal to have that much fun on the way to work.

On the way home. I’d have to feel pretty miserable (or tired, very likely if one races in his spare time) to not go for an extra hour or three.