My lasting memory of today’s ride will be feeling like I was absolutely slogging myself, and then looking down and seeing I was going at 24kph.
To say there was a headwind at times would be quite the understatement. Unfortunately it was one of those days where regardless of the direction of travel, it always seemed to be windy. And at one point, rainy. Which is pretty bad as the rain storms in recent days have been abrupt hail. Fortunately that didn’t happen today, but I did get a soaking.
It’s been a weird day really. I got told yesterday that I needed to do an ‘all hands’ presentation. Short notice. Totally unprepared. I spent the morning preparing for that, and then when it was finally over at 2pm, I needed to get away from the computer and just blow off the steam.
A bike ride suited perfectly.
Much like yesterday, I was out to free ride. No structure. No plan. No route, even.
Just on the bike, ride, see where you end up. Which, to be fair, is a fairly limited number of routes around 2-3pm, as it means keeping well away from school traffic, which can be a major challenge. Mother’s with large 4×4’s do not a safe feeling cyclist make.
However, because the lunch time crowd had all gone back to work between 2-3pm, it was quieter than a typical midday ride, which was nice. I also found plenty of the new cycle paths up around one of the many new build areas nearby. Bumpy, but safe.
I think the one other thing of interest today is that Intervals.icu is telling me my estimated FTP is currently 231w. That’s down from an estimated 232w yesterday, and down yet further from the 237w I managed at my last test. I think that’s higher than I would have personally estimated. I’d be pretty pleased with myself right now if I could average 240w indoors for 20 solid minutes, which I think is around the 230w marker after tax.
Anyway, hopefully more of the same tomorrow. It’s forecast to be even windier though, so maybe I will do an indoor session. Thankfully no presentations tomorrow, so a less stressful day awaits. Well, fingers crossed.
