Crack of Dawn

After yesterday’s ride, I wanted to make a few adjustments to my setup – remember all of my gear – and get in a longer ride. And as I woke up at 5:50, I decided what the heck, why not get out early doors and enjoy the (even quieter than usual) quiet roads.

Initially I decided to continue on with my aim for mostly left turns. This meant I had access to a fairly long loop that still kept me off the busier main roads, most of the time. I could even take two short cuts, if needed, and entirely avoid traffic lights. This was primarily due to still not yet being that great at clipping in.

On the plus side, I definitely appear to have a much better cleat position on my left shoe now. God knows how bad my previous position was, but this is way better. If only I knew how to accurately mark and measure this sort of thing.

One thing that’s immediately different between Zwifting (or any other type of indoor cycling) and the great outdoors is the cold / wind. Particularly this morning I was freezing on my hands. Gloves immediately required, I think. I do have a pair, but they aren’t specifically cycling gloves. However, they will definitely do, for the moment.

As it was so quiet out there I decided to alter my route almost immediately, opting to go on some quieter side streets and cover some routes I used to walk quite frequently. This was a lot of fun, even though I managed to cleave my way through them much faster than I anticipated.

Next up, I went for the only hill I know of round here that’s not too far away.

Compared to Zwift, this hill was over before I’d even got started. With a long down hill lead in – avoiding the cars – I had plenty of momentum to cover the first third of the climb without really having to try. Dropping down a few gears and picking up the cadence and I was already at the top. Disappointingly short. I didn’t even get chance to see how the Garmin registered and reacted to the gradient.

Given how short this was, I decided to repeat the loop, but the second time – without realising it – I cut the start point, so my time wasn’t registered. To be honest, I was only interested in the climb portion, and hadn’t considered that the Strava segment would be based on the long, flat lead in also.

Anyway, live and learn.

From here I went looking for any other little climbs I could think of – finding one at the local hospital. Sadly it was a lot busier on the hospital than I was expecting, even at the early time of the morning. Who would have thought?

At this point I decided to just go exploring.

But what I found was I quickly ran out of routes to cover.

So what I might do either later today, or tomorrow, is to pick a longer route and let the Garmin sat nav take me somewhere – country roads or something. I’m not sure yet.

I have to say, I found the 23km on the open road considerably more challenging to achieve than 23km on Zwift. Again, I put this down to the consistency of Zwift versus the stop / start nature of the real world.

Still, it’s a fun experience, that’s for sure.