Woah. Ok. Doesn’t often happen, but sometimes I am so wiped out from the ride that I end up having to do the write up the following day. Such is (or was) the case with this one.
I’m not sure if it’s because of back to back 30km outdoor rides, because of the heat, or maybe I’m getting crappy sleep and not fully recovering, but for whatever reason, after this one yesterday I was absolutely exhausted.
I’d said on Tuesday night that I’d do my usual slightly hillier affair on Wednesday. It’s not really hills. It’s more of a ride of two halves, with the first half being a steady-ish grind uphill to around the 18km mark, and then after that it’s largely gradually down hill all the way home.
One of the nicest parts, especially on a hot day, of this route is a little unusual feature down Ford Lane. A ford being a road with a stream that runs through it.
There’s two Strava segments for this road – and on this ride I appear to have hit the northbound variant. I’m really pleased to have taken fifth overall.
I know it doesn’t really mean very much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a nice sign of my progress anyway. And to be up there with some of the names I see so frequently on all the segments around this area is cool also.
I can’t quite remember if this was the case or not, but I’m fairly sure that on the way out of the house I said to my wife, oh, I’ll be at least an hour as I’m not going too hard today. And yet I did – at least by my standards.
For some reason I found myself over 3w/kg for long portions of this ride. I’ve said it before and will no doubt say it again, but when outdoors and without ERG mode, I struggle to keep myself in check. I think this is why I feel / felt so tired. 30km outdoors would have translated to 45km or more on Zwift, in my previous experience. Not that any of that really matters, but it does give some insight into the nonsense that is a generic 100km weekly riding goal.
Anyway, even with the tiredness I have no complaints about this one.
The one thing that is no fun on a hot day is the sweat that drips off me and into the inside of my sunglasses. For the first time in a very long time, my bike was wet with sweat droplets from an outdoor ride. It looked like I’d done a particularly hard indoor session. And the sun is scheduled to keep on coming, which is nice. I don’t know how you people in the hotter countries survive with this all year 😀
Right, so my plan, as daft as it sounds, is to do another ride this evening. All being well I’m looking for an easier 20km ride, and that shall be my last of the weekday rides. Also I’m hoping to get this done on my dinner break. But for now, breakfast awaits.
