🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞 Hoorah! 🌞🌞🌞🌞🌞
The sun is here. Oh yes.
First day of the year that I have managed to get out in my short sleeve jersey and I had no regrets. Before I set off I thought about taking my gilet but there was absolutely no need. Sure, it was windy in parts, but with temperatures of 17c this one was lovely.
Today’s ride was pretty much laid back. I wanted to take a chilled one after Sunday’s trip up the Alpe du Zwift. Had it been a wet / wintery kind of day I’d have stuck to the 160w / endurance tier stuff over on the turbo. That doesn’t generally translate to an outdoor ride, but rather than do my usual 200w kinda efforts, I was a bit less strict with myself today.
That said, I did manage to do my 30km in a decent time and with a decent calorie burn, so overall happy with how this one went.
Honestly, having done this ride at dinner time I kinda feel cheated not to be going out again this evening to get in another stint. It’s that nice today. I bet there’s loads of cyclists out there right now. Heck, there were plenty out at lunch – but not one was in short sleeves. Madness!
What I’d completely forgotten about with these warmer rides is the abundance of flies that land all over me during my ride. It’s not so bad when I’m out there as I don’t tend to notice them. But when I got home today I had about 8 camped on my jersey. Rank. And worse, when I squished them all I made a right mess of the fabric. I hope that comes out in the wash.
Now this heat wave is supposed to last all week, and indeed be hotter tomorrow.
Good news.
I’m going to aim to do my first Churchtown loop around tomorrow, which in general is a fairly fast and steady effort, aiming to complete the 30km loop in under 60 minutes. The astute mathematicians amongst you will deduce this indicates an average speed of >= 30kph… which is quite something out on the open road. I’ve managed it several times, though it’s a bit of a killer as best I recall.
Anyway, that’s the plan for tomorrow.
