Although I had a route in mind today, I didn’t have a game plan of any distinction.
Lately my rides seem to consist of a five minute warm up, 20 minutes of hard effort, and then after that I feel like I’ve earned the right to take it easier for a subsequent ~20 minutes before heading home.
Today, I started with the 5 minute warm up, but then I just kept going.
Somewhere along the way I decided I’d push myself for 40 minutes and see how hard I go for as long as possible. Last time I did this, it didn’t end well. However, I didn’t have that thought in mind at all (until just now as I sit here writing this) so it wasn’t any mental factor at all.
Now, it’s not fair to say that I went flat out for 40 minutes. Actually, I can’t quite even say I did 40 minutes hard effort. With having to stop / start at junctions, and infrequently taking breathers, momentarily stopping pedalling, or guzzling a slug from the water bottle, I must have slacked for five minutes during that intensity period.
Even at the forty five minute mark I was still doing my best to keep on the gas. So much so that I didn’t really easy off until I was getting closer to home. At that point I looked down, saw I was at about 55 minutes into the ride and had about 28.5km on the clock.
With five minutes left to the hour mark, I figured I should keep on gunning it as hard as I could to try and smash my previous hour best average kilometres covered.
I think that would be this ride.
The difference between this and that ride is / was the amount of stop / start as above. This was not a decent TT-esque circuit.
Whilst I felt decent on the ride, when I got home I felt dizzy and like I wanted to puke. Definitely pushed myself too hard today.
Anyway, like I say above about doing the 20 minute effort then easing off, I will take today’s ride as my hard effort and most definitely ease off tomorrow morning.
For now though, I’m pleased with the ride today but it would be super nice if the stats looked like I was improving in some way. I’ve never felt fitter or faster, but the metrics tell a different story. Puzzling.
