As the post title says, today I was time crunched. I knew I had a meeting at 13:30, and was planning on being out from 12:15 to 13:15, looking to do a pretty full on session.
However, at about midday my wife reminded me she had an appointment at 13:10, so I would need to be back before then. Well, that cut into the amount of time I had to ride – taking me down to about 45 minutes at most.
I didn’t have a decided route before I went out, but aimed to stick to the back / country roads simply to avoid as much road traffic as possible. It was definitely quieter out today because of the Easter holidays, but not deserted by any means.
More than traffic today, the problem was the roads themselves. They are, frankly, a disgrace. It’s very hard to keep any kind of speed up because the road surfaces are dangerous in part, especially when still wet as they are today.
Yes. Readers from Sunday may have been wondering why no ride yesterday?
Well, the weather forecast let us down. Badly. The forecast on Thursday was for a wet Friday lunch time, then dry until Tuesday. Looks like they misjudged it, by a whole day. Yesterday was sodden all day long. Quite miserable. In hindsight a walk could have been had, but that thought only came to me as I was led in the bath at about 10pm.
As I say, today I tried to ride hard.
The alternative to heading outdoors would have been an SST session, and whilst this ride didn’t really replicate that, that was the sort of intensity I was aiming for. Basically persistent steady hard effort.
Even more so because I knew I didn’t have a ton of time.
By the end of the ride I saw I’d managed 20km in 40 minutes, putting me at a 30kph average, which I was pleased with. Again, this involved a fair amount of stop / start, so the actual riding was at a high intensity.
I have no idea what tomorrow holds.
This week is super meeting heavy, but if the weather holds I am prioritising outdoor rides at the moment simply because after so long off the bike – and with work during the day – I am sick of being cooped up in this office.
I need the fresh air.
