Just a fast little bike ride

A weird thing happened on the way to my bike ride today. The Yankee is doing a sprint tri tomorrow, so she had a short ride planned. I was going to ride longer, but she got hers in early, which freed me up to do whatever.

Whatever is a thing I seldom do on the bicycle anymore, which is a shame and something to remedy. So I was looking forward to riding that, and my legs felt good and I thought it would be a grand, fast ride. I could go hard where I wanted to, not have to chase to catch back up at other moments, and so on.

So I left the neighborhood and went into the next neighborhood and thinking about the basic, familiar route I would take. There’s a hard stop sign at a hill just up ahead and that slows things down, but after that long little hill you take another stop sign and, from there, start to build some momentum over the next four rollers. Then comes a right hander onto one of those roads that has low commercial buildings — a dentist, an orthodontist and a funeral home — on one side and the back yards of houses on the other side.

Earlier this week I sprinted out that road and set the third fastest time on Strava, three seconds behind the leader.

This was to be my first sprint today, but my legs felt like solid stone. So, I thought, it’ll just be a pleasant and easy ride the rest of the way, for however long that feels rewarding. Freed up to do whatever.

Whatever turned into something pretty interesting as started feeling stronger with each passing little hill. Strava counted 24 timed segments on the route I chose today, one of our standards, and I had my second-best time on one of them, my third-best on five of them and set a new personal record on the longest segment, a 5.67-mile romp where I was trying to improve my overall speed. Usually I can add .2 mph over that portion, but today I did better, still.

I don’t have any photos of this, so that’s an archival photo of my shadow, because I was thinking about peddling and trying to remember how to breathe and recollect how gears work on my bicycle. It was the fastest outdoor ride of the year, so far, and for 28 miles it also somehow felt like the first ride of the year.

I see this as encouraging. And I see it as a reinforcement to do more of whatever on the bike. And now to start adding on to it.

To the miles ahead!

Comments are closed.