Catching up on riding

Hadn't realized I had so many days up on which to catch, for biking.

Friday was a gentle (too gentle, really) ride in preparation for a hard group ride on Saturday.  It was chilly again; right around freezing, but at least it was dry.

Saturday, I wasn't feeling well at all.  A result of that is that I overslept by half an hour or so.  That forced me to miss the group ride, but feeling the way I was, that wasn't much of an issue.  Going on the group ride still would have been a terrible idea.

Because I wasn't feeling well, I took it easy (extremely easy, actually).  I managed to do fifteen miles, though it was at a very slow pace.  Not helping matters, my power meter died only four miles in, giving me no pacing feedback.  So I can't really say how hard I was riding (even compared to my usual easy rides), though I did do a good job keeping my heart rate down.

In any event, I went out again Sunday, again taking it easy (and after replacing the power meter's battery.  Which had lasted a hell of a lot less than the 200 hours they advertise.  More like 10-20, this time).

I generally took it easy, and did the 25-mile loop that was my standard for a while.  I did a great job with my heart rate (though the power was quite a bit less than I prefer), with the result that the ride took a couple minutes short of two hours.  But I still made it home in time to get the kids ready for church, so no issues there.  All in all, quite a nice ride.

Oh yeah.  Almost forgot.  I'd been having slight soreness right next to one of my sit-bones for several days, and put my moon saddle on the bike Saturday night.  One minute into Sunday's ride, I knew it wasn't positioned correctly (too high and too far forward), but decided not to turn around for that (and I wasn't able to adjust it with my multitool.  I couldn't turn two of the three adjustment screws with it.  Not cool).

It felt quite a lot different.  I think there's some good facets to it, if it's adjusted well, and I wonder if it'd be good to use more regularly.  I ended up using it again Monday, but taking it off Monday night.

It definitely forces me to do a better job distributing my weight between my feet, hands, and bottom.  But it feels incredibly different, mostly in not-good ways.  I'm not convinced it isn't good, as a long-term change, but I still took it off last night, and put the old saddle back on.

Yesterday, I wanted to do a hard ride, but I again wasn't feeling at all well.  After debating a while, I decided that I'd still do a hard ride, but further debate got me to thinking that a shorter one would be a better idea than the longer one I'd originally been thinking about.  Annoyingly, the temperature had gone back to just above freezing.

I went out, and felt ok for the first ten minutes or so, but then the illness (cold, flu, whatever) caught up to me, and I started struggling.  I held on long enough to get eleven miles in (with a lot of elevation, at that), but still bailed earlier than the fourteen-ish miles I'd planned on (which was eleven miles less than the path I'd originally planned, though with more elevation).

It was not a good morning when I got home.  I was tired, my wife was tired (she had stayed up all night to do work), both of us (and our youngest) were sick... Not a fun day.  I had my iPad with which to attempt to do work, and that actually worked pretty well.  But that was the only bright spot until, in the evening, I got the aforementioned good news about the iMac.

But I was feeling better, illness-wise, towards the end of the day, so I was pretty sure I could get a good ride in.  I went to bed a fair bit later than I should have, but still managed to get up.  And of course, with the hard ride yesterday, I was taking it easy this morning.

I did the fifteen-ish mile course I've been doing, of late, and felt pretty good.  I worried, towards the end, that I was getting home too late.  That got me to push a little harder than I would have, but it all worked out ok.  I was still at a significantly lower power than where I really wanted to be, but not nearly as much so as on Sunday.

I'm still debating about tomorrow; training-wise, it would be a good time for a hard ride, but I also have a physical at 0900, and need to show up for that in a fasting state.  The good part is that I'll get done the bloodwork I've been curious about, but fasting for an additional two hours or more after a hard ride doesn't sound pleasant (perhaps not even terribly healthy).  I'll think about it some more; at least I have that going for me.

Update: I forgot to talk about the weather for yesterday's ride.  The forecast was for 51-53F, although I checked before going outside, and saw it was only 48F.  That's above the level where I normally put a jacket on (45F is my usual rule of thumb), but I decided to put one on anyway (my lightest windbreaker).

And man, was I glad I did.  I was pleasantly surprised my hands ended up ok for the ride (I was wearing my summer gloves, which are full-finger, but have no wind breaking ability at all).  The average temperature for the ride was around 45F, but it got down as low as 39F, so I was a bit chilled for a while, in there.  Still, not too bad overall.  And my legs were fine (ironically, I'll wear shorts for normal daily activities down into the twenties, but I start wearing leg warmers for biking at around 40F), so maybe I should stop wearing so much leg insulation.

And I never noticed it before, but I definitely noticed the flapping that the jacket I was wearing was doing, while riding.  I wonder if a more form-fitting windbreaker would be a good thing.  I probably won't bother, but it does bear some thought.