Early mornings

Yesterday, I needed to get up early to go into the office.  Well, not my office (I mostly telecommute), but another office for the company, about thirty miles away (as the crow flies; driving it was just over forty).  I knew about how long it would take to get up there without traffic, but I had no idea how much rush hour would affect things.

So I got up at 0400 so I could still get my bike riding in.  Even with that, it was tough to get ready in the morning (also, Competitive Cyclist finally put up a page with their credit details.  Basically, I was right except that it's in half-hour increments, not full hours.  Yay, although my ride yesterday was 88 minutes, so I just missed).  But I got out of the house about when I wanted to, and headed up.  It turned out that the traffic wasn't bad at all; I made it in a bit less than an hour.  I'd budgeted enough time that that gave me time for a half-hour nap (which I needed) once I arrived.

Getting back to the ride, I knew I had a little while, so I did roughly my normal morning ride, adding in about three miles by going through, up, and around Shirlington.  As I mentioned, it finished at 88 minutes, 18.3m, and 1061' elevation.  The weather was forty-ish and dry, which was nice.  And I did a pretty good job with my heart rate: 119bpm avg, 131 max, eight minutes over 125 (which is more than I thought, actually).  And yes, replacing the battery on my power meter and heart rate meter fixed both.

This morning was a little different.  I actually started about the same time, and decided to do my big loop (the 27-mile version).  The weather was a bit more mixed; it was warmer, but it was drizzling when I started (and it was hard to tell what the rain was going to do after I started).  So I wore my wet-weather attire, and got out there.

The rain got harder for a while (it was pelting me for a little bit, in there), but then slacked off to nothing for, probably, the last hour of the ride.  I ended up riding with the jacket mostly open for a bit, which was a first for me.

My biggest irritation with the ride was that water got into my shoes pretty early on, despite my booties.  I think it came in via the vents on the bottom; I taped the back ones, but not the front ones.  It never got to be a lot of water, but it was distracting for a bit.

But once the rain stopped; well, actually once it stopped being hard rain, the ride became quite pleasant.  And I timed it just about right, finishing in a hair over two hours.  Twenty-eight miles and 1200'.  Power was a bit lower than I'd like, but heart rate was almost identical to yesterday.  That is, same average and peak, but only six minutes over 125.

Don't think I can keep doing the 0400 rising (even though today it happened with my alarm still set at 0500), but it does make for a nice start to the day.

Tomorrow will need to be another hard ride, although I haven't picked out a course yet.  It's also supposed to rain, and I'm not looking forward to that.  We'll see how it goes, I guess; at least it won't be cold (50-ish).