I haven't been updating about my biking, either. Since I figured out how to schedule it for minimal interference, I've mostly gone back to doing fifteen miles a day. The difference is that I haven't been doing longer rides (aside from the occasional 18-miler).
And yesterday was worse. I was concentrating on using my turn signal to signal a car ahead of me, and chose too tight a line around a corner, and wiped out when I tried to slow down and my rear wheel locked. Ouch.
It wasn't as bad as the last time this happened. It wasn't wet, so I probably slowed down more. It was fresh pavement, so it was a bit smoother. And maybe I wasn't going quite as fast to begin with. Still, I scraped my right arm and hip pretty good (the latter having just about fully recovered from the last incident, finally), and had to bandage myself a bit last night.
Not fun.
Because of that, I only did around seven miles last night, so I was a bit off my pace (and sleeping was awful, last night).
That's the only big negative of late. There are a couple of smaller ones. I had no feedback the last two days, when the battery on my RFLKT+ died. I replaced it, but put the cover on backwards (they should do something so this isn't possible), and it wasn't able to sync up with my phone. The thing that pisses me off most about this is that it never stopped trying to find it. I figured it would time out and stop searching after a few minutes, but I didn't notice until the next night that it never had stopped. So this battery won't be lasting very long. At least I know not to do that again, I guess.
The other little negative was that I did a hard ride a couple nights ago (the first one without the display), and I wasn't able to maintain that heart rate over 180bpm. I could get it up there, but I couldn't maintain it for several minutes, as I've done a couple of times recently. Because of that, my times weren't that great. I just looked, and did manage a couple PRs that were top-10 finishes, so maybe it wasn't as terrible as it felt at the time, but it was frustrating not to be able to keep hammering all the way up the Walter Reed Dr hill by Shirlington.
Actually, now that I'm looking, there's some irony there. I had my third-best (actually, tied for second) time on the steep part of that hill (better than I'd've guessed), but my best time on the long version of the segment (the long version includes some rollers at the top of the hill). And I finished tied with a friend of mine for 11th overall. Color me shocked: I guess having to reel it back in early had some benefit. Anyway, it was a four-second gain on somewhat less than two minutes riding. Not bad, actually.
That's got me looking at the 'Compare Efforts' page for the segment. It seems that I outclimbed the KOM and several friends for at least the first two-thirds of the steep part. Funny, since my time on the steep part was fourteen seconds off my record (hence my frustration; that's a hell of a lot). But I guess I'm seventh overall on just the steep part, so maybe that makes some sense.
Anyway, outside of those annoyances, the riding has been going pretty well. Two or three nights ago, the ride was just after some rain, and outside of the spots where there was enough water for the tires to kick it up onto me, it was just a glorious ride. The temperature was absolutely perfect, and I was just in harmony with the night. It was amazing; rides like that are why I get on the bike every day. I believe that was also the day where I kept my heart rate at an average of 126bpm, and a max of 131bpm. Perfect.
Otherwise, riding has been going well, but quite uneventfully. Let's hope that continues.
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