Double-looping it

This morning, I got up early, as planned, and yes, I did about the same ride as yesterday.  I think it was as much warmer as it was supposed to be, I went with the same attire, except without the base layer.  And I did go with the new booties; I couldn't put them on the new way, but I put them on the shoe before putting the shoes on, and that didn't work too badly.

I got out about the same time (not sure why, since I didn't go back to sleep for a few minutes after the alarm went off), and got moving.

I tried, as yesterday, to push my cadence a little bit higher, and that seemed to work pretty well.  Again, though, I don't know how well, because the heart rate meter was a bit flaky again.  But when it started working, things looked pretty good, so I'm hopeful it was good all along.

So I zipped around the bottom loop pretty quickly, until I got to Gravelly Point, where I started stopping to take pictures again.  I didn't get the colors in the sky, like yesterday, though that wasn't a surprise.  But I did get calm water and a pretty good sky, so that made for a few decent shots.  The one above was my second favorite; my favorite, it might not surprise you to hear, was shot on the tripod (this one was free-hand; I'm not sure how I managed to be so steady for a 1/8s exposure, especially without stabilization or a viewfinder).

Regardless, I got moving again after taking a few, and finished out the ride.  I finally managed to save it as a separate route from the Farlex Loop I've been doing for a while (Farlex referred to the geography, and this is much the same areas, so it's the 'Farlex Figure 8').  The new route is much the same, but the little changes make it a bit longer and quite a bit hillier.

Again, 26.5 miles, almost 1200' of elevation, and I averaged 14.4mph again.  Not sure what I'm really doing differently, but it's working.

The only bad thing out of this morning is that I slept on my shoulder weirdly, somehow.  My left shoulder is really bugging me, in a way that used to be typical following rides, but which hasn't happened in a while.  Not sure why it kicked back up again.  Sometimes I can fix it by pushing on a specific spot, but haven't managed it yet, this time.  Hope that changes.

Anyway, I won't be able to go on the group ride on Saturday, so I might do a hard ride tomorrow, or I might take it easy again tomorrow and go hard, on my own, on Saturday.  Not sure.

Either way, I'm happy to say that I finished all of the Strava challenges for the month.  Not sure I'll ever do that again; certainly never come close, before.

Regardless, go Caps!

Picturing the future (updated)

I went with the plan, and got to bed really early last night.  Then I got up at 0415 (actually overslept by a few minutes), and started to get my stuff ready.  Fortunately, since I had arranged just about everything last night, that didn't take very long.

The one thing that was annoying was that I got out new booties, and attempted to put them on the same way I described yesterday.  That didn't work; neither of the new ones would stretch over the heel of my shoes.  So I put the old ones on again, and will revisit that issue later today.

And speaking of lingering issues, I got in touch with Stages again yesterday and sent them pictures of my meter.  It turns out that they had a manufacturing problem with the caps on their meters for a while (you'd think that, since my meter was a refurb - due to being a warranty replacement - that they'd've caught that earlier, but apparently not), and the cap is known to pull the battery away from the terminal.  Don't know for sure if that's my problem, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.  In any event, they're shipping out a replacement, which will hopefully arrive within a day or two.

The temperature was projected to be just under 50F, so I opted for a light jersey with a sleeveless base layer.  A sleeved base layer might have been better (I was a little chilled, occasionally), but it worked out ok overall.

The departure timing seemed about right, so I grabbed my camera and tripod, and got on the road a few minutes earlier than planned (yay, preparations).  The one thing I was planning on doing differently today was to try to maintain a higher cadence than I've been doing (I normally end up around 55-60 on easy days, in the interest of keeping my heart rate down).

Today, I decided to try upping that a bit, to exercise my cardiovascular system a bit more.  Unfortunately, I don't really know how that worked.  If my heart rate meter is to be believed (hint: for much of the ride, it definitely isn't), then I did a great job and everything worked out.  Unfortunately, I don't really know.  The meter was flaky for most of the first hour, flat-lining at different values for most of that period.  The one positive sign is that my heart rate stayed down once the meter did seem to start working.

The one thing I'm not sure if I understand is that I made excellent time on the ride.  Strava admits to 14.4mph, which is a significant improvement on my usual just-short-of-14.  And that's with my camelbak with the camera and tripod, which definitely slowed me both on hills and at speed.  So something certainly went right.

In fact, I almost stretched the ride out another few miles, based on that, but I wasn't sure if I believed the data.  And I'm glad I didn't, really.  I wouldn't have been problematically late, but I would have had a lot less time to eat, for sure.

As you can see from above, the timing did work out well for picture-taking.  I took half a dozen or so pictures, and I think that's my favorite.  I didn't end up using the tripod (just decided it was too much of a pain to take out and unfold), though perhaps I should have (definitely would have saved at least one of the shots).

One bit of amusement: due to pausing to take the pictures, I passed the one lady jogging three different times.  The third time, approaching, I said, "On your left.  Again".  We both laughed.

As far as the rest of the data about the ride, cadence averaged 72 (which likely includes a several minute drop-out of the meter, which I was able to end when I took the last picture), so that might be part of why there was more speed.  Distance was 26.2 miles, with 1173' of elevation (more than I expected).

Overall, I was very happy with the results, and will definitely try to raise my cadence higher on easy rides.  Or maybe I'll try to raise the tempo sometimes, and try to grind it out more on others.  It could be that both will be helpful.  I'll have to give it some thought.

In any event, tomorrow will definitely be an easy day.  I'm not sure about time or distance, but I'll be taking it easy.  I guess if I get up early, I might repeat this morning's ride, maybe with another mile or three thrown in.  The weather should be nice and warm, but heading towards thunderstorms later.  That could make things interesting, in a good way (as long as the thunderstorms don't move up enough to show up for the ride, of course).

Update: I forgot to mention that I was really amused to come one km short of finishing one of the Strava challenges, at the end of the ride.  For a 1225km challenge, I find that very funny, and I wish I could say that I did it deliberately.  FWIW, I'm currently ranked 8195th on that challenge.

The hills are alive...

Okay, that title is probably a little too cheerful.  I decided I needed to push a bit, this morning, although I realized as soon as I got moving that I was a bit sore.  So it might not have been the best of decisions, but I went with it.

I overslept by a few minutes, but tried to keep that from getting in my way.  I even had trouble with finding my phone, which delayed me a couple minutes (problem with getting ready without lights on.  Don't want to wake anyone, after all).

One thing I did do, that worked well.  When I had to take my shoes (and booties) off, I tried a new way I'd heard about in comments on a particular pair of booties.  Instead of getting my shoes on, then putting the booties over the whole thing - which does work, but can easily tear up aero booties - I put the booties on, and pulled them up over my ankles, putting my feet through the cleat holes.  Then I pulled the heel down over the shoe, then pulled the toe over the shoe.

Anyway, I got out on the road a few minutes later than I'd intended, and headed for the hills to do something approaching intervals.  I did ok on the first two hills, but I died pretty soon after that.  Still, I kept pushing through them for forty-ish minutes.  Terrible times, and very sore muscles, but will hopefully make me stronger.

To try to counteract the sore muscles, I kept riding for another half hour or so after I stopped pushing.  We'll see how that works out.

That all ended up with a bit more than 18 miles, almost 1500' of elevation, and an average speed of 14.6mph (16.5 in the 40-odd minutes of pushing).

The one thing that really torqued me was that I wasn't able to see the power meter for the entire ride.  Not sure what was happening, but that's a new battery.  Need to follow up with Stages pronto.

As for tomorrow, it'll be another easy day.  I'll probably try to get up a little early and do 25-ish miles.  The temperature is supposed to be in the high 40s, perhaps warm enough for me to just go with bibs and a short-sleeve shirt (maybe with a sleeveless base-layer underneath).  Today was 45, and I went with summer gloves and a windbreaker, which worked out well.

A bit of a hiccup

Saturday morning, I got up about my normal time and got out of the house ok.  I was going to the group ride, but I started a bit early, and did a few miles just meandering around my neighborhood.  I eventually made it to the meet-up Starbucks, and was still a bit early.  Since I can't get my phone onto my home wifi network, I finally remembered to turn it on and see if I could get to Starbucks'.

That seemed to work fine, and to test it, I opened the Strava app (which came up fine).  But when we went to leave, I tried to tell Cyclemeter to start recording again, and I couldn't get the app to come back.  Force-quitting Strava didn't help.  Force-quitting Cyclemeter didn't help either.  I couldn't use Wahoo Fitness or Strava to record, because I didn't have all the sensors paired.

Not having any time (the others were literally pedaling away), I had to put the problem away and just ride without recording.  We did a fairly long ride (about 32 miles, based on past experience), and that worked out to a decent experience.  The one downside was that my legs were really tired, for some reason, and I was having trouble keeping up.  I managed, but it wasn't fun, and I was just as happy we were going with a quickly-rolling pace line (only leading long enough to get clear of the last guy, basically).  Outside of when we were doing that, I was mostly trailing.

I had a decent time, overall, but my legs were quite sore.  Hopefully, it'll go better this week.

Saturday night, I had my 25th High School reunion.  It was a pretty good time, although I was a little disappointed that the only people from my class who showed up were the ones I've seen in the last couple years.  I'm certainly glad they showed up, but wish a few others had showed up as well.

The point in bringing it up, however, is that it kept me awake until very late (the fact that I wasn't able to watch the third period of the Caps game until afterwards doesn't help either).  So there was zero chance of getting up early on Sunday for a long ride, as I might have done otherwise.

In fact, it brought into question the whole idea of getting up at the normal time.  I managed that, but it was a struggle (I had to resort to my mantra about choosing to ride, which I hadn't done in several months).

So I did get out, but I still hadn't figured out how to deal with cyclemeter (I had tried a bit more; even rebooting the phone didn't help), so I was stuck trying to give it a go with Wahoo Fitness.  That might have worked ok, except that I couldn't figure out why my speed and mileage data fields weren't showing up.  When I finished the ride, I realized that it had to be because I hadn't allowed Fitness access to location data.  So I had 1:09:22 time, elevation (888', amusingly), and heart rate data, but nothing else.

Since it was my shortest "standard" ride, I knew the mileage, but there was no way to export to Strava.  So I had to do a manual upload for the second day in a row, which was irritating.

As for the ride itself, it was a little chilly, but went pretty smoothly.  Afterwards, I crashed out on the couch for a while (I don't know how long).

The day was busy with kids' stuff, but at least I managed to get in bed reasonably early; I certainly needed the sleep.  I set the alarm for a few minutes early, so I could get a couple extra miles in.  I got up right away, when it went off, but was a little disoriented for a couple minutes.

Once I was up, I tried to get it all in order, and did get most things.  The one thing I couldn't manage was pairing my power meter with Wahoo Fitness.  Not sure what was going on, there, but it couldn't be seen, even after putting in a new battery.

I managed to get the ride in, that I was looking for, and it went pretty well.  Actually, I was trying to go a little bit harder (or at least at a higher candence) than usual, and I thought I might have managed that.  After the fact, though, I'm not sure, because Strava pegged me at about the same average speed, but with good heart-rate numbers.

What's bad, though, is that Fitness kept pausing itself while I was riding.  Mostly, it fixed itself within a few seconds, but a couple of times it couldn't.  Pulling a phone out, unlocking it, and playing with the screen is not fun, when you're moving (don't do it unless you're on an empty road or trail.  And even then, be very cautious).

The result is that it lost about two miles distance, in aggregate, along with an unknown amount of time.  Strava fixed the distance (and elevation, presumably); I don't know what it was able to do with the time.  All in all, very frustrating.

The good news is that I figured out the Cyclemeter problem while riding.  Deleting the program and re-installing it fixd the problem, and it had an internal cloud backup of the data, so that was great.  I lost two days, but not the eight months or more that preceded them.  Not great, but worlds better than I was expecting.

Tomorrow, I'm not sure what I'll do; my legs felt great both yesterday and today, so no worries there.  And I think I kept the heart rate down (the first six miles had no heart rate data, for unknown reason) quite well; at least, I did on the latter two-thirds.

More importantly, the Caps are playing another home Game 7 tonight.  I'm not looking forward to it at all, but I'll be watching.  And if they win, then they get to go face a well-rested Rangers team.  Lovely.  Go Caps!

Push it real good...

As I mentioned, I wanted to try to duplicate my ride yesterday, but with my camera (and tripod), this time.  Things did not get off to a good start, as I rolled over after turning off my alarm.  I only slept another fifteen minutes or so, but that was enough to make things a little more difficult.

I rushed through my normal preparations, thankfully remembering to grab the camera (which normally resides in my camelbak, but was next to my computer this morning).  I got out the door at a couple minutes before five, which was five minutes or so behind yesterday's ride.

Because of that, I tried to ride as close as I could to my 125bpm max, and I was surprised at how well I was able to do that.  I did go over a few times and maxed out at 134.  The ten minutes that I spent, over, was more than I thought, although the average for those ten minutes was only 127bpm.  So I think that isn't too bad.

The bad part was that the sunrise was not terribly interesting, this morning.  We didn't have the break in cloud cover that caused yesterday to be so lovely.  Ah well.

The one pain point on the ride was that it was colder than yesterday (and had more wind, I think; that part's harder to be sure of).  There was supposed to be a one- or two-degree difference, and some of the ride hit that number.  But yesterday it warmed up for quite a while in the middle; a six-degree difference.  So while the difference wasn't as big as I expected, it was constant cold today after irregular cold yesterday (I wore equivalent clothes, both days).  For most of my body, it didn't make any difference, but there was a world of difference for my fingers.  Yesterday, slight chill.  Today, getting close to numb.  Ouch.

Tomorrow is supposed to be about the same as today.  I'm hoping to hook up with the same group as last Saturday; if that falls through, I'll probably head up MacArthur Blvd into Potomac (MD), pushing as hard as I can.  In fact, there's a long, flat stretch in there; if I'm by myself, I'll probably try to do another FTP test.  But hopefully the group ride will happen; that's certainly more fun.

"Like ships in the night..."

Just noticed a really neat, fairly new (I saw the link a couple days ago, I think) feature on Strava called fly-by.  Essentially, it shows your ride and all the people with whom you crossed paths on that ride.

Look in the upper left, and it'll play them like a video, so you can see where other people were while you were riding.  And when you do the animation, it'll animate them, as well.  I don't know, if you're doing something like a short race, if it'll give enough detail to see jockeying going on in a ride (I suspect not), but it's still really awesome.

I'd also call it evil, in terms of time-wasting potential.

But it's fantastic, too, if you meet someone on the road or trail, and can't remember their name (or how to spell it).  Now you can just watch your ride, and look for the intersection or overlap.  Sheer genius.

Disappointed that this now means I know that the person who passed me this morning is not on Strava (well, or hasn't uploaded their ride yet, I guess).  Was curious.

Slow figure eight

I did get up early, this morning, and headed out on a big loop.  It went very quietly, for the most part, although I did have to turn around only a quarter-mile in.  I'd looked at the power meter yesterday, and left the cap and battery off.  I was miffed that the battery was already dead (only an hour and change of run time.  A new record.  I've gotten in touch with Stages about it, so we'll see how they handle it).  The only bits of excitement within the ride itself came when I was passing the airport, and another cyclist passed me.

I wonder what other people think; when he was just behind me, I half-turned and said, "Good morning".  Am I the only one who thinks he was an ass not to respond at all?  In any event, he didn't seem to be going a whole lot faster than me, but I quickly realized I wasn't going to keep up without pushing my heart rate way higher than I wanted to do (and, in fact, I accidentally pushed it up to 132 while verifying that).  Still, I was amused that, even after getting my heart rate back down to 120-ish, he didn't make it out of easy sight until he turned off to take the 14th St Bridge, a mile or two later.

Actually, one other piece was that I stopped three different times, just after that, to take pictures.  I really wish I'd had a better camera than my phone.  The shot above isn't bad, but could be better, especially if I'd brought the tripod.  Still, I was glad to be in position to get what I got - to quote the old photojournalism maxim, "F/8 and be there".

The other "exciting" part of the ride came just as I was riding up the hill to the gate at Ft Myer.  Some jackass decided that he needed to fly by me with about a foot of clearance.  I was irritated, but going to let it go, until I realized he was going to the gate.  So I sped up and gave him a little piece of my mind while he was at the guard shack with his window open.  That spiked my heart rate up all the way to 163, which surprised me, given it was only 30-ish seconds of hard exertion.

I was pleasantly surprised to get it back down into my target range in only a few minutes, afterward.

Anyway, the incident, combined with a couple other recent happenings, has me reconsidering getting a GoPro, or something similar.  I really don't appreciate such behavior.  I think I'll talk to my dad about it.

Other than that, a very pleasant ride, and some decent miles in.  For the first time, I'll finish all the Strava challenges this month.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll finish the MTS challenge with several days to go.  Decent ride tomorrow, long rides on the weekend, maybe a couple miles with my daughter as well.  We'll see.

Oh, and I signed up for the Velobici challenge yesterday (veloviewer mentioned it).  It started March 8th, and I was amused to see I've already met the mileage target for it.  It's a little bit of a waste, though, as I'm not impressed with their goods.  Plus, while I'll do more than respectably, I don't have any chance of winning any of the categories (though I might make top ten in nighttime miles, and could move close to that in the steel category by renaming my bike.  Oh, and I figured out a way to cheat so I could reasonably compete in the 'most PRs' category.  I see people there with more PRs than miles, so I wouldn't be alone in that, for sure).

And Competitive Cyclist disappointed me by putting their "dollars for hours" program on hold.  I guess the demand was much higher than they anticipated, and I think they just couldn't keep up with entering people's miles in the system.  Still, I got forty-ish dollars in credit while it lasted, and put a few extra miles in than I would have done, so it wasn't a complete waste, even if it doesn't come back.  I hope it does, though; I loved the idea.

Getting back to the actual biking, tomorrow will be another easy day; I might even repeat today's ride, taking my Coolpix A to get some better sunrise shots (though I'll need to take the tripod to make significant improvements; HDRs don't work all that great without that).

Then Saturday should be another hard group ride; hopefully I'll be fully recovered by then.  Either way, it should be fun, I think.

And hopefully the Caps can put together a much better game tonight, and win.  Go Caps!

Caps even series

As I mentioned yesterday, I did watch the game two days ago.  I thought it was a pretty uneven effort, with OV's goal being a very lucky one (deflection behind the back just going under the crossbar? Ridiculous).

Once again, the Caps were outplayed pretty solidly, and only a great game by Holtby kept them in it long enough to get to overtime.

Fehr was out, as expected.  Glencross was also scratched, which surprised me quite a bit.  I was glad to see Bura on the ice.  It wasn't one of his best games, but he looked good when he was there.  He certainly was far from the worst forward on the ice for the Caps.

Wilson was on a mission to be a one-man wrecking crew.  He got called for two penalties, but one of them seemed ludicrous, while the other seemed merely a bad call.  I think he might have been the only Cap who was matching the hitting of the Islanders (it amazes me that the Islanders are both winning the possession battle, and winning the hitting battle.  That's damned near impossible to do).

I did think OV got away with one with an early hit to the back of one of the Islanders, but given that I'd already seen the Isles do the same thing twice without a call left me feeling rather less than gracious about it.

Anyway, the Caps need to work on their breakout.  It wasn't nearly as bad as in games one and three, but it wasn't good.  Not nearly enough tape-to-tape passes, and way too many forced ones.  I can't say that that was particularly on any one defender, either; it was all over the place.  Some of that's on the Islanders excellent forecheck, of course, but the Caps need to improve.  Maybe getting hit so much is making them tentative; I'm not sure.

Ward has continued to be quietly excellent at both ends of the ice.  I'm still not sold on having him on the top line, but he's done very well there in a strictly complementary role.

MarJo hasn't really been rewarded for the effort, but he's also had an excellent series.  I will say that I noticed him quite a bit less in this game than in the previous ones, though.

Anyway, the important part is that the Caps did get the deciding goal in overtime (nice shot, Backs) and can head back home with home ice advantage (such as it is).  I hope they can just win the next two, though; I do not look forward to the possibility of another home game seven.

A big roadblock just got put in their way, though, as Grabovsky is healthy again.  I can only hope that other players on their team decide that that's an excuse for them to take it easy, though, because otherwise the Caps are likely to lose the next two (which would still avoid game seven, I guess).  Much as I love Grabbo, and wish him well, generally, I'm not keen on having him suiting up against the Caps.

Go Caps!

Following the plan

Yesterday, I decided that I'd head out to Purcellville again, and was debating timing.  I ended up getting up at the normal time, and went out on my normal easy route.

That went well, although I did decide to try to place highly on one short segment in there, which didn't.  Basically, I made the turn onto that segment, and started to push, when I realized that the wind was in my face, and there was a hell of a lot of it.  I realized there was no way in hell I was going to get a good time with that much wind, so I quickly dialed it back down and finished normally.

My wife got out the door early, and I never took my clothes off after the early ride, so I was in good position to get on the road quite early.  Realizing that, I decided to take my camera (and tripod) with me, since I would have the time to stop and shoot along the way.

So I got on the road right around nine AM, not really rushing, but still maintaining a good pace (my goal was 16mph).  I wasn't really out to pass people, but I ended up playing leapfrog quite a bit as I did so, and then stopped to take some pictures.  At least one guy I passed three or four times; I imagine he was kind of curious what I was doing.

The first place I stopped was in Vienna; not too far from where I used to work in Tyson's Corner.  I'd say it's a quaint little town, but it's also one of the richest in the country, so I'm not sure if quaint is really the right word.  Anyway, this rail car is kind of tucked away where you don't really see it unless you're on the W&OD trail.

From there, I kept heading west, making good time despite the massive headwind.  My next stop was in Herndon, where there's a replica rail depot that's been made into a small museum (I didn't go in).

And this is quite a busy town, so it feels a bit odd, here.  That is, too quiet and peaceful.  Still, a nice spot.  You can't see it, but there's a tiny little Town Hall just off to the left; it has the sign, but I suspect that it isn't actually the town hall anymore.  One of these days, I'll need to check on that.

Riding a bit further, I got to Smith's Switch Station, which is a nice little resting spot.  Most importantly for me, it has a few porta-potties, of which I was in desperate need.  This also wasn't my first time stopping here; on my first ride out, this was one of several places where I stopped and snacked (and rested; I was already in bad shape by the time I got there that time).

This time, other than the call of nature, I was in fine shape, so I only stopped long enough to use the facility and take this picture.

From that point, I really didn't take many pictures.  A couple miles from Clark's Gap, I stopped to take a picture of this church.  I really like the color contrast between the tree and the church.

And then I took the shot up at the top of this post, of the end of the trail at Purcellville.

One thing you can't tell from that is that there's a bike shop directly behind me (and across the street), called Trail's End Cycling.  Something's apparently trying to keep me from shopping there.  The first time I rode out, I didn't go around the depot building, and didn't see the shop (I'd been told it was right there, somewhere).  The second time, I went in, but they were having a problem with their distributor, and had almost no stock.  This time, it was a Tuesday, and they apparently close Mondays and Tuesdays.  Kind of annoying.

The good part was that it meant I got right back on the road, and headed back east.  That part of the ride is quite pleasant, without sharp turns or steep hills, and almost all tree-lined.

There were really only two bits of interest on the way back (I only stopped once to take a picture).  One is that I let the phone run down too low, and it stopped recording for several miles before I noticed.  I'd been planning to start it charging when it hit 5%, but it was already stopped before that.  So when I realized, I started the charger.  More annoying, it didn't automatically start recording again, so I went another half mile or mile after that before stopping again to start the recording.

I again stopped at the BBQ in Ashburn to get a sandwich to eat (well, two, actually).  This time I used the vinegar BBQ sauce, instead of the sweet stuff (because of diet, although it's Carolina BBQ, and the vinegar sauce is more authentic for Carolina).  And I screwed up in that I ordered baked beans on the side, forgetting how much sugar goes into those.  Probably not a big deal, with the nearly six hours in the saddle, but annoying.

The other bit of note was that I ended up riding for five or ten miles with another biker who was getting ready for a 400-mile, three day, 13000' elevation ride.  Very pleasant conversation, and it made the miles go by much more quickly (probably literally, as well as figuratively).

After he turned off, I made the last ten or twelve miles on my own, and I was feeling pretty good as I did it.  I was tired when I got home, but not excessively sore.

What I didn't realize until today, was that I got some significant sunburn on the way.  Not as bad as my normal first sunburn from ultimate, but significant. What was funny, to me, was how sharply defined it is, and how little spread out.  Tops of knees, a little on outside-back of calves, and on the tops of my forearms.  And the sharpness of the definition comes from the tightness of the clothes, of course (well, of course, in retrospect.  It wasn't something I'd thought about beforehand, and I was bemused to see it).

Last night, I was very tired (though I still watched the Caps game, of course), but still forced myself to do my exercises - at much lower intensity than normal - and stretches.  I think that helped cut down on soreness this morning.

I had a little trouble waking up, but still got out this morning.  I was a bit annoyed; the temperature was supposed to be in the low-50s, but it was actually low- to mid-40s.  I managed, but I was definitely chilled.  And I did do the full fifteen miles, this time; last time I rode so far, I only did twelve the next morning.

The downside is that I've still been pretty sore today.  I actually felt good when I finished the ride, and then got more sore, later.  Not sure what to make of that.

One funny note related to Strava.  I actually finished the ride yesterday ten meters short of the goal for the monthly climbing challenge.  I did, of course, blow by that today; I'm curious how much I'll beat it by, by the end of the month.  And I'm on course to easily surpass the 1250km for the MTS challenge, which is pretty cool.

I'm thinking I'll get up a little early in the morning, and do a gentle twenty-five miles or so.  If I can average the same 14mph that I did today, that'll even get me home early.  Here's hoping.