szewczykm

Monday is was in the dumps because eating well was starting to be a struggle. It had been easy for a few months and I had a bad few days.

Then tonight I rode 35.5 miles averaging about 15.5 mph. I beat my personal best 50k by over 8 minutes riding at 15.8 mph... It felt really good. I only took one 2 minute break.

Even the rejection from my wife as I walked through the door and she was grossed out because I had about 50 bugs smashed into my chest, face, and hair did not bring me down. Admittedly, I looked pretty gross but how cool is that?

Downside - I only stopped for a minute to arrange my water bottles. Only to discover that somewhere along the way I lost my fancy insulated bottle from my bag. It couldn't have been strapped in any tighter. I'm not sure how that happened and I didn't notice. That ride was well worth the price.

Mithrandir

Nice job! I'm attempting my 2nd ride in a month tomorrow, after I got hit by a car. My first ride ended in disaster so I'm trying hard not to be psyched out... but I'll try to follow your example and set a new personal best!

Street Pedaler

Congrats. It's weird how things go, sometimes. I know that some of the best rides I've ever had have been on the days when the LAST thing I felt like doing was to get on a bike and ride. Sometimes everything just really seems to "click" or something. I wish every ride were that way.

downtube42

Often my best rides start out with me feeling like crap and not really wanting to ride. I think maybe on those days I start slowly, properly warming up, leading to a better ride.

EL LUCHADOR

congrats man, that is moving fast. i would love to be able to average that.

but, my personal best was 14.3 and it was two days after i did a worst of 10.7 so i think your theory might be right.

what do you weigh? what cadence do you like, any tips for cycling faster?

Stealthammer

+ 1

Some of my personal best performances whether racing or training, have started off with me feeling like crap and not really wanting to ride, and often I actually feel slow and "out-of-the-groove" during the ride. But when looking at my times, average speeds, HRM readouts, or placings, I find that my own subjective evaluation has little to do with my actual performace.

skilsaw

A wife grossed out by a few dead bugs?
Sell the house, send the wife packing, and N+1 !!!

Mr. Beanz

+1 Just the other day I asked Gina about swallowing bugs as she hasn't mentioned it in a while and she swallows atleast one bug every ride. I haven't heard you complain about swallowing bugs lately, have you not caught any?". She said, " it's become such a part of riding that I just learned to swallow them unless they are too big".

As far as the dark, yeah! When I train for a ride, I do what I can. I don't stress with the results after each or evena few rides. I know it goes up, then down, then up, then down, down, then up, then down then one day I wake up and my pace is much better than I was expecting. From that point on, I know it is at a constant better than it was state.

vesteroid

So many comments I could make about that first paragraph...all of them would cause beanzy to pound me....must resist.

eja_ bottecchia

It is always darkest before it goes completely black.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a locomotive coming at you!

Mithrandir

I tend to think of it as a clever way to replenish my protein during a ride.

Mithrandir

To follow up...

https://app.strava.com/activities/18658653


New personal best! 16.6mph according to Strava, but my Garmin said 16.8. Either way, it's at least 0.6mph faster than my previous best.