Originally Posted by
Dunbar
I've been chatting with some fellow cyclists while out on my normal rides and who would've thought it could be so hard? I'll be cruising along at 60-70% of FTP, chatting away, and feel like I'm about to run out of breath if I talk too long. Is this a skill one needs to learn?
Late last summer, I was ready to snatch the pebble from my master's hand. The backstory: he got me started cycling. Riding with him prior, when he was in shape and I was not, would drive me nuts when we climbed big steep hills. I'd be dying, and I'd look over, and he'd be barely panting. Or the SOB would bust out in a STORY!
So fall comes around and I'd gotten all obsessed with riding and caught, then passed, his conditioning level. It helped that he went backwards due to getting sick, traveling, etc.
So we did my hilly 50-mile route, that I'd been pounding every other day like clockwork for weeks, and about 3/4 up a particularly nasty wench of a hill, I'm fine but he's clearly suffering, and I said: so, tell me a story!
It was, like, so cool.