Originally Posted by
Spoonrobot
Right now I can't even stand outside in the shade for longer than 5 minutes without sweating profusely.
Five minutes? Practically Arctic. I've seen days where I couldn't cross the 30' of parking lot to the car before I was sweating.
It's the difference between "riding" and "coasting." If you can mostly coast to work and pedal sparingly things are much easier.
Last couple of miles to the office is 89 feet of gain in a mile, then bombing the last mile with 95 feet of drop. Makes the finish fun, but guarantees I haven't been able to coast for a while until getting to the top of that hill. (the 1.5 miles before that is short climbs with flat-to-barely-downhill bits, so it's hammer-and-coast until the full mile of climb starts.) Let's also not forget the effect of adding panniers and other gear; most of us can't really commute on a stripped down TT bike, so there's an extra 20-40 pounds of gear and the resultant drag.