I just had my first commute for over a year yesterday. I left the company I was working for last winter and went back to working from home for an out of state company. Not many commuter miles between my bedroom and home office... Now I'm back to working for a local company so I can start riding to work again.

My commute has gone from 5.5 miles to 13.
There are showers at the new place so I don't have to soft-pedal it in to avoid getting stinky.
Not being acclimated to the cold kicked my ass.
Being on a low carb diet has me in a state of perma-bonk.
Being out of shape from not riding at all in 2 months didn't do me any favors.
I'd forgotten how much I hate having the studded tires on.
My route needs tweaking. I had some dicey moments - nasty neighborhoods and bad traffic...

So the commute pretty much destroyed me but I can't wait to get back at it next week. Hoping to get back to 4 days per week ASAP. It'll be awesome having 100 commuting miles per week in addition to my distance training on the weekend. Will probably do 2 days next week...

Two things: 1. It always hurts the first week back, doesn't it? 2. Thank you for "perma-bonk"!