It was nice to get out for a ride today that was just a ride -- not training*, no specific goals, just pedaling through new countryside.
Not so nice was that it started with the climb to Sutton, while my legs were cold, and it took me a good 25 miles to really feel warmed up and loose. Which has become par for the course, which is just honestly kind of ridiculous -- legs, really?
It was good to be riding by myself -- I ended up doing a ride with a group ride two weeks that I hadn't intended to be a group ride, it just happened that way. That was an organized ride but go-at-your-own-pace; I was just barely fast enough to hang onto a group for a while, and once I started to falter they had decided I was Part Of The Group and they were keeping me, which meant a lot of hill-sprinting and pushing hard. All good things, but it was also nice to be beholden to no one but myself. Especially as I wasn't pushing the pace today -- I just rode until I was back at my front door.
Looking forward to the time change; after getting clipped last fall I haven't wanted to do my commute end-to-end in darkness, and it's been too cold for it to be fun anyway, but that should be changing.
* Well, right now time in the saddle is an important thing to train, because I need to get certain delicate anatomical structures used to sitting on a small brick for hours on end again after months of nothing longer than errands or spin classes. But I wasn't deliberately training anything.
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