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.
dphilli1 had to be out at Purgatory Chasm this morning at early o'clock, so I dragged myself out of bed and went with him, plus bike. Which meant I was 60-odd miles from home without having to ride out and back, which was nice.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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