Spider Monkeys

Well I was mostly right yesterday. This morning's ride was a toughish outing. I would be lying if I said it was 100% on the rivet smashfest, but there were certainly some solid sections. I have to say the BYL Junior guys might be spider monkeys mostly made up arms and legs but they can ride bikes and climb hills. I pride myself on usually getting to the top of a hill before other people, which I managed today, but the juniors didn't make it easy.

Not the driest ride I have ever had it must be said. There wasn't torrential rain, but there was enough little showers coming through to make sure that the roads didn't dry out until I was well out of the hills. I was more than a little nervous about heading into the hills on wet roads. Last time I did it I came out a nervous wreck. Today was much better. I am certainly feeling a lot more comfortable on the bike. I am still descending like a concerned senior citizen, but today was a vast improvement over last Sunday's hills ride, and today the roads were wet.

The one annoying thing about the ride (besides the rain) was that my power meter went a bit haywire. You know it isn't a good sign when you turn all your devices on and your power meter doesn't want to calibrate. Never bodes well. After struggling to set up correctly I am sure the power meter was reading low for a big chunk of the ride and then about halfway through it just plain stopped working. Completely dead. The spot it stopped was heading up a big hill too which was very annoying because I missed recording a big chunk of power. I got it going again once we left the hills and I think it was reading correctly after that, but it was quite annoying. It seemed to work okay when I was riding yesterday. Very random, which summarises my experience with this power meter quite well.

With the rain this morning I did think briefly about getting on the Kickr instead, but really there wasn't enough rain to make that necessary. If I had gone that option I would have been annoyed at myself, since it was a mostly dry morning with little showers. It would have been a waste to spend it indoors. Plus I was keen to get in another decent length ride. Last weekend my long ride was 120km and it felt very good. Today I was keen for similar. In fact today's ride ended up being a little longer, but it still felt good. The overall intensity was low, but spending over 4 hours in the saddle is going to tire you out no matter how you slice it, which it did today. Just really nice to start getting some miles in.

Of course being out for a wet ride meant that something else has happened today. Bike cleaning. Definitely my first bike cleaning session for the Winter (all 4 days of it so far), but I think it might actually be my first bike clean of the year, which sounds bad until you realise that my road bike has probably only had a handful of rides this year. To be fair to the bike it was due a good clean, but more to wash off any remaining dust. All done now, shiny and clean. Just in time to be rained on again I suspect.

Running tomorrow and possibly a bit of an open water swim in the River, pending weather. The run is another controlled pace affair, so hopefully I can replicate the run from Wednesday. Control, control, control.