I didn’t die

So as you may have noticed, I stopped updating this thing.  The main reason was that I wasn’t progressing like I wanted and was getting quite discouraged.  This isn’t a rare thing for me;  the same thing happened last year.  I start out the summer with tons of ambition but then usually fall short within a month or two.  I’ve come to a bit of a realization though in that I can be completely happy without constantly trying to set personal bests or pusing myself super hard.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve only gone on group rides or commutes.  I did manage to find an awesome group that rides just a hair faster than I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays so they present a good challenge and also keep me on the bike 3 times a week now along with the Sunday Nice N Easy ride.  With commuting this puts me up to about 70 miles a week.

I really feel like this sort of schedule is working for me.  I don’t lose entire days like I used to and I also don’t get discouraged when I’m not constantly pushing myself for more, more, more.  I’ve been doing it for four weeks now and I’m hoping that I can keep this up until the rides stop at the end of October.  That should put me in great form for the Hilly Hundred which is at the end of October.  Of course, if I don’t feel like I’m ready, then I’m not going to feel horrible if I don’t do it.

So, on to today’s ride.  Today’s ride was great.  Both Tom and Matt were there which meant that they went off the front so I had someone to chase.  For some reason, I was feeling incredibly strong so I went with them.  It was exciting to be pushing that hard.  We stopped at the turnaround point for about 20-25 minutes, which probably wasn’t the best thing since I didn’t really get a chance to warm up again.  On Bottom Road, Tom took off again and no one was going to catch him.  I figured I’d have a bit of fun and tried to catch up.  I kept up 26mph for 2 minutes, but then had to drop back down to 20mph since I had pegged my HR.  Eventually I caught up with him and we both slowed down to about 15mph.  The whole reason he went off was just to see who would come with him and to just get his HR up.  I’m glad he didn’t keep pushing once I caught him since I wouldn’t have been able to keep up for much longer.  About half a mile after I caught him we came upon a series of three hills.  They killed me.  But we all rested for a couple minutes at the top so I recovered pretty well.  After that it was a pretty uneventful ride back.  I did my best to stay up front and keep up with Tom.

Overall, I’m very happy with myself after this ride.  I’ve gotten much stronger over the past month or so and it is really starting to show.  When I first started getting back into these Sunday rides, I was consistently one of the slowest ones.  Now I’m to the point where I am quite sure that I am actually one of the fastest.  I’m still the slowest on the Tuesday/Thursday rides, but I am getting stronger and hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the middle of the pack pretty soon.  If not, then there is always next season.

I am finally becoming a real cyclist and getting much stronger.  I really love this feeling of accomplishment.