Early morning ride

Got up at 3:35 this morning to get in a nice longer ride.  In fact this was my longest ride so far this year.  That's not saying a lot, except that I am starting to increase my mileage. I needed a longer ride to make sure I will be ready for Saturday's 20 mile Tour De Cure (Hey, if you haven't donated, how about slipping them $10 or more HERE?).  Its too bad I couldn't start when I want to, which would be about 5:00 am to try and stay out of the heat.

OK, anyone familiar with the schedule for Saturday will say I could, in fact start early.  As early as 5:30 am, but only if I'm doing one of the longer distances.  I'm not, so my start time will be 8:30.  That's still significantly earlier than last year.

This morning I knew i had to go at least 10 miles which represented half the stated distance for Saturday's ride. So I set the alarm to get up at 3:55 so I would have to ride, cool down and post the ride to my various websites (Daily Mile, Strava, Plus3, Map My Ride) and then get showered an to work at a reasonable time.  Now, astute readers will note the difference between my alarm and the time I actually got up.  I knew that if I tried to get that last 20 minutes of sleep, I was putting the morning's ride in jeopardy.  So, when I woke up 20 minutes early, I just got up and started getting ready.

For some reason knowing that I was up early had me taking my time to get ready and out the door.  I ended up on the bike about the same time as it would have been if I had gotten up at 3:55.  Funny how that works.  Anyway, by 4:08 according to my Garmin, I started pedaling.  The temperature was in the low 60's with a NNE wind of 10 gusting to 18 mph.  Not too bad, except the direction.

I felt good as I got into my rhythm and completed the first lap around my usual morning training loop.  On the second lap I decided I needed to change things up a little and did my longer loop.  I was still feeling good and looking at my Strava report of the ride I see I actually did my third fastest time on the long loop. Not too bad.  I continued mixing it up between the 2 loops trying to take my mind off the fact that my arms and shoulders were feeling it this morning for some reason.  By the 8 mile mark I was also starting to feel it in my saddle area.  I know its from a lack of saddle time.  I wanted to stop at this point, but knew I needed to keep going to put in the distance.

I did push through 3 more laps and ended with a total of 11.67 miles this morning and an average speed of 12.9 mph.  Not too bad at all.  Have I ridden faster and farther?  Sure I have, but this tells me I can manage to get through the ride on Saturday.

Have any big rides planned for your weekend?

Get on your bikes and ride!!!!