Week 10, 2,000 miles before daylight savings time

 This week was a hard week for me to ride.  I am getting tired of the cold wet rides in darkness.  I say this with a twist of irony as I live where the winters are quite mild compared to my friends up north.  Of course I do not have any local acquaintances that ride all year every day no matter what the weather is,  This is the longest consecutive days that I have been on my bike in my life.

I wanted to have 2,000 miles behind me by Week 10 of 2014 and today I have 2,011 miles in the logs.  These miles are almost exclusively commuter miles on the same roads.  There are many benefits to riding the same route over and over.  There are plenty of downsides to this routine bike commute and I only think of them in the morning right before I start putting on my riding gear.  Since I want to encourage my positive brain and discourage negative vibes I will only list the beneficial reasons that I like bike commuting the same route day after day evening after evening.



Riding the same course every day allows me to play games to break the monotony of the routine pedaling on the same road every day.  So I have broken up my 25 mile commute into three segments  I use my Garmin 810 to document my average speed on these roughly 8 mile segments.  I recently configured a Garmin 810 screen to show only show current lap average speed, lap time and lap distance.  When I focus on how fast I am riding it is hard for me to keep an even pace over time.  When I monitor my average pace I seem to pace myself better.  On my segments I can set a goal of how fast I want to average the segment that I am riding and then pace myself for that segment.  This is easier than trying to set a pace for the whole 25 mile ride.  I am learning how to set short intermediary goals that will work within my over all goal to get where I want to be.



One of my long term goals for this year is to ride 200 miles in one day.  Riding everyday has gotten my body into a rhythm of physical exercise that allows me to be relaxed on my bike even when I am tired.  I have noticed that over the past year and a half that I have been bike commuting that my neck and shoulders have gotten stronger and they do not get tired on my rides.  Some days I really feel like riding fast and other days I do not feel like riding at all until I get on my bike and start riding.  On the days that my body is telling me to back off I listen and ride at a slower pace and enjoy the view.  When I am riding in this mode I imaging that I am at mile 140 on a 200 mile ride and think about just keeping my cranks turning no mater what my mood is.

I tested a nice Trek Domane 4.7 in July 2014.  for a while I wanted to really get a new lighter bike.  The more I ride my steel Serotta in all of the fowl weather this winter I have reclaimed the love of this bike again.  Every time I am cruising down Leary Road with ease relaxed in my areo bars I think about how the master bike fitter measured me for this bike.  I am glad I got this bike custom made with the areo bars because I can ride so much faster when I am on them than when I am in any other position on my bike.

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