Some mornings, you just know that a cycle commute is the last thing your body wants or needs, but you still go anyway. That was me this morning. On both counts.
At 6:30 am, as I got the BeOne ready for a long way commute, I wasn’t actually feeling bad as such. I’d had a good 43 mile ride on Sunday and had been resting up since then so I should have been fresh, but still I knew somehow, something wasn’t quite right.
So I set out into the cool morning air and kept the pace easy to warm up. Then only four or five miles in: bonk, power failure, no reason. Just as the hills started too. I should have been rested; I should have been fuelled; I should have been warmed up; but as Bradley Wiggins said after his disappointment in the Tour de France, sometimes you can do everything right and it still just doesn’t work. Hearin’ you, Brad.
There was a turnoff that would have cut short my intended loop, but I rode past it stuffing an energy bar into my face (just in case) and kept plugging on. Uphill. Slowly. Painfully. Stupidly? Probably.
Let’s not overstate things though. It’s just a bike ride and I made it all right in the end. I recorded an 18.0mph average over the first 18 miles (or so) as I joined the M5 cycle path at Jordanstown, which only dropped to 17.5mph after the city centre traffic was negotiated. That’s surprisingly adequate given how it felt on the bike.
I’m pretty tired now and I’ve almost convinced myself I’m sickening for something, but in reality it’s probably just an off day and I’ll bounce back by the weekend.
Maybe I should take more heed of myself. Sometimes, I just know.
Performance is tied to so many physical and non-physical factors that any one of them being out of kilter can throw a spanner in the works; tiredness, aches, pains etc.