Shorter and Faster and Bike Etique

A lot happened on the bike today. The best part was that my average speed for 40 miles was 17.2mph. I did the Platte River trail again, its a really nice trail. From where I start it has a slight incline all the way until I turn round and then its Downhill all the way. Today I had a head wind for my outward bound trip, by mile 19 I was at a point where I just wanted to turn around.

The cool piece was I managed to average 16.2 on the way out and when I turned around I was doing about 22 for a bit and finished at about 19. I didn't get out as early as I would have liked so that's when I made the decision to go harder with a shorter distance. Speed is an issue that I need to address, I have been hoping the weight loss would make me faster. It will but I have hit maximum times I can dedicate to training, now to longer I need to go faster. What I did like about the summaries on my Garmin was last week I went and extra 7 miles and burned only an extra 400 calories. What I took from this was as effort goes they were very similar.

What I learned was that you really need to cycle in the conditions your race will be in. Up until now I have been cycling in the foothills which is climb, recover, climb, recover and is a bit gruelling after a while. I think that is why I was slower last week I just didn't know I could go faster.

Now here's a question. What do you do when people overtake you and then slow down to below your speed? This happened twice today the first one was just outright rude. The second one a couple of guys got lost and then cut in front of me to get back on the trail. They looked faster than me so I sat behind them to see once we were out of traffic if they would take off. What happened though was their two friends caught up and crowded me out. I had to force my way past. Should I be saying something? Who knows, who cares. Was this just another incident of "Hey fat boy I'm faster than you, oh I guess I'm not." This does happen and is very weird. I recognize we all have different training goals on different days, just cycle at your pace and Ill cycle at mine and we can all have fun.

After the cycle we headed straight into the mountains for a BBQ where I had two beers. I don't recommend this as apparently a bit of altitude sickness kicked in and I was all over the place. I guess I should have re hydrated first.