That Was Faster Than I Expected

This Ride: 21.8 miles
Month: 370 miles
2011: 5,487.4 miles
Total since 1/1/2010: 11,607.1 miles

This morning I had conflicting goals. I wanted to ride relatively easy because I have a 200 k to ride tomorrow.  I wanted to improve my ranking on an uphill “sprint” some of the SPP people have set up using strava.com.  I was hobbled in this second goal by not knowing exactly where the start and stop to the sprint was.  I miss-gauged it so both goals were impacted.

We had 9 out this morning, and it was quite pleasant out.  We set a quick pace from the start, and I was riding comfortably with the group.  When we got to where I thought the sprint started, I pushed hard, and held it there for probably twice as far as I needed to.  I did succeed in improving my ranking and average speed over the section, but could have gone faster if I had started the effort at the start rather than several hundreds of yards after the start.  (My average speed was 15.1 mph on the section before this morning.  After this morning it was 17.6.)

Once I got back on the trail, I continued a pretty quick pace, and it felt good.  I’ve not put out that kind of effort/speed since the end of June.  It has been lacking in my riding and training as I was more focused on distance than speed.

I also discovered that my Garmin Edge 500 does not automatically select the bike I’m riding based on the cadence sensor.  Therefore I need to make sure I set the Garmin for the proper bike if I want to have a cadence sensor that works.

Now for another long day of work.  It has been a long week already.