It was a beautiful day to be outside. It warmed up to 65 degrees! (Hard to believe we’re getting snow on Monday.) Wore my bib tights with a long sleeve jersey, no jacket, and was comfortable.

I need to build up my confidence on the bike on roads all over again now that I have the clippies. Today I had to get a later start than I would have preferred for a road ride, so I opted for the C&O: I could do the workout as planned and not have to worry about cars and busy intersections. I’ll get there again, but I need to ease into it.

I really wish I had someone more experienced to ride with. I’m a very visual person and it’s super helpful to be able to watch someone more experienced than me handling their bike while riding as we navigate the same obstacles. The local cycling groups haven’t been organizing group rides due to weather. Maybe that will change soon…

Current challenge is unclipping only one side and leaning the bike in that direction without flailing: I’m so used to placing both feet on the ground when stopping. But being able to do only one foot will make stopping and starting at road intersections safer. I toppled over onto the wrong side the first time I tried it, and re-scraped the same damn knee (not too bad bc I had a bandaid on it) but succeeded every time after that. Now I need to get equally good at it on both sides!

I’m facing the fact that because of my QL needing more strengthening, I may need to respect my body and revisit my cycling goals for this year in terms of distances and climbing so I can give it more time. (I would just drop to the next shorter distance if necessary.) I stayed within my watt and RPM targets for this workout (hence the slower speed: it was meant to be a recovery ride with low watts and high cadence) but my lower back was super tight by the end. I find endless flat rides like this more physically taxing than hills or anything I do on the trainer because it’s constant pedaling in the same position, so we’ll see how I do once I start climbing again. I have 8 weeks until my first big ride to figure it out.

Once the time changes (soon!!! Yay!) I have a short training route mapped out that includes the big hill from Indian Springs Rd that I can do before or after work.