Just cycling harder

ROUTE Wind. Trust me, I try so hard not to talk about it as its the excuse I use the most and Im sure I'm not the only one but I include it as part of my training record. Not sure of the direction today as it was quite swirly and as strong as any other day from the past 2 weeks. Couldn't get out of the house as early as I would have liked due to getting up late but was still able to do a quick 16 miles with time left over just in case I punctured and time to visit the Co-op for my daily dose of 'hunger busting' kit. This kit consists of 2 bottles coke zero, a pint of milk, some fruit and a snack, today it was 2 bags of filling but calorie poor rice cakes. Copious amounts of freshly ground coffee follows then a good proper meal when I get home. When in the queue they always put the doughnuts near the tills and I find it sooo difficult to just walk past and ignore them but that's what I have done the past 3days! Cycling in to work today was harder due to no real tail wind at any point but traffic lights were alot better to me than yesterday.

Distance 15.6miles

Average 20.1mph

Ascent 500ft

ROUTE Due to an unexpected turn of events I was able to cycle home whilst it was still day light so made the most of the evening sunset and wanted to do the 20mile commute I did yesterday in reverse. Wind was swirly and strong again and I wasn't feeling too good when I set off but tried to give it my all from the off. Oldham road was a drag but managed to get a cross/ tail wind down Victoria Avenue until it decided to swirl about. I had to do a lot of riding standing up and I couldn't put any power down whilst sitting so stood up to get the speed up and sat down to relieve the pressure but try and keep the cadence up for as long as poss until my speed dropped significantly that I had to stand and sprint again. I hit one hill so hard, standing all the way, that I was sick and swallowed it but seemed to recover fairly quickly, well quicker than expected, then had a bad head wind on Heywood old road. Last 5 miles was a much needed tailwind albeit a swirly one. The last climb was Holin Lane, a mile from home, which gets very very steep but somehow I managed to keep above 10mph. A final sprint home finished what felt like a killer interval training session. I suppose I treat all my commutes like that.

My cleats were as far forward as possible which relieved the pressure on the calves and legs but just didn't feel right, 0.5 cm further back should do the trick. I think that I might have to go back to my double crank soon as the little ring is kinda redundant for my commutes. I do way too much tweaking of my bike setup, Ill get it right and leave it one day.

Distance 20.6 miles

Average 19mph - just!

Ascent 1050ft