I bicycle commuted to work yesterday for the first time this year. My new location, and the facilities at this site, make it reasonable to ride both ways.
In the morning, I took the short route (about 7.5 miles). It was very dark and I had to use my headlights. It was a very nice ride in, though it was pretty chilly. I ride east in the morning, so I rode into the sunset. Nice.
The ride home was a different story altogether. I took a longer route home, to increase my overall mileage. Yesterday happened to be a very windy day, and my ride is essentially all in one direction (west, except for the part that makes it a longer route). Guess which direction the wind was coming from. Yep, a very stiff wind out of the west beat me to a pulp. On one section, the wind was so strong I could only maintain 9.5mph, and I was weaving from the effort and wind pressure on my bike. What a pain.
My total round-trip was about 20 miles. I'm guesstimating on this figure, because my great, yet crappy, Shimano flight deck computer tends to "turn off" during rides, so it doesn't capture everything about the ride. It usually manages to do this when I'm going really fast, so that my average speed doesn't reflect my actual effort (at least, this is what I tell myself).
Average for the ride: a very crappy 13.1mph.
Before the commute, my legs were already sore from some pretty intense squats that I did on Sunday. Last night it felt as if my quads were bruised. It hurt to push on them. I decided to take Tuesday off from any workouts whatsoever.
