Thursday, May 29, 2008

Weighty things to consider

Had a mental health day today and went for good ride in the southern parts of Wollongong around Albion Park and back home via the coastal cycleway. I made a conscious effort to push harder gears instead of spinning and found my legs coped pretty well. The effort also paid off in being a lot faster. The 70km ride saw an average of 27kph which is a lot better than my usual, and I don't feel any more fatigued than I do normally.

I think I might be guilty of taking things too easy in the saddle and I should HTFU. IN future I will define rides as training, so I'm actually trying to exert myself and improve my stength and fitness, as opposed to just enjoying the ride. Bit of a revelation.

In the last few days the randon email list has been discussing bike weights during brevets. I've always thought that I was a pretty heavy traveller, but this morning I weighed the bike with my standard 200km kit, including lights, camelback and assorted food and came in at 16kg. Bike and rider weight is 94kg. The new bike will shave about 4-5kg off that standing weight and I could probably drop another 5 kilos, so everything is relative.

Mileage in kilometers is 2043.39

1 comment:

David Killick said...

Hey, great blog. Not sure which is lonelier sometimes, bike blogging or audax riding! The mileage thing on each post is a great motivator in my experience, I need all the motivation I can get sometimes.

This one's an interesting post, you have got me thinking about a lot of things. 27km/h is a cracking average speed - well done on that.

The harden up issue is a big one for me, sometimes I think I'm not pushing myself hard enough. Time to try a bit more I suspect.

I'm starting tomorrow.