Sounded Good in Theory

Sometimes, I do have a hard time to get myself motivated for a middle of the week 30-miler on the bike. Last week, I fought the demotivation with joining a co-worker at a popular group ride. I thought, a group ride for a change is exactly what the doctor ordered. I had this option this week again, but honestly, I felt so uncomfortable* in the group last week, that my nerves couldn't handle a new edition of that one so soon.

*While average speed and distance for the ride was pretty much perfect, the constant speeding up and slowing down of the group was driving me nuts... I felt like we are going to crash any second.

Besides, I did have intervals on the schedule and I yet have to do a longer ride on my aerobars, so riding alone was the way to go this week. But I didn't feel like my usual usual, so I branched out to a popular loop 20 minutes from work. Unfortunately, it was 20 minutes into the exact opposite direction from where I live, so needless to say, I was home very late last night. So while that new route was a good idea in theory, I kinda doubt, I will do this again.

The ride itself was really nice and the loop is popular, because it's really pretty, low traffic and not a lot of turns. On the way back, I ignored a turn, thinking I'll cut the ride a little shorter, only to realize later, that I just added at least three miles and so I ended up with close to 35 miles for the day. Not bad for a weeknight.

Also, I had a classic nutrition fail: I still had leftover gel blasts in my bento box from Saturday's race in an open bag. While I was at work, the bike was in the car and the summer heat, did a great job melting the gel blast. When I lifted the bike out of the car, I saw this:

And because, I didn't do enough stupid things already, I thought, I'll get the gooey mess out of the car with my hands, only to have the sticky crap on my hands. Then I thought, I get rid of it by wiping it off in the grass only to have gel blast covered in grass on my hands....