70 KM Night Bike Ride

Night riding is dangerous

After taking Monday off, and not getting up early enough on Sunday for my group ride, I decided to go out tonight. I was planning on going out at around 4PM, but it rained, so I had to wait until 6PM. The roads were semi-dry at that point.

I get twitchy whenever I take a rest day. Last week, I took too many, but I had a scooter accident, so I guess that it’s understandable. Today, I wanted to do 100km, but after 70, I started getting a bit tired. I wasn’t out of gas, but I had the feeling that things would get dangerous. Let me explain. Since I ride on bike paths, there are always people, bikers and things to avoid. It’s not like I’m riding on an empty street in the middle of nowhere. When I started swearing at a car that wasn’t driving in its lane, I knew that it was time to stop. If it had been day, I would have continued. But riding at night is more dangerous.

Nevertheless, I managed to ride 70 km in 1:40, which is my fastest time yet. My initial plan was to do 100 today and 50 tomorrow. Instead, I’ll do 70 km tomorrow. That should even things out. I completed 25 km in 35:05, The first 50 km was done in 1:06, so I am getting faster.

Average speed was 42 kph. First 25 km was done at 42.74 kph. First 50 km was done at 45.45 kph. I sped up during the second loop. The second 25 km was done at 48.39 kph. That was my fastest. It took me a while to get warmed up. My legs felt strange, but after 20 km, they felt fine.

So I’ll schedule a long ride on Friday morning. I’ll do  like 100-200 km in one ride. I need to get used to longer rides. Right now, I’m still doing time trial training. It’s still fun and I don’t mind the loops. My sitting position is getting better and I transmit power better to the pedals. However, I don’t like riding at night. I’d rather ride during the day.

The ride went well and felt good. I missed not going out on Sunday, but it rained again and after my mud ride of Saturday, I didn’t feel like getting covered again. It didn’t rain for very long today, so there wasn’t that much water.

For starters, a car cut me off, so I was swearing at that. Coupled with some bad leisure bikers and I was annoyed. I was feeling groggy and a bit tired. That made me less likely to respond quickly to an emergency situation. Anyway, since I do loops, it’s easy to change my mileage.

weekly km count: 70
monthly km count: 800
yearly km count: 857 (started in June 09)