I had a one hour recovery ride scheduled, as my first bike session since racing last weekend. A recovery ride is an easy effort ride, and it is designed to just get the legs moving again. I do these a lot, especially on the day after very long rides or long runs.
I normally do recovery rides on my trainer, but the weather was so nice this morning, that I decided to ride outside. In order to keep my effort easy, and to allow me to just spin my legs, I chose the flattest route I could from my house.
Things were going really well, until about twenty minutes into my ride. I was about to turn onto a nice, long and relatively flat road, when I noticed that it had been freshly oiled and chipped. For those that don’t know, oiling and chipping is a low cost way of maintaining roads. Essentially a layer of hot oil is sprayed onto the road and then immediately covered with limestone chips.
The problem for cyclists is, that a significant portion of those chips, don’t adhere to the oil. The process essentially turns a regular road into a gravel track. This makes the road very treacherous to ride on a TT bike. This morning, I chose not to risk a crash, and immediately changed my route.
The new route I took was unknown territory for me and this turned out to be a poor choice. What I discovered, was that this new road, was extremely hilly. One hill was about a third of a mile long with a gradient of over 10%. This is not what is needed on a recovery ride. By the end of the ride, which ended up taking 75 minutes, I had more elevation gain, than I had on the 56 mile ride at Ironman 70.3 Musselman.
To add insult to injury, I also encountered loose dogs on this new route. I was chased along the road by them. They didn’t try to bite me, but nonetheless, it was not a great experience.
The was some good news in all of this, and that was the state of my legs. Even though my recovery ride turned into a hill climbing adventure, my legs felt very strong. Something positive to take from a ride that didn’t go to plan.
