This is the second full week and third week of training for me. It didn’t start out so well. Sunday I was supposed to do a shortish 10 mile ride, but I miscalculated and did 15 mi. I felt fine afterward, though very tired, so I thought it was probably okay, but I woke up in the middle of the night with my legs feeling sore and heavy (a sign of having overdone things).

Monday and Tuesday I went very easy on the riding (I completed the suggested distances but at an AVS about 10mph), went to bed early, ate a lot and fairly healthfully (and drank a lot of water), and started feeling a lot better. Today was supposed to be a brisk ride, but I’m going with “compared to Monday and Tuesday, a slow normal is pretty darn brisk” (AVS 12.5 so far). My legs are still feeling overtired but not in the bad, heavy kind of way so far.

Pondering what happened, I realized that last week I consistently was over target for many of the distances because of my commute patterns. I also haven’t been eating or hydrating as well as I should or sleeping as much, and I’ve had a lot going on socially. The combination of those things, along with the five extra miles from Sunday, looks fairly lethal when you line it all up like that, and indeed it felt pretty lethal, both physically and mentally. Doubts about my fitness for this whole endeavor had started to crop up, but when I realized what was going on, I noticed that a lot of it was poor choices that I can change.

One thing I noticed is that I’ve been pushing myself on speed/effort, which isn’t desirable. Speed is very much negotiable; completion is less so. I’ve committed to do the ride, not to do it at a certain pace, and I need to remember that. Plus, riding slower during the commute has the nice side benefit that I feel more relaxed and safer because I have more reaction time and I’m going at a speed that doesn’t surprise drivers as much. It really doesn’t take much more time either, though the difference is not imperceptible.

And in fun tidbits, here is my route on Saturday:
34-mile training ride