Today was the first outside ride since returning from Valley of the Sun and, man, did it feel cold! It was overcast and only 38°F when I left my house. I really got spoiled riding in 85° weather! But I had already committed to riding with my teammate Ben today, so I didn’t feel right about completely backing out. I did a short warm-up on the trainer with a 5-minute push. The push felt awful on my legs and it was hard to maintain my power so I started considering changing my workout plan. I wanted to do a long tempo ride with some LT intervals.

After my warm-up, I headed down to Reed Cycles to meet-up with Ben. Ben brought an ex-teammate of his along and the three of us headed west. The wind felt colder than I expected and I wasn’t too psyched for the ride. As we hit Beacon Light Road I tried a 5-minute push. I can usually do better on the road versus the trainer. My legs still felt awful, but the power numbers were much better. So much better than I was wondering if the PowerTap needed to be zeroed. I did switch bikes between the trainer and the road, but I was using the same CPU and hub so there’s no reason it should have been different (after I got home, I confirmed it was correct). But I could tell by the way my legs felt I should wait another day before doing my planned workout.

At that point my hands were already freezing so I decided to shorten the ride and do a sprint workout instead. Looking back, I hadn’t done a true sprint workout in a month, so it was much needed. My power for the sprints were significantly off from what it used to be, confirming that I shouldn’t slack off and always do my once-a-week neuromuscular workout.