I wanted to get some good saddle time in as the weather has been great recently, but I didn’t want to overdo it. So today I did a modified Hamilton Corner loop, but at an easy pace. I just tried to enjoy the weather and scenery and rode at an endurance pace. I noticed that my body did tend to gravitate toward tempo work, probably from all the tempo riding I did last year. But I restrained myself, which I’m glad I did because as the first long ride since I let my Chronic Training Load (CTL) drop to the 20’s, I was hurting over the last hour and a half. I couldn’t imagine what I would have felt like if I had gone harder early on. The training stress for today’s ride confirms it was a fairly easy though, only 183. I can usually rack up over 200TSS in 3 hours when I’m doing tempo work. Again, there’s only one place to go from here…up!