And the tired legs go on and on...

Away tomorrow, out for curry Thursday so bike it had to be.  Went to sleep promising myself that if I still felt stiff and achy I'd ditch it - but knowing that as I ditched cycling in last week I would be cross with myself if I did - after all, I've started marathon training, haven't I?

So - I woke up achy and stiff, but neverthless hobbled into the spare room to pull on my biking stuff, and rather later than usual, set off.  The first decision is at the bottom of our road - right for the flatter, busier main road route down the valley, left for the lumpy way.  Irritatingly the flat way now feels like cheating, so I turned left and headed off towards Draughton and the first climb.

My legs didn't feel too bad - certainly better pedalling than they were walking down stairs - and I hit the bottom of the climb in something around normal time.  I'm not sure whether I was trying harder, but I became aware as I went over the top into Airedale that I seemed to be a bit quicker than usual. It was quite thick fog, and I was glad of my lights, but as I dropped into Silsden the clouds parted and I stopped to take the shot at the top of the page - lovely.

Without pushing it, I tried to just keep the speed up down into Silsden and the climb up Holden Lane.  I definitely pushed it a bit up the first section, getting out of the saddle rather than grinding it out, and reached the corner feeling tired but not as much as normal.

I kept pushing until I realised that as I hit the last steep section I was within spitting distance of my fastest time to climb this hill (nothing impressive - 6:30 for a 0.6m stretch!) and so really drove the pedals round to pass the tree that is my "done it" point about 5 seconds quicker than my previous best - but with my HR well in the red zone.

I got to work in under 57 minutes, which I think is the quickest I've ridden in this way.

The ride home was fun - again without pushing hard I realised I was only a few minutes slower than last year when I used to get home in just over 50 minutes instead of the current hour, so I pressed on down through Draughton and got to the A59 in 48 minutes - no record on the cards, but a definite possibility of a respectable average speed.

The horrid climb up the A59 takes, I can now report, a touch over 2 minutes when you're trying hard, so I had a fair bit of time in hand to do the 2 miles home - in the end the watch stopped on just over 56 minutes, so today was two mystifyingly fast rides on tired legs, and the first time I've got home quicker than going in the lumpy way.

Maybe I should ride tired all the time?