Now, when riding I never suffer like a racer does. Riding should be fun, and there are always reasons to stop for a moment, have a drink, and stretch the legs. No one’s chasing me, and I’m not chasing anyone else — at least with the goal of winning anything. So I seldom feel the need to push myself so hard that I feel like I’m going to end a ride totally spent. That seems to go against the point of riding — to have fun.
However, today was all about suffering. For the music in the park ride the temp was just south of 100 degrees; humidity was off the chart; we always seemed to be riding on fresh blacktop and without shade; there was no such thing as enough water. As I told my wife later, I got to a point where I just switched off and stopped thinking about how I was feeling. We covered 40.5 miles; the entire time I tried to avoid thinking about the heat, and kept telling myself to keep my legs spinning. Must of worked — I finished feeling relatively fresh, though definitely not ready to go any more miles.