Monday, September 6, 2021

The Hasty Retreat Of Summer 2021

It’s Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer. Perhaps you enjoyed a day off from work. Good for you. For me, it’s just a Monday without mail. I worked last night, I will work again later tonight.

Last Monday we hit 80° in West Bend and we haven’t been close to it since. On Saturday we didn’t even get to 70° and on a couple of occasions in the last week we had overnight lows in the 40s. We also had lots of clouds, a little rain, and generally depressing conditions, all of which figured in my ride statistics. For the week that ended yesterday, I did only 3 rides for a grand total of 100 miles in 6 hours. You have to go back to May 3-9 to find a weaker effort in my training logs. Going into last week I had completed 7 consecutive 200-mile weeks. Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday was my first 3-day break from cycling since May 27-29. I just couldn’t rally myself.

I’m feeling the change of seasons very acutely, again. And it doesn’t help that we’re losing almost 3 minutes of daylight per day. Next Thursday, September 16, will be the last day in 2021 with a sunset later than 7 p.m.  If you live a normal daytime schedule, then it’s getting difficult for you to ride after work. There’s a little more flexibility for me, but even I have to sleep sometime. Right now I’m still trying to sleep away the cooler hours of the morning so that I can ride in the warmest hours of late afternoon, but each afternoon is getting shorter. It won’t be long until I’m staying up after work so that I don’t miss a tiny window of nice weather early in the afternoon, then I’ll sleep in the evening.

My new training week began today with a 32-mile road ride. The forecast isn’t bad, so I’ll try to rack up 200 miles before the week is done. But last week wasn’t an anomaly; it was an omen.

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