Clyde1820

With cycling, I've never done it for competition nor exclusively for "training" reasons as such. And so, I've always felt that I have usually been serving various other aspects of my mind/body on many rides, even when a good portions of the miles might be deemed by some as "junk."

Back when I used to run hard, years ago, most of us (in the group of decent competitive runners) felt there was no "junk" mileage put in, just varying degrees of focus. One bunch of miles might be focused on the strength aspects; a different batch of miles or route, acceleration; often with the longer and more-sedate miles referred to as "long, slow 'base' miles." Yet, even with the different routes, intensities, focus, we always got something out of it, and felt all of it was geared toward the goal of improvement competitively. (The 'numbers' bore this out, with several of us, as well.) Might well not have been the most-efficient way to go about it, but our choice of varying the mileage content worked.

For me, I do what I can, I push where it feels appropriate to what I'm looking to get out of the session, and I accept the rest as having other benefits despite not peak benefits for the supposedly "primary" training goal of the day.