I came here to post about my ride.
I wanted to do a long one but my legs were tired from yesterday’s kinda hard ride. So a la
bigjohn I decided to ride to Acton.
This is a maybe 27 mile slight uphill ride and then a 27 mile slight down hill coming back. Normally it’s a headwind out/tailwind back but today the weather pattern was reverse. You could realistically do an pretty steady effort both out and back.
I never get assigned from coach the long zone 2 ride but I have heard
LAJ kvetch about them, so I figured here was my chance to see what was up with that. Now cycling wise, I don’t find
LAJ to be a complainer but how hard could a zone 2 ride be?
I spent 2:15ish pedaling constantly (pretty much) in zone 2 going out. Jeez why was that so hard. I was really happy when I got there, and took a little socially distant break on the side of the road eating my raisins.
Then back at it going home into that headwind. Another hour of steady zone 2, wow this is tiring!
Thankfully I got a flat when I got back into town. Too tired to really investigate and I didn’t bother to take my sunglasses off so I neglected to realize my tire was cut, I just saw a drop of sealant and thought I might be able to limp it home by putting more air in the tire. “Limping it home” was a valid excuse for respite from the endless zone 2 pedaling. I had to stop and top off my tire twice more and finally called for a pick up 30 min later.
So the moral of the story is: yes a long constant zone 2 effort is weirdly taxing in a way that it logically seems like it shouldn’t be.