Long ride

First hour beautiful, second hour quite good, third hour hot and demoralizing.

Back tire was totally flat when I pumped up tires last night, it still seemed OK in the morning so I went ahead with it without replacing the tube or investigating further, but it was clearly having a slow leak of some sort: about half an hour from home, I got that bumpy feeling that tells you really you should get off and check your tire, only I was by that point so hot and fatigued that I really couldn't face even five minutes by the (incredibly hot) side of the road, I figured that so long as I still had some air in it I should just get home and deal with it later! But it is bad for the morale to be toiling in high zone 4 and going only at an incredibly slow speed - a reminder that full tires are a necessity for road biking. Annoying task now awaits for later in the day - hopefully it's just the tube, not the tire itself...

I was out the door by 6 (ugh), it makes a huge difference in terms of temperatures and traffic. Rode out past Bodden Town and the Lighthouse and took the left on Frank Sound Road, got to the Esso station around the 1:35 mark and stopped there for a snack and to top the Camelbak up with water and Gatorade.

That gave me a mental boost, and the ride back from there to Bodden Town has some very beautiful stretches, but I began to be aware of being subjectively very hot, and also increasingly suffering from all of the minor ills that cycling flesh is heir to: the heels of my hands were sore (this bike is a bit too small for me, so I lean even more heavily than I do on my NYC bike); toes were uncomfortable in bike shoes; the tender spots under my shorts that were still sore from last week's ride were sore again, and I couldn't find a comfortable position to sit in; my lower back needed stretching more and more often...

In short, I was very glad to hove within view of Kirk's Supermarket, which really tells me that I am almost home...

(Now that I am air-conditioned, I am feeling much better - really it wasn't a bad ride, the slowness/soft tire thing is a bummer but it is still a good workout even if it brings down average speed and extends the last part of the ride almost intolerably!)

3:07:41
44.08 miles
14.1mph avg speed (avg HR 139, max HR 154)

zone 1: 0:01:50
zone 2: 1:44:57
zone 3: 0:55:62
zone 4: 0:22:42