Almost February

I didn't really need the knee and arm-warmers this morning, but somehow it just seems wrong to be riding before dawn in January without them. Don't get me wrong.  I'm not complaining.  Anyway, it felt like I could finally see the end of the tunnel, or should I say the winter, this morning.  As I waited up on the levee at 6:15 am, I looked up at the eastern sky and could see a hint of sunlight.  It reminded me that it was the last day of January and therefore time to start at least thinking about moving farther away from "base miles" and closer to "build," whatever that means.  The bottom line was that I felt a bit less content sitting in, and a lot less content letting gaps open up ahead of me in the paceline.  That little tailwind didn't hurt either.  So after VJ finally pulled off after towing the whole group for about three miles, I put in a fair amount of work today as the group made its way out to Destrehan, where, by the way, there is now a big eagle nest in one of the trees on the batture.  It felt good. After the turnaround I started heading back at an easy pace while some of the other riders were doing whatever they do there.  Personally, I've rarely felt the need to stop in the middle of a 40 mile morning ride.  Anyway, for some reason the paceline didn't show up until I was basically all the way to The Dip.  There was an increasing wind coming out of the southeast that kept the speed down a bit all the way back home.

So I've been playing around with Strava on my smartphone lately, uploading ride data since Saturday, except for Monday when I must have somehow failed to touch the right button.  Anyway, it's kind of neat to see the speed graph for a ride, and kind of funny that the software defaults to show the elevation chart first.  One thing that's completely useless here in New Orleans is elevation tracking.  Since I don't have data from a powermeter or heart rate monitor, Strava guesstimates power based on speed, body/bike weight, and elevation change.  Of course the elevation change data that it gets from the GPS is pretty random, so I'd guess the power data is equally random.  Anyway, it's been interesting to see the data from other local riders' training rides.  Perhaps it will provide a bit of extra motivation now and then.  It's been a very long time since I've kept a training log.  I'm guessing I'll probably be a little inconsistent about actually starting the application every time I ride, but we'll see how it goes.