Uninspired

After a good solid 300+ mile week and a very late bedtime I didn't feel the slightest twinge of guilt about sleeping late Monday morning, which is to say that I skipped my usual 6:30 am ride.  Unfortunately, I didn't feel much better at 5:45 this morning when the alarm went off.  Although the weather has been great for riding, I just felt so uninspired.  So it was one of those mornings when I had to push myself out the door and grind out the miles, knowing it was the right thing to do while all the time wishing I was sitting on the front porch drinking coffee. It's not like I'm over-trained.  Over-aged, perhaps, but definitely not over-trained.  Perhaps I just need to get to sleep a little earlier for a couple of days.

When I arrived at the start today I was surprised how few riders there were.  There had been a report that the bike path would be closed under the Huey P. Long bridge, but apparently that has been delayed.  I wondered if that had scared some people away, but as it turned out it hadn't.  By the time we got to the playground we'd picked up enough additional riders to at least double or triple the size of the group, which is to say there were maybe 15. The pace going out was a little erratic, mostly around 24 mph, but occasionally surging closer to 28 for no apparent reason.  Every now and then Lenny would randomly attack.  I quickly retreated to the nether regions of the paceline where the temperament better suited my mood, reacting reluctantly to the sudden gaps with long steady efforts rather than quick out-of-the-saddle bursts. At any rate, the ride out to the turnaround was fairly fast today, which is probably good because I certainly needed a little push.  If I'd been riding alone today I have no doubt I would have ended up going 15 mph and looking at the scenery.  The return trip was considerably slower and I found myself raising the speed by a couple mph to 25 mph on those rare occasions when I'd hit the front.  I guess I wasn't the only one feeling lazy today.  Toward the end Lenny inexplicably attacked a couple of times.  I wondered if he was trying to do a little interval workout. Sometimes I may start a ride feeling sluggish and uninspired, but by the end I'm back to normal.  Not today.  Group training rides are like a box of chocolates......