My first year of bike commuting was very much about figuring things out. Some things fell into place pretty quickly. I’d found routes I was happy with within a couple of weeks, and with the exception of a couple of rides last year where I needed to take a diversion due to temporary road closures, I’ve stuck to the same routes ever since. Yet even by the end of the Summer, I still hadn’t found a routine that was allowing me to commute regularly, and that was my main focus last year. The best change I made was taking my work clothes into work in advance of my ride (i.e. if I wanted to commute on Tuesday, I would take the clothes in on the Monday). In order to commute regularly, you need a routine which will hold up even when conditions are far from ideal, and knowing that even if you are riding in torrential rain you will have dry clothes to change into makes a big difference. My routine proved very robust – the only time I cancelled a commute was due to having watch Coventry City’s playoff semi-final win over Middlesbrough the night before, and I’m happy to make exceptions for occasions like that.
This year has therefore been less a case of trying to find a robust routine, and more a case of trying to re-learn my old routine. I got things slightly wrong on Thursday by setting my alarm earlier than I needed to, albeit I’d always rather be earlier than needed than risk being late. I also needed to remind myself about how to ride a commute. I’ve been riding on Zwift throughout the Winter, and on many of those rides I’ve been putting in big surges in effort followed by periods of recovery. However, on a commute, it’s much more pleasant if you can put in a more steady effort, even if the overall effort level is similar. That is easy to do on the flat, but on a hill it can be tricky. On Thursday I was familiarising myself with each hill, noting which ones I needed to drop down to the small chainring for, and yesterday I was able to go faster overall in both directions for less effort through just being in the right gear on each hill.
One change which I will be making is switching from a backpack to a pannier rack and bag. Given my recent back issues, it seemed like a sensible idea to take the weight off my back, even though I pack fairly light, and it would also be nice to arrive at the end of my rides slightly less sweaty. It is also an option that I’m using with a view to doing some bike packing this Summer. I’ve also bought a Wahoo head until, albeit whilst I’ll be using that on my commutes, I cannot see too many ways in which it will impact it. I’m expecting to do around 80km of commuting on my bike each week, so there’s plenty of potential to use this to improve my fitness. That didn’t happen over the past two Summers, primarily due to hip flexor issues limiting my running, so if I can get that right this year, I will be very happy.
For the next couple of weeks, my goal will just be to settle back into the routine of commuting on my bike. Once I’ve done that, I hope to start focusing on how I can turn my commutes into more effective training.
Scorpo Stories 