After the experiment yesterday morning, I rode up the hill in peak hour traffic. It was a little cray cray to be honest, but OK. The hill was totally fine, although I think I was in top gear from some of it.
Overall: pretty stoked!
Mercifully I didn’t encounter any buses on the way up, I am a little anxious about manoeuvring around them in the narrow bits of road when they’re at a stop.
I did have a bit of a chuckle about the e-bikers zoooooming past me – good for them I say – but I had to remind myself not to try to keep up with them. At one point a chap on a snazzy looking roadbike zipped past me as well. I told myself it must have been an e-bike, but I think, in fact, he was an actual cyclist, unlike me.
I also used Strava for the first time today, starting with the ride down the hill from school. It will potentially be useful for plotting my progress and improvement (if any!).
I liked how someone has entered the “hill climb” as a thing, and I can see my time for that segment – just over 11 minutes, which, again, I am pretty stoked with. I do hope that improves over time as it’s surely a leading indicator of my fitness and preparedness for the big one later in the year.
I’m impressed and a little terrified at the way Strava pretty accurately shows my movements – down to walking around the living room and kitchen at the end of the ride.
My initial impressions are that Strava is trying too hard to get me to connect social stuff – and that ain’t gonna happen for a while. I would love to be able to tap on the map and see the speed I was going, or alternatively the speed chart and see where on the map I was when doing that speed. I apparently got up to nearly 50km/hr, which I can’t imagine is correct, so would love to know where I was when that happened.
A lesson from this morning from an intersection I had not encountered on a bike before, and that was to keep cool. I got a little flustered when I stopped, there were cars behind me that I assessed could make the same turn before me. I attempted to wave one through, but then a line of traffic appeared preventing the car from moving. I should have simply accepted that I had stopped and was going to start again, and not wasted more time missing a chance at going through the intersection, and holding everyone up.