Hey everyone, it's been a week since my last cycling post and with all Splinterlands posts I'm making I have to at least try and diversify things a little bit, not easy when I play every day and I 'only' cycle two times a week! 😄

In my usual cycling talk posts I am sharing some pretty pictures, well... most are pretty normal for me but I love the pictures you all post from other parts of the world as well so it's just that we don't always appreciate things we see almost every day.

Last week however, it was really - really cold and grey so things don't look very good to begin with but the main reason I don't have any pictures to share this week is it's very difficult to take pictures with my thick gloves on, and taking them off isn't a good plan because too much heat is lost and I'll end up with cold hands.

Last Thursday was a 0 degrees Celcius ride and because this is my first winter I still need to learn and experience everything, well I learned it's better not to stop in the first place because it's crazy how fast my body starts to cool down when I stop and the bad thing is... I only notice it when I'm back on the bike again and I'm cold. 😅

So, while we patiently await for the next Sunday Chit Chat is launched, fear not I have other things to ramble about. 😁

Same route twice, and not on purpose...

You can also say I did the same route twice by accident, my Garmin is getting clogged up with too many routes and the names are too similar so this morning I made a new route for me to cycle today but I couldn't find it in my cycling computer and once I thought I found it and discovered this is exactly the same route as I did earlier this week, I was already 5km out so no point in stopping anymore.

Garmin Connect looks like this, I just started building routes and naming them without any real plans, later I started with coding them either Road or MTB so I know what to choose, when it's been raining a lot I'd like to stay on the roads in the winter, too much work to clean my bike after every ride.
I also include the wind direction I made the route for and the distance, this worked for a while but now there are just too many of them so I already came up with a new system. 🙂

Taking the same route twice wasn't a big deal anyway and now this happened I thought about it's actually interesting to see whether there would be differences in performance, both rides were zone 2 rides meaning I'll do my best to keep my heart rate between 120 and max 130.

Thursday was a horrible ride, way too cold even for me and I like cold weather 😅 I got home, showered and then got in bed on my wife's side and turned on her heating blanked.... after 30 minutes I fell asleep.

Today however I did the same ride with 6 degrees outside, and while it's only a small difference, this time I wasn't cold at all and was happy to be on my bike again and enjoying the ride, so now the question arises: does the way I FEEL, influence how I perform? If you ask me I would say definitely!

Thursday Ride: 0 degrees, average heart rate: 128, average speed: 24.3km/h

Today's ride: 6 degrees, average heart rate: 129, average speed: 24.3 km/h 😮

Conclusion: How I feel, does nothing to my performance as long as I keep riding with heart rate as a guide, I know heart rate isn't the best tool for this but I am not mounting a €250 power meter on my MTB and heart rate is pretty reliable when you're not riding on or above the threshold zone.

But that's pretty damn consistent, on 2+ hour ride to get the exact same average speed!

Sunday Chit Chat

Well @nanixxx isn't taking her job as our fearless leader lightly and the Chit Chat posts are getting even better every week, I think it's a smart approach mentioning everyone active in the cycling community and maybe, they will participate in this Chit Chat some day!

The question for this week:

In what ways has cycling helped you bond with others—on the road, in conversation, or just by sharing the same love for bikes? We’d love to hear your stories!

Well first I have to say... I don't like people in real life 🤣 I mean, I love spending time with my wife and kids but other than that I like to be by myself and it's also why when I grew up I have always found individual sports rather than team sports, never say never but I don't think I will ever be riding together with someone else because I just like to be outside - alone with my thoughts and don't have to consider what someone else wants, slower - faster - a stop half way - shorter - longer.... no thank you! 😄

That being said I do enjoy my online friends and talking about cycling on Hive, the great thing about online friends is you can turn them off... 😇

As he usually does (because he likes to keep everything in order), @nozem01’s participation was not long in coming.

This made me laugh! Haha yes you are starting to know me already - I like things to be ordered. 😄

Question to the readers:

As a cyclist, what kind of exercises are you doing that's not on your bike to improve your cycling performance?

For me, I'm doing knee strengthening exercises because my joins are hyper mobile and I want to prevent knee injuries with this much power on them, on top of this I'm also doing core exercises on the days I am not riding, the exercises vary each day and it's only 6 or 7 minutes every night but it helps to strengthen my core muscles which are very important for cycling, this also helps me prevent back pain so it's a win win 😊

source

Cycling stats update:

Distance this week: 106.9km
Distance this year: 417.1km
Distance all time: 2945.5km

Well, that's it for this week - thanks for stopping by! I'll save this post for now as a draft to continue when the Sunday Cycling Chit Chat is launched tomorrow! 😊

Thanks for stopping by, keep on pedalling and ride safe!