It warmed up nicely today. FOX@1:56: 67deg; calm. I wore shorts and a short sleeve jersey. At a cross street just west of Quartz Hill HS, a cyclist turned onto Ave L a couple hundred yards ahead of me. It looked like another one of my long-time cycling friends “Big Randy”. After getting on the Ave L bike path at 70W, he waited for me. Sure enough, it was Randy. We rode together until Ave G and 50W, where he turned south and stayed straight. It was good chatting and “catching up” with Randy. I was wearing my La Vie Claire jersey that used to be worn by the Canadian Steve Bauer. I told that to Randy which started a long conversation about the ’84 Olympics and other top American cyclists of that era. Randy went to the Olympic road race; I went to the Velodrome to watch the track racing. That was on my 27th birthday; 4 days before my oldest son was born. That brought back a lot of memories.
The wind was mostly calm for the entire ride. It did feel like we had a light NE’ly headwind riding east on G. I felt good the entire ride and felt like I got stronger towards the end of the ride. I was really surprised that my normalized power for today’s ride (177 Watts) beat my previous best nP by 5.4%. And this was while talking for more than half the ride. For most of the time riding south on 30W to get home, my power was over 200W. FOX@3:15: 70deg; calm.
After the ride, I had a recovery drink, then a pre-workout protein shake before lifting weights for one hour. I felt good after I got home.