Lots of Early March Biking (and a Big First Half of the Week!)

My wife's car has been randomly dying lately, so I dropped it off at the shop on Monday and took my tri bike out of the back seat to get home:

(That was after biking to-and-from class on my mountain bike too!
And a long run earlier that morning!)

Then, being it was nice on Tuesday, I got out for a quick fast ride down the Greenway. I went into the wind for over 11 miles until the Greenway turned into gravel:

New lightrail bridge in the distance (near 169?).

Then I was pushed by the wind for a few more miles to hit 20 kinda-hard-but-not-quite-tempo miles in 58:38 (20.5 mph). After I eased up and then did more along River Road, my overall average actually rose to 20.7 mph because I wasn't fighting the wind any more. After those 2 days, I had worked my way up to 779 "intensity minutes" for the week already:

And then after a run and more biking to class, I biked back to pick up my wife's car on Wednesday. So by Wednesday night, the first 3 days of the week had a tally of over 1,100 intensity minutes:

Nearly the total of the previous WEEK after only 3 days!

Because I work out in the morning (generally), by Thursday morning, I had over 1,300 intensity minutes. Seven out of the previous 10 weeks had 1200-13xx intensity minutes total, and here I hit that after exactly HALF a week (3.5 days). I knew I needed to ease up to end this week as to not kill myself!!

Oh, and that 3 day stretch of random biking capped off a nice first half of March OUTDOORS in the saddle:

Bike workouts are green. And that one purple workout was a trainer ride
(which is not counted in totals here).

I had posted about my 2 nice rides to start the month: my first long outdoor training ride for 2024, and then some 5 mile intervals on the Greenway. And then these 3 days earlier this week added on 17 miles commuting on Monday, 31 miles down the Greenway on Tues, and nearly 19 miles commuting on Wednesday.

That's 138 miles over 12 days in early March!

Compare that to my previous March bike totals:

- 2024: 138 miles
- 2023: 6
- 2022: 0
- 2021: 63
- 2020: 5
- 2019: 23
- 2018: 0
- 2017: 133
- 2016: 61
- 2015: 71
- 2014: 0
- 2013: 0
- 2012: 102
- 2011: 0
- 2010: 35

So previously, I've been over 100 miles in March 2 times, and I already beat those 2 totals this year within the first half of the month. YES, a lot of that is "commuting" and not "training," but I'm happy to be in the saddle, saving on fuel costs, saving on parking costs, and getting in extra little workouts. And the weather is going to be cooling down a bit now, so I might not be getting many more "training" miles outside for a while.

(Now whether any of this translates into any extra multisport fitness is yet to be seen...)