Had a rare 9 O'clock appointment this morning, so predictably for the first time on record my terrible sleep caught up with me and I overslept. By nearly an hour
No shower, straight out the door now about half an hour late and at least devoid of the panic and anxiety that usually accompany the consequences of my poor timekeeping.
In the car I gambled by taking a detour through Langford Lock to avoid a repeat of the tailback I'd experienced yesterday thanks to half the dual carriageway being shut off at Begbroke. As is usually the case my initiative proved to be self-defeating since I encountered more unexpected roadworks, and when I joined the dual carriageway it seemed to be flowing OK - so that escapade probably lost me a few minutes.
Once on the Brompton I hit it hard from the off; aided to an extent by a relative lack of others on the tow path. Those I did encounter were typically receptive to / accommodating of my distant bell, and were afforded appropriate gratitde as a passed.
An exception was a woman on the phone with a dog - after being passed by a cyclist infront of me she turned, looked straight at me, walked onto my side of the path and turned her back on me.. leaving her dog on the other side. I thought she'd clocked me and would stay there as I threaded my way between the two, however as I passed she started drifting back across the path; requiring a bit of evasive action that saw my arm just brush a bit of projecting fabric on the shoulder of her dress..
Couldn't face a lack of breakfast so nipped into the butchers; a nice quick transaction saw me emerge on to the high St a mere 10-12 minutes late, hanging a left to take the faster Cowley Rd route. Smashed it down the high st, I got caught at the lights and blew my fellow commuters into the weeds when they changed. Over Magdalen bridge then threaded my way through the traffic backed up across the Plain roundabout (the one that keeps claiming cyclists
)
Smashed it up the Cowley rd, picking my way through the ponderous commercial vehicles trying to park and the cars stuck behind them. Finally managed a 90% of max HR, out-of-the-saddle effort on the only meaningful hill before arriving at work at 9:00 on the dot.
Once in I hurriedly got everything together and called the client only a few minutes late, to be told that they'd not yet been provided the necessary hardware to proceed
Despite the alleged 7mph head-ish wind (which tbh I didn't really notice for the most part) this was my fastest commute at 15.2mph (previous max was 14.5mph, long term mean is 12.3mph) at a mean HR of 76% of max. It's the first time I've done the bike portion in under 30 minutes too. I hit this one so hard that I had to extend the Y-axes on the graphs in my commute log spreadsheet
All in all a pretty decent experience; handled fairly stoically, put some work in and managed the situation pretty well for once. I've not had a ride this intense for a while and distance has been lacking over the past week or so, so a welcome bit of exertion. It'll be interesting to see if I remain as positive at the end of the working day..
left it all over the path mind but its better than before .
