Outside on the 4th

It was a nice day to go riding today and I actually got outside for a change! :) Took my road bike out for ~4 hours no garmin just as I felt. I was prepared to go quite easy but I felt a lot stronger than I thought I would so parts of the ride today were fairly strong effort. ~45min into it I came up on a big group of riders so joined with them for maybe 1/2 hour and that was pretty fun, though it's been a while since I've done a big group ride and I felt anxious with the company. They were riding shorter though so at the top of one climb they turned around and I continued on my own.

3+ hours in I opted to ride in the Maunawili neighborhood which is a bunch of pretty steep hills. Legs held up just fine which was confidence building. I don't feel like I need wattage numbers to tell me when I'm riding strong.

4 hours doesn't seem like it's long enough to be considered a long ride when Ironman training, but it's the 4th of July and I didn't want to spend the whole day away from my family riding my bike. I guess in good news, it didn't feel long. Like- my brain didn't process 4 hours as a long time to be on a bike- so that seems like a good place to be mentally.

I've done so much indoor riding in the last few weeks I was sort of curious how it would go outside. It was fine. I think that as long as you have really good skills and confidence on the road, then you can do a lot of quality riding inside and it will transfer over to the road. If you don't have a deep background in riding outside, then the strength you gain from indoor riding can be lost in translation when you take it outside (due to excessive nerves or lack of skills or confidence or whatever). I see this in some of the athletes I work with- GREAT power numbers inside but then they go outside and it just doesn't translate... In those cases, I urge the riders to get on the road more often.

Off the bike 10x30" strides and those felt good. Hip is pretty much fine. Its not 100%... I still need to manage it as if it's truly hurt but it's def good enough to run on.

I didn't slow down enough on my ride today to take any pictures (so does it even count?) Happy 4th!