Two Rides, Two Days, Same Time of Day, Completely Different Rides

Riding the same route, the exact same roads, every day on a bicycle can be an entirely different ride each time.  This is certainly true of a group ride where who is on the ride dictates the pace.

For the past month I have been riding alone and settled into riding the same 25-mile out-and-back ride four or five days a week.  I ride just a little east of due south out of Lancaster for nine rolling miles, then up a three-mile climb. I turn around in a parking lot at the top, descend a different hill and go back to my home in the city on the same road just west of due north. 

Yesterday, the wind was out of the North NorthWest at 17mph, a perfect tail wind.  I felt good and rode hard out of the city and up the first long climb and all the way to the top of the three-mile climb at the end.  Eight miles into the ride there is a speed indicator telling people to slow down for construction.  It is on the far side of a bridge and slightly uphill.  Yesterday I first lit the sign up at 22mph then was down to 20 as I passed it.  By the time I stopped at the turnaround, I had covered the 12.5 miles in 48 minutes with more than a thousand feet of climbing. The ride back was a slow slog in a headwind. On the steepest part of the 3-mile descent, I only reached 37mph. 

There are 14 Strava segments on the route, seven in each direction. Yesterday, I made five PRs on the ride south. 

Today, the wind was 10mph out of the SouthWest.  It was a grinding headwind. I rode hard up the the big hill, but it was just over an hour when I reached the turnaround point.  On the way back my top speed was 51 mph, but with the wind 45 degrees off of a straight tail wind. I did not have any record segments on the way back. At the construction sign where I went 20mph and 22 yesterday, I first lit the sign at 13 mph, then 12 today.

Same road, consecutive days, about the same temp, but such a different ride.  Using my heart rate as a relative indicator of effort, yesterday I set all those PRs and had a high heart rate of 143. Today my highest heart rate was 155.