Starting with basics. It is not hot out.
It has been warm. We were blessed with an unseasonable warm spell in early June, but since then things have pretty much settled down to norms.
It will get hot. (Hot starts at 95 degrees F.) It most certainly will. August is hot. And that is the crux of the matter. Simply put, when it gets hot, a lot of folks start finding “reasons” not to ride. Many (possibly most) will reassure themselves that they will “get back to it when the weather gets cooler.”
The problem with that approach is that breaking a routine is a lot easier than re-establishing it. This is the first step to joining the “Old Guys Who Get Fat in the Winter Racing Team.”
“Winter? You were just talking about August!”
That’s right. It makes sense too. For a lot of people, August is the beginning of the Great Annual Deterioration. Here’s how it works.
It’s hot out. I’ll skip today’s ride. It will be better later this week. Or next week. Or…
Part of the problem comes from a simple fact. It’s far easier to maintain conditioning, than it is to recover it.
Take a day off of the bike and it’s impossible to notice. Take a week off, and you might actually come back stronger. (Most folks don’t get enough rest and recovery.) But go for two weeks, and the loss of fitness is quite noticeable. Worse, it takes a lot of effort to recover lost fitness.
As a general rule, it takes about two days of training to recover each single day off. Go a month off the bike, and it will take about two months to get back into condition. That is, in a word, demoralizing.
August will be hot. Some of us like it that way. For others, the temptation to slack off is incredible.
Good luck with that.
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