I hope I\’m not what Joe Friel calls a \”Christmas star\”. By that he means riders who are in shape for racing during the Winter, but are gone when the Summer\’s serious racing begins. (See The Cyclist\’s Training Bible, 4th ed, pg. 109).

Today I got out there and rode 40.3  miles. I wasn\’t racing, goodness knows. Leaving out the first mile (to \”get going\”) and the final 2.5 miles (I tried doing a \”cool down\”), I averaged about 14.2 mph. That really isn\’t so very fast.

At one point I was passing another cyclist. Yet another rider was approaching from the opposite direction. I put on the steam so I could finish getting around the rider in front of me before the fellow coming head-on got too close for safety.

I hit a max speed of 21.1 mph, so apparently the potential for greater speed is there. Come to think of it, there was a time when hitting 15 mph for a second or two took hard work. Now I sometimes average that for as much as 10 miles or more.

It\’s not a stellar performance, so apparently I\’m not a Christmas Star, but hey — it\’s progress!