After the temper tantrum my body threw yesterday morning, I was essentially forced to ride slowly and keep my heart rate down during the day‘s ride. This is called active recovery. Well, it helped. I woke up feeling goooood this morning. Ambitious. My first thoughts were, “oh yeah, I‘m gonna wreck these climbs today“. Was that kind of morning.

I want to ride my bicycle – cit. Freddie Mercury

I headed out in obviously high spirits, with the refrain from Coldplay & Rihanna‘s song Princess of China stuck in my head. So for the first hour or so, I would occasionally burst out with “coulda been a princess“ and then a few mumbles, because I literally only know those four words.

Not even a kilometer from the start, my navi sent me downhill on a forest road which ended, meaning I had to climb a few hundred meters up 10% to get to the road. Didn‘t phase me. It was literally and fortunately not figuratively, all downhill for the first hour. Eventually I hit the valley floor, and (hat tip to Reinier for the rec) got to cruise through a nice river valley on stretches that looked like this:

I cruised along the flats for a few more km before heading out of the valley…

…and over a ridge on a glorious, lengthy, switchbacky, forested climb. A cyclist‘s/climber‘s dream. Here, I had a decision to make: enjoy my high energy and push, or play it smart and allow my body time to recover. Knowing that I have somewhere around 700km left to get back to Berlin, and about a week in which to do it, I opted for recovery. Thankfully, I have big enough gears that I could spin up the climb without straining. It felt a bit perverse to enjoy the climb purely as a spectator and not for the challenge it presented. I felt like I was breaking some kind of rule. Hills are meant to be suffered on, period. But not today. The old dog has learned a new trick. Don‘t misinterpret this as pride…it‘s not. (Active) Recovery is a basic fundamental of training. I‘m just so dumb it took me three weeks to accept that it would be useful for me as well.

Anyway. Summit reached, and the views are great:

Another long, cruisy descent (for the non-native speakers, cruisy is not actually a word, and switchbacky isn‘t either for that matter) into the next valley followed. Only another few km of climbing, and I‘d have another nice descent to the finish line.

Only it didn‘t quite work that way. Being an idiot, I saw a sign that said my road was closed for construction and decided it didn‘t apply to me. To be fair, there have been a few instances already where this worked. So…yeah. It didn‘t work, and to borrow another made-up word from the current US president, it didn‘t work bigly. The construction site was something like 4km uphill from the sign. I rode all 4km.

(No cars because no other dummies)

Then I rode back down. Then blindly followed the detour signs, shedding elevation as I went, all the way onto a pretty heavily-trafficked and unpleasantly narrow road. After the second massive truck blew past me, I decided I needed to reroute again, and I turned around and shed yet again all the elevation I had just regained. Balls. Still, spirits are high. Nothing phases me.

I found another, smaller, mostly parallel road, and took that up and over the hill:

(Not really visible: the 5% grade)

Shortly after the top of the hill I was able to regain my original route, having added about 15km and 300m of elevation to the tour. Still didn‘t phase me. I had Freddie Mercury in my veins (admittedly not the best metaphor, considering…) and I couldn‘t be kept from the joy of the ride.

The rest of the ride was gravy. Another 15km or so of gradual descent meant I didn‘t have to pedal hard to keep speed, so I was back in cruise-control, enjoying the scenery. Valley meadows and forested hills. Delicious. Got to the hotel, got checked in, showered, did my laundry, then treated myself to a celebratory beer to ease into the coming rest day. Not bad.

The ride