{"id":13949,"date":"2025-08-26T11:13:30","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=13949"},"modified":"2025-08-26T11:13:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T09:13:30","slug":"the-energetic-cycling-rest-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/the-energetic-cycling-rest-day\/","title":{"rendered":"The Energetic Cycling Rest Day"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

On Sunday evening I saw that a ride was planned for Monday evening. Usually I would hae skipped this ride because I felt that I should rest. According to Garmin I should have taken a rest day.<\/p>\n

I intended to have a calm bike ride, until I got onto the bike and started to pedal. I went through the road I find is dangerous, before taking a second road I find is dangerous, before taking a third road I find dangerous, before finally being on safe roads.<\/p>\n

The roads are usually dangerous because cars drive too fast, and too close. To boot, I was cycling at rush hour, when people are impatient to get home, and bad tempered. Having said this drivers did not make me feel unsafe or afraid.<\/p>\n

I believe that turning back, and looking at drivers, letting them see that you are aware of them, calms them down. They usually slow down, and overtake with a good distance. For not ignoring cars, cars don’t ignore us, and that’s safer.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting because the route I chose was not the easiest, or the quietest. It is the route that I often rode along in the past, but gave up on, due to my feeling of being in danger.<\/p>\n

When I got to Versoix I went through the woods, along roads where I was almost alone. At this point I could have slowed down but I didn’t. I kept riding at a comfortable, high pace.<\/p>\n

When I got to Grand Saconnex I raced people on e-bikes and saw that at least one was going above 25 km\/h so it should have been classed as a 45 km\/h e-bike.<\/p>\n

It’s good to be more cautious around urban cyclists. I stopped at the lights but urban cyclists either ignored them, or went ahead of the lights being green for us. I still chased, and then overtook them. It is nice to feel fast.<\/p>\n

The group ride pace felt quite fast. It wasn’t as relaxed as it would be with others. On climbs I took advantage to ride faster, to push a little more. That’s how I got a few new PRs.<\/p>\n

When you do a 13km climb with 1300m of vertical gain, shorter 100m climbs feel comfortable. I didn’t want to push too hard, but I pushed hard enough to be second on the two main climbs.<\/p>\n

Riding is funny because when rides are short, and there is a lot of traffic we ride as a group but conversation is more challenging. It’s a solo ride in a group.<\/p>\n

When the group ride ended I headed for Place Des Nations, before heading down to the lake. It’s at this point that I began to push, to pedal hard and fast. I treated it as a time trial to get from near Agip to the D\u00e9carcad\u00e8re in Nyon.<\/p>\n

For the most part the cycling path was quiet so I could keep pushing. I maintained 30 kilometres per hour which is slower than when I was with the two time trialists but I was maintaining that speed. I could feel myself getting fatigued, especially near Crans and the swimming pool. When I got to Crans I saw normal cyclists and they were slow, in contrast. I flew by.<\/p>\n

When I got to Nyon I was hopeful that the lights would be cooperative and they were, so I got to the d\u00e9barcad\u00e8re I mentioned before but that light was green, as was the one to head up to T\u00eate de Course. I couldn’t stop to rest and breath so I continued on towards home.<\/p>\n

What surprised me about this ride is that Garmin said I should rest so I felt that I should. When I cycled I found that I felt powerful for the entire ride, that I had enough torque left over to keep pushing for speed. This is a nice feeling.<\/p>\n

And Finally<\/h2>\n

Despite the 1600m of climbing on Saturday’s bike ride and the 30,000 steps of walking on Sunday I still had plenty of energy for Monday evening. I drank three 700-800ml bottles worth of water during the ride and I kept an average speed of 25 km\/h for three and a half hours of riding.<\/p>\n

The group ride was 40 kilometres and I covered 88. I probably could have been slower between Versoix and Nyon but I like to minimise the time I ride at night.<\/p>\n

I made sure to be on the protected cycle lane for almost the entire ride back. Luckily night set when I was almost home. I should wear my bright cycling clothes for future rides to Geneva at night, to be really visible. With a 1300 lumen light on the front, and the Varia 515 I was visible, but I could have been even more visible.<\/p>\n

I’m glad I could cycle home rather than take the train. It’s more fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>On Sunday evening I saw that a ride was planned for Monday evening. Usually I would hae skipped this ride because I felt that I should rest. According to Garmin I should have taken a rest day. I intended to have a calm bike ride, until I got onto the bike and started to pedal. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[255],"tags":[733,496,6995,704,1158],"class_list":["post-13949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-swiss-walks","tag-cycling","tag-hiking","tag-opportunism","tag-rain","tag-weather"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13951,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13949\/revisions\/13951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}