I repeated my effort on the Strava segment I created last week yesterday morning. I did everything I could think of to get a little faster, including pumping my tires up to the max, using stiffer shoes, and making sure I wasn’t wearing anything that would flap in the breeze. But I also made one other change that I think made the most difference: I ate breakfast. The bottom line was that I completed the course in 51 min 30 sec vs. 58 min 43 sec last week. Quite an improvement, which vaulted me to number 2 on the leaderboard for the 70-74 age group on this route.

I was not expecting this much improvement, I thought maybe I’d knock a couple of minutes off. That’s why I think eating breakfast was the biggest change. I’ve discussed previously that I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating breakfast before my morning workouts because this should help acclimatize my body to burn more fat, which has health benefits. But I forgot it is a good idea to have enough carbs “in the tank” for timed efforts because this allows more power to be generated.

This result makes me the second-fastest old guy in Morgan Hill! (at least on one route…). I doubt if I’ll ever catch the aptly named Mr. Jett who is in first. This is not something I’d want to do more than once a month as it left me pretty tired. But it is good motivation for training faster once in a while.