Does commuting affect your training?

[Geonz]

It's pretty well-documented that "recovery" rides and "base mileage" are important. The summer I was free-lance writing, I did lots of miles with our slow groups and wondered if that was helping my speed. It did, absolutely. Those 50 mile rides at 13-15 mph (tho' the effort was more like 15-17 'cause I was on a hefty hybrid) really paid off. I'm not tooting my horn - these are objective observations that happen to be about myself... I got on a light bike and did a double metric ... and at mile 75 my riding buddy just got in back and drafted for about 15 miles, 'cause I was just plain stronger (we averaged 16.9 for that). I won the indoor time trial that winter, too. It sort of "blew my cover" - I hadn't been out on *any* of the "fast rider" hammerfests (because I had no idea I was doing this whole ugly-duckling-to-swan thing and was absolutely positive I couldn't keep up, and also had no idea how to do all that stuff they do and didn't know the culture or the code), though I had done a *lot* of interval training on my own because I wanted to get faster. I'm not *that* fast but it's fun :-)