I haven't been riding much since I did the century on July 9 (and went out of town for a few days). But today I drove up to a nearby town to ride through one of the city parks that has a nice scenic drive with wide shoulders (and a 6 mile section that's completely closed to car traffic on Saturdays). I have ridden this route 3 or 4 times this season, but usually only when I'm doing a long ride, because I don't like to drive to my ride and it's a minimum of 50 miles roundtrip just to get there. But anyway, I have "stats" for my performance on this road and today I blew them all out of the water! I did the whole 32 mile there-and-back in 1:50, which is an overall average pace of 17 mph. Already this is almost a full mile per hour faster than my usual pace. But the first hour was even better: I did it in 18.25 mph! It was phenomenal and really tiring (hence the pretty significant drop-off for the remainder of the ride). I actually managed to stay in my Zone 5 heart rate for 30 minutes, which is not typical for me. Guess taking time off after the century to recover, switching my cycling up with some trail walking/running, and waiting for a cooler/less humid day really makes a difference. Mostly I'm just encouraged that I can[ get faster.