Second wind.

Is it April already? The days are getting shorter, the weather is turning cooler and daylight savings ends tonight. It's always a bit of a test on a riders mettle here in Tassie once the nights become dark and cold. I spent a couple of hours in the shed last night putting a pair of rear lights on the Cross Check so I'm ready for the winter months ahead.

After the warmest summer on record I find I've done relatively little riding for this time of year. The motivation seems to have left after the Alpine Classic. Perhaps I suffered too much or perhaps I just need to find another goal. At any rate, while I've ridden a few kilometres most days, my disdain for riding just for the sake of it as opposed to as a form of transport means it hasn't been much.

The flipside of this equation is that when I do ride, my legs are fresh and not recovering from endless commuting miles. The last few rides I've done have been blinders. Today was a case in point - I knocked ten minutes off the time for the ride I call the Cheesecake Run, a 35km blast mainly on dirt roads into town and back, with a killer 15 minute 200m climb at the end. And oddly, the coming of winter seems to have roused my interest in riding again. It's no longer as, but perversely I'm keener. Who knows what's going on here, perhaps it just the normal cycle of motivation that we all go through: unexplained bursts of activity and equally unexplained periods of lethargy and disinterest. Let's see what autumn holds.

1477km so far this year.