Cold Turkey Cycling

One of my co-workers conned me and some others into going cycling yesterday. Nothing earth-shattering in length or height, only about 45 miles and some mild hills of the palouse, basically from my house to Troy along the Chipman trail and back. However, considering that it's been almost a month since I did any riding on the trainer and that I've only put about 2.5 hours on the trainer so far this year, it was essentially cold turkey.
Doing 45 miles in about 3.5 hours is probably about half as fast as we should have been going, but we did have someone on a mountain bike kinda slowing us down...and well, there's the cold turkey part I already mentioned.
It was actually a quite beautiful day and effectively sunnier than I had imagined it would be. Although it was a little blustery most of the day and the wind was actually a bit strong a few times on the way home, I don't think I could have asked for a better day. Almost needed something more than the biking shorts and jersey on the way back, but managed to get by without it.
Our group kind of broke up near the end as me and group organizer bolted for the Pullman trailhead at a slightly higher pace. We were only going about 16-17 into a 5-10 mph headwind, but it was about all I could do and I'm glad we scaled the pace back or he would have left me in the dust. As it was, he took off for the last mile anyways, but that was cool.
When all was said and done, it was 44.53mi in 3hrs34min. I had over 22 minutes with my heart rate between 181 and 188 bpm and another hour and 20 some minutes over 170 bpm. I guess that's a little excessive, but I think forgetting the sunscreen and having lobster arms and legs is more of a big deal than a little high end cardio work out.

--mb