I enjoy making myself suffer outdoors to push for PRs or even just see what I can make my body do. Admittedly, there’s not a lot of motivation beforehand but as I look back I see the growth and have a sense of accomplishment for what I did. It’s much tougher than one would think to hold a particular zone on the rolling hills in (driftless) SW Wisconsin although it’s become a lot easier to do throughout this year as I’ve moved outdoors. Of course going up it’s easier but on the downhills it’s not uncommon to be in 53-11 spinning 110 rpm and struggling to stay in sweet spot.
Even if it’s just zone 2, I’ll change up the route to just enjoy what’s around me. I have slowly adjusted the routes I take to accommodate this. This includes avoiding villages or cities unless I need water or food during a ride. There’s a lot of farmland and pastures on rolling hills where I frequent which is something I think is a beautiful landscape to take it. Wide range of farms to notice different details every time I pass them. They go from Amish to organic to small to quite large.
There’s a good bit of wildlife where I live and I also hunt so it helps scout a little. Even before I decided to hunt, I was always curious what animals were around and what they do. For some reason I seem to attract birds lately as they fly directly over me for a few minutes. Seems sketchy sometimes, like I’m worried they’ll dive to me but they don’t…yet. Tying into the farmland and pasture comment, there’s so many different variations of cattle around to look at.