If you want to feel like Superman then ride with a good tailwind. You cruise along at a high speed with little effort. It is quiet and comfortable. So what could possibly be good about a headwind? Headwinds offer a constant resistance to your efforts especially on flats or slight downhills. These are places where you tend to "spin out" on a single speed. Right now I am running a 33x16 gear until the trails open so I spin out around 22 mph.
Today the wind was from the northwest at about 25 mph. It was in the lower 40's and sunny. There is a bike path between my home in New Holstein and the city of Kiel to the southeast. The path is about 2.5 miles in length, lightly used and fairly flat. It starts just a block from my door so I use it for interval training and for getting to various routes on the other side of Kiel. Today I rode easy, with a high cadence, downwind to the end of the path and then returned into the wind as hard as I could. The strong headwind kept my speed down around 11 mph so the return trips took about 10 minutes. Then I returned to Kiel with a high cadence and repeated the hard effort five times.
A great training ride that combined fast pedaling with hard efforts thanks to a good headwind.
Mike
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