u/valetdude

Note: Specifically directed towards people riding their actual bike outside, NOT indoor training.

I work a standard 9-5 job (which means I usually leave to the office around 8:15-8:30am and get home at 5:30-6:00pm depending on traffic). Have to worry about helping with preparing dinner and being present for the family after work, too, so I can't just be gone from 6:00-8:00pm (or when the sun ultimately sets). What am I missing here?

Again, I'm specifically NOT talking to the indoor riders - I understand I can wake up and do an indoor ride, but that's not exactly what I'm referring to in the title. I'm directing this post to the people who ride their actual bike outside 4-5 days a week. How??

And the clubs that have group rides at 2:00pm on a THURSDAY... do none of you work??? I'm so confused. Am I doing this all wrong? Do I need a new career?

Hello all!

Somewhat new, somewhat not-new, road cyclist here. I previously only ever used road riding for endurance training for my MTB racing, so I never actually focused on learning how to 'ride correctly'. Well... I'm trying to get out of the saddle more because practically every road cycling video/content creator I watch seemingly gets out of the saddle a LOT.

When I get out of the saddle, my heartrate spikes up by about 10% and I can only hold it for like 30 seconds before I almost HAVE to sit back down. Honestly, it feels like it would keep spiking up if I don't sit down, but I digress. I get that 'everyone starts somewhere', but I don't feel like I'm a complete beginner. It's incredibly deflating/demoralizing to be comfortable doing 1,500-2,000' climbs but getting out of the saddle at any point during the climbs just completely wipes me out. From my racing days, I'm used to being in zone 4 a majority of the time and I'm comfortable pushing the limits, but this just feels... different? I feel like my heartrate shouldn't be pushing upper zone-4 low zone-5 after just a 30 second burst.

Is this the norm until I just get used to it, or are there ways of specifically training for getting out of the saddle to keep my HR more stable?

Thanks!

Feeling pretty down right now. I feel like I've got a golden ticket but it's not at all what I expected. Currently a mid-30s career changer who spent the last 3 years learning to code (web) while building numerous full stack applications with all kinds of custom API integrations, etc.

I come from a prior career of 10+ years doing basically the opposite of engineering and I wanted a change. Felt burnt out and always enjoyed the aspect of solving problems and making things 'work'. Learned some SQL and fell in love. Then learned the rest and... still was in love.

Well... after a year and a half long job search, I found a job at a startup (~30 employees) as a SWE. I'm 3 months in and am already feeling incredibly burnt out. I must not even write 90%+ of my code anymore and my boss, teammates, mentors, and other engineer friends I've made along the way have all told me some variation of "that's just the way it is now" or "yeah. we don't write our own code anymore." It's incredibly deflating.

I feel robbed of the last three years learning. I understand that in order to effectively use Claude and all of its capabilities, you need to understand what you're looking at under the hood, so my efforts to learn were not for nothing, but it just feels so pointless and wrong doing things the way I'm being told to do them. If I code 'by hand', it takes too long. If I spend too much time reading up on documentation or trying to understand something new, it's "hurry up".

This can't be normal, right? I mean... surely it's not like this everywhere?? Wondering if I made the wrong decision and if I should begin looking at other careers AGAIN.