My usual approach to commuting is to take a fixed route and travel it as fast as I comfortably can. This is usually not particularly fast because I have work to do after the morning ride and household tasks to do after the evening ride, so I need to leave some energy in the tank. Or that's my story, at least.

But in the last few weeks I have mixed it up a bit and kept things fresh by changing my route and my pace. It all started when a forced detour took me around Birrarung Marr because some festival or expo was being installed in the park. So I decided to keep going up Batman Ave into Exhibition St. There's a sharp little hill at the bottom of Exhibition St, but after that it's quite pleasant and easy riding. And going that different way (just a few streets over from my usual south-north route through the CBD) gave me a fresh prespective on my city. Old and familiar sights that I don't regularly see, made new by being viewed from a bicycle seat.

Some other variations that I've tried in the last month:

Slo-ow

One golden morning I was actually early for work (shock!) and with plenty of time on my hands I decided to enjoy as much of the day as I could, so imposed a speed limit on myself: under no circumstances would I allow myself to go faster than 25km/h (except perhaps freewheeling down hills). Everyone passed me and it was surprisingly easy to avoid the temptation of jumping on behind anyone going past at a pace I could keep up with. I trundled and took photos. It was great.

Above average

The other day I twiddled the knobs on my clock to show the "average speed" setting just as I headed for home, so I decided to play "always above average" in which I tried to maintain a speed faster than my currently showing average speed. There's a three-part strategy for this game: warm-up slowly for the first third of the ride, step up to a comfortable pace during the middle third, and go hell-for-leather in the final third. (Never make the mistake of going out hard in the first half of the ride unless the last half of your route is all seriously downhill.) I'll admit to excusing myself from maintaining the above-average pace for one short but steep-ish section of my ride home.

Fast

On another morning, I rolled onto the trail just as one of those crazy bike path pacelines came sweeping along. Throwing caution and intelligence to the wind, I jumped on the back. Taking Paul Sherwin's advice that the most dangerous place to be is in the back of the peloton, I jumped to the front and pushed myself hard to set the pace. (Hmm, on reflection that may have been demoralising and/or annoying for the people behind who weren't riding a folding bike…)

Forget the clock

Yes, I forgot to attach my speedometer (again) and despite the minor annoyance at my forgetfulness, I made the best of it and simply enjoyed riding by "feel" rather than riding to a particular number on the display.

An old favourite

Earlier in the year I had got into the habit of riding across the parks around the MCG to avoid going through the CBD. I really like this route but recently I've stopped going that way, for no apparent reason. Perhaps it takes a little bit longer to go that way, and the little hill in Clarendon St might have something to do with it. Anyway it was fun to add a bit of variety and return to this old favourite one afternoon.

An old, old favourite

These days I only ride on the Gardiners Creek Trail for the short stretch between Glenferrie Road and the Yarra Trail—the rest of it I avoid. So when I returned to that trail on a recent whim, it was a pleasant discovery to find that the M1 Upgrade/parkland uglification project has brought some interesting new changes to the the trail, including a reasonably well thought-out bridge and an artificial wetland where a bowling green once stood.

Explorations

Lately I've been trying to fine-tune the first part of my commuting route. So I've been doing some exploring up and down back streets, usually on my way home. It hasn't always been rewarding for defining my new route but as far as aimless wandering goes it's been great fun.

Comments

eccles

That's a nice shot - I like the way the shadows frame the bright bridge.

Treadly and Me

Why, thanks. I've actually photographed that scene before as part of my 2006 commute route but I deliberately kept the trees and the water depth gauge out of the shot:

But I agree with you eccles, I like the one I took for this post more. And it really was a golden morning, so it would have been hard to take a bad photo (even on my crappy phone camera).

SuperGran

Lovely photo! Mornings are a great time of the day, especially when its sunny and still.