Yesterday in Newburg, the 9th Annual Cheesehead Roubaix could not have been more different than the 2017 edition. Last year’s weather was so awful that very few people showed up and almost nobody rode the whole route. And low attendance meant few contributions to our host, the all-volunteer Newburg Fire Department. We fixed all of that yesterday! With sunny skies, dry roads, and comparatively light winds, turnout was somewhere around 300 and NFD collected $2,129 in cash donations and concessions sales. Thanks to everyone who contributed!
I was thrilled to ride the route again after missing it last year. In 2017 I used my minivan to offer SAG service, knowing that a lot of riders would give up due to the harsh weather. Here’s how I have performed at Cheesehead Roubaix since 2013:
2018 — 3:40:39 / 17.1 mph
2016 — 3:44:40 / 16.8 mph
2015 — 3:38:05 / 17.3 mph
2014 — 4:08:34 / 15.3 mph
2013 — 3:26:18 / 18.3 mph
The route hasn’t changed since 2013, and that was my first year with a Garmin GPS device, so I can see with a fair amount of accuracy how my performance over the same 63 miles has varied from year to year. The differences in speed are all weather-related. I was fast in 2013 on a warm, dry, almost windless day; I was slow in 2014 on a cold, wet, windy day. This year I rode Lovers Lane cleanly while loose gravel forced many others to walk the last 100 meters—even guys with a lot more tire than my trusty 700x25 Continental Gatorskins. Overall, yesterday’s performance was statistically average. I still had a 17.8 mph average until about Mile 41 before fading. I haven’t ridden as many miles as I normally do by the end of April, and a lack of deep endurance was evident in the final miles on Sunday.
Cheesehead Roubaix 2018 was fun and successful, a return to form after a freakishly bad 2017 edition. As May begins, so do high-mileage weeks as I look to regain that deep endurance. But it won’t be long before I’m making plans for the 10th Annual Cheesehead Roubaix!
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