Some Notes As February 2022 Winds Down

Yesterday was the first 50° day of 2022 in West Bend. We had not seen 50° since December 16, exactly five weeks earlier. And it probably won’t be another five weeks before we see the next 50° day, but it will be at least one. The snow that melted so aggressively yesterday will be back with a vengeance as ice in the week to come. There’s some new snow in the 10-day forecast and some sub-zero wind chill. Winter isn’t done with us. Not even close.

Sunday’s warmth came from high southwesterly winds: a sustained 20+ mph with gusts up to 40. On a day that would have been attractive without them, those winds convinced me to delay my first outdoor bike ride of the year. My first outdoor ride of 2021 didn’t come until February 25. This year’s debut won’t come until March. On Sunday I contented myself with a 10K walk around town. I had to do something outdoors or I would have cursed myself for wasting all that gorgeous sunshine. Overall, however, it was a bad week of training. I had some lower back pain that came out of nowhere on Friday morning and still isn’t completely gone.

Continuing with the theme of things that aren’t done yet, here’s the 2022 Tour of America’s Dairyland schedule as released last Tuesday:

• June 16: Janesville
• June 17: East Troy
• June 18: Grafton
• June 19: Manitowoc
• June 20: Milwaukee (Bay View)
• June 21: TBA
• June 22: TBA
• June 23: Milwaukee (Brady Street)
• June 24: Shorewood
• June 25: Milwaukee (Downer Avenue)
• June 26: Wauwatosa

Menomonee Falls appears to be the location of the June 21 race, but I haven’t heard anything about June 22. For me, one of the interesting things about this year’s schedule is the placement of Manitowoc on the first Sunday. You may recall that Manitowoc took over the spot in the ToAD schedule that West Bend occupied from 2016 through 2019. For those four years, West Bend had the Monday race, the worst spot on the calendar. ToAD had something less than enthusiastic support from the City of West Bend and its citizens. Still, one wonders what might have been if the race had endured long enough to move from an undesirable weekday to a very desirable weekend.

Yesterday I was asked by a junior racer whether there were any Tour de France-style stage races in Wisconsin. There aren’t. ToAD isn’t one; it’s a collection of criteriums. Racers accumulate points toward an overall prize in a way that is similar to the green jersey competition in the Tour de France, but ToAD champions are not determined by aggregate time. If they were, then an individual time trial would be a very cool—and probably indispensable—addition to ToAD.

Time trials are in the news right now because of comments made by Chris Froome on his YouTube channel back on February 11. Froome has won the general classification of the Tour de France four times. He also has two GC wins at the Vuelta a España and one at the Giro d’Italia, plus several wins in shorter stage races like the Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de Romandie. Time trials have been essential to his success, so it’s interesting that he has come out with so much passion to change the way they are conducted. According to Froome, time trial bikes are inherently less safe than standard road bikes, presenting a hazard not just while racing on closed courses, but especially while training on open roads. And, he says, smaller teams are at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to R&D, wind tunnel testing, and other aspects of the specialty, so running time trials on standard road bikes would create a more level playing field where rider ability is more important than technological advantage.

I hate to say it—I have been extremely but, I think, justifiably critical of Froome in the past—but on this subject he’s absolutely correct. The safety argument speaks for itself; I’m more interested in the competition argument, particularly as it applies to us mere mortals. I’ve been in Wisport and other unsanctioned time trials, racing against amateurs who were outfitted with $10,000 in bikes, wheels, aerodynamic helmets, shoe covers … you name it. And what my competitors had in common was that they were mature, mostly Masters racers who could afford their arsenals of high-tech toys. But what about the people who can’t, especially younger racers? USA Cycling, the Wisconsin Cycling Association, and other racing organizations love to talk about lowering the barriers to entry for younger racers or people from economically disadvantaged groups. Running time trials on standard road bikes—or, at least, offering a standard road bike classification within an event that allows TT bikes—seems like an easy win.

(Not Quite) The 2022 WORS Schedule

During the past few seasons it was no secret that Don Edberg was looking for a successor to run the Wisconsin Off-Road Series, the USA Cycling-sanctioned state championship mountain bike series he founded in 1992. And now Don can retire, knowing that the series is in good hands: Trek announced today that it will own and manage WORS, providing the series framework for what otherwise would be a collection of unrelated races owned and operated by local organizers. Trek says it will use a series format that is “similar to the one Don has developed over the years,” but it may be a little while before we know what that means. And the schedule isn’t set in stone yet. You can count on the Englewood Open dates, May 20-22, as that event is also part of the UCI calendar, but the remainder of the WORS schedule is just a guess at this point. Ten days ago someone was poking around in the old WORS website (www.wors.org now redirects to Trek) and posted a schedule that placed all of 2021’s races on the 2022 calendar on Sundays. I didn’t post that schedule here because I didn’t trust it. In recent years, more and more WORS races were moving to Saturdays. So, with the caveat that this isn’t final, here’s the approximate 2022 WORS schedule as posted by Trek earlier today:

We had never gone this deep into the offseason without a WORS schedule. Now we have one ... kind of. More importantly, we have confirmation that the series isn’t dead. And if Trek does for WORS what it has done for Wisconsin cyclocross, then we can look forward to a bright future for mountain bike racing statewide.

Level Completed? Level Up!

As winter wears on, I continue to pick off little Garmin Connect achievements when the weather isn’t too horrible. I would be happy to avoid the outdoors for most of our winter, but Garmin doesn’t recognize my Zwift sessions in its criteria for points and badges. It’s weird. Garmin does count Zwift mileage toward my annual cycling goal. (I wish it wouldn’t. From my point of view, I’m still looking for my first real—i.e., outdoor—ride of 2022.) So, out I went yesterday for a bitterly cold 1.2-mile walk to earn the 1-point Be My Valentine badge. I could have satisfied the conditions of the “challenge” simply by walking to the end of the driveway, but I stayed out long enough and moved fast enough to turn the walk into a warmup for the home gym strength training session that followed. And yes, I know Garmin can track strength training and I could use those activities to satisfy challenges like yesterday’s, but I don’t track my strength training activities in Garmin Connect.

Maybe I should start! Just a few days ago, Garmin Connect quietly addressed one of its biggest and oldest customer complaints: the Level 5 ceiling. Badges are little rewards unto themselves, but points are a better indicator of a user’s ongoing commitment to fitness. Harder challenges have higher point values. Running a marathon, for example, is worth 8 points. You can slowly move up the ladder by gaming the system and hitting all of the easy holiday challenges, but you shouldn’t hope to catch the real athletes. Not anymore. For years, Level 5 was as high as you could go. That left some users wondering why they should continue to participate in challenges on Garmin Connect. Last year I advanced from Level 2 to Level 4. This year I fully expect to reach Level 5 and I admit that if there were nowhere else to go I would stop bothering with challenges like yesterday’s. It wouldn’t count for much that such challenges encourage me to cross-train and not to spend all my time on the bike. But now the ceiling is Level 10. In time, even that won’t be high enough but at least it creates some temporary incentives. Going up in levels is almost completely an exercise in vanity, but to whatever extent it keeps a person exercising bodily, let’s reward a little egotism.

My Return To Heart Rate Monitoring

In December 2005 a coworker gave me an old bike trainer he no longer used. It was a noisy magnetic resistance unit with a cable controller that clipped to the handlebar of my Gary Fisher Wahoo mountain bike—my only bike at the time, outfitted with slick tires instead of knobbies. It was a clunky setup even for 2005, but I made it work for a while.

Indoor training is very different now! I have a smart trainer and a Zwift membership and, as of yesterday, a Wahoo of a different kind: a Wahoo TICKR heart rate monitor. By using reward points on my credit card, I was able to purchase the TICKR for only $12.23, but even at the full retail price of $50 it seems like a good value. I tried heart rate monitoring before and I eventually abandoned it. This time I hope I will find more utility in it. And, if I don’t, then at least I won’t have spent much money on the experiment.

Buying the TICKR was motivated purely by a desire to get more out of my Zwift sessions; I don’t know whether I will use the monitor on outdoor rides. I have it set up to connect to Zwift via Bluetooth, but it also can connect via ANT+ to my Garmin cyclocomputer.

Zwift and I are still learning about each other and over time my numbers will become more accurate. But after the maiden voyage of the new heart rate monitor, it was gratifying to see this correlation between power and heart rate:

A year ago, before I had a smart trainer, I was disappointed by the obvious inaccuracies of the data I obtained from my sports watch and the way it responded to intervals. During the first couple of minutes yesterday, the TICKR wasn’t sending data to Zwift. That was despite the fact I had applied some conductive heart rate monitor gel to my chest. But I’m not worried about the data I didn’t capture during a gentle warmup. Once the sweat started to flow the TICKR was flawless. Heart rate crept up over time but it also rose and fell with changes in power output. And it fell rapidly when I started my cooldown. That’s just what we would expect.

Going forward, I will look for things like elevated heart rate without a commensurate rise in power output, as that could signal overtraining or the onset of illness. In the short term, though, overtraining is the least of my worries. I’m still trying to make more time for indoor training, and in a way the TICKR is a new “toy” that will encourage me to spend more time on Zwift.

Tearful Symmetry

“Burning bright?” Not so much.

As the Year of the Tiger begins, I am so fat I almost could cry. I do a weigh-in on the first day of every month and today’s did not go well. I knew it wouldn’t. The needle started to move in the wrong direction during the 3 weeks I was off the bike following my crash in October and I have not been able to reverse the trend. I am 4 pounds heavier than I was on this date last year. I don’t feel like I’m eating any more than I do during warm weather months, but without the calorie burn of 12- to 15-hour weeks on the bike I just can’t keep the winter weight off.

No, I’m not doing 12- to 15-hour weeks on Zwift. Even combining Zwift with regular strength training and occasional walking I am not approaching 12 to 15 hours of activity per week. But I did lace up the walking shoes yesterday and today in pursuit of a couple of minor Garmin Connect achievements:

What can I say? January was cold. We were almost never above freezing and very frequently below zero. We had a 40° day on January 12 but didn’t see another one until this afternoon. Despite the cold, we had almost no snow. I was never tempted to break out the snowshoes. Friends with skis appear to have enjoyed January, though, as there was enough of a base for them.

Today’s above average warmth will be short lived. We probably won’t see another day above 32° until Sunday at the earliest. And suddenly 32° feels like my lower limit for outdoor activity of any kind. That’s how soft I’ve gotten. Historically, the date on which West Bend’s daytime high gets back to up 32° is February 16. It’s weird to be looking forward to so small a milestone.

In the meantime I’m committing to more hours on Zwift. I enjoy it when I do it, so it’s inexcusable that I haven’t been doing it more. It’s probably also true that I have been doing Zwift the wrong way. With no competitive goals in the near future, right now I should be concentrating on endurance efforts. Instead I am riding for no more than 1 hour at a time and I’m going too hard. Riding with other people—even if they appear only as cartoon characters in a virtual world—encourages me to chase anyone in front and to run away from anyone behind. I’m riding harder as I approach sprint points and course finish lines. I’m trying to beat my previous best times on courses I have ridden before. All of this is fun but it’s not what I need in the middle of winter.

At least I’m getting a lot of reading done. Cold weather can’t stop that; it rather encourages me to read more. I’m already on my 4th novel this year. And I saw a robin on a snow-free patch of grass in my yard today. Mom assures me that’s a sign of spring, which can’t get here soon enough.