A Bad Time To Revisit An Old Hurt

Today I did not exercise outside. I haven’t been able to say that since April 30. My streak is over at 120 days. And it’s over because I’m injured. This time, the cause of the injury wasn’t a bike crash. I have sustained some sort of repetitive stress injury to my left calf muscle, the gastrocnemius. The injury surfaced 2 miles into my walk yesterday morning, and it was all I could do to limp 0.6 miles back to my house. Today I did nothing. I’m going to stay off my feet for a couple of days and hope for the best.

I have experience with injuries of this type. The first time I felt this pain was in 2001 during a softball game. Jogging from the dugout to my position at the beginning of a new inning, I felt a pop and experienced a sharp pain. I turned around to see who had hit me with a ball or some other object, but that wasn’t the cause. The calf muscle became tighter over the next few hours and left me with a limp for about a week. This injury reappeared a couple of years later in another softball game. On that occasion I was not jogging but sprinting out of the batter’s box to beat the throw on a ground ball. That sudden acceleration seemed to be the cause.

Yesterday’s event didn’t come with a pop or any other sensation of catastrophic failure, so I’m hoping for a rapid recovery. But this is a setback for sure. I don’t know whether I will be able to participate in this Thursday’s cyclocross practice at Royal Oaks. With the first race of the WCA season now only 13 days away, my first priority is to heal. If I lose a little top-end fitness in the meantime, then that just has to be OK.

A Little Thing That Means A Lot

At the end of last year when I was outfitting my new mountain bike with the accessories it needed, I bought a bottle cage from Elite: the Vico, renowned for its lightweight construction and its firm hold. It looked great on the bike, but my very first ride convinced me that it was the wrong cage for that application. The Vico’s hold was far too firm. I could barely extract my water bottle in the parking lot, much less while bouncing around on singletrack. So, I replaced the Vico with an old aluminum cage that doesn’t pretend to have any of the Vico’s carbon fiber, designed in Italy, sexy charm. It just works.

In July when the Framed Gravier arrived, I tried again to find a home for the Vico. Again I was frustrated. I was literally forced to stop pedaling while extracting or inserting the bottle, that’s how much concentration it required. And I’m talking about roads and recreation trails now, not mountain bike trails. I expect to use my bottle cages without looking. The Vico wouldn’t allow it. I had to be so deliberate that my average speed was suffering because of my bottle cage!

The Vico works better with some of my bottles than with others, and I’ve heard it works exceptionally well with Elite’s own line. But I have plenty of bottles already. I would sooner give up on the Vico than replace all of my existing bottles to accommodate it.

Deciding that the experiment with the Gravier was a failure, I demoted the Vico all the way down to the spare parts bin. Ouch! That’s no place for a barely-used carbon cage, but there’s no other place for it right now. My road bike has stainless steel cages that work beautifully. My cyclocross bike doesn’t need bottle cages; they get in the way when I need to run with the bike on my shoulder. The Gravier got a pair of these:

Elite’s Cannibal cage has a much more forgiving design. It’s even marketed as a cage that works well with smaller frames, as extraction and insertion don’t have to be perfectly straight. Frame clearance isn’t an issue with my 56cm Gravier, but I’m enjoying these new cages nonetheless. Once again I can grab a bottle without taking my eyes off the road. The hold is firm but not excessively so. Nothing less than a crash should cause me to lose a bottle.

It’s remarkable how much this one piece of equipment was throwing me off. There are no unimportant parts on a bicycle. And the more you ride, the less you can put up with something that isn’t working to your complete satisfaction.

Bespoke

As a consumer, you probably understand and accept that bike brands have to save money somewhere to bring complete bikes to market at prices people are willing to pay. Even very good bikes usually have a house-brand handlebar, stem, and seatpost—generic aluminum parts stamped with the brand’s name—and a saddle at or near the bottom of their own line or another company’s. A lot of this stuff is sold only with complete bikes; you couldn’t buy it by itself … and you probably wouldn’t want to. That’s not to say it’s bad, but it’s ordinary. And it’s heavy.

“Light. Strong. Cheap. Pick two.” That’s an old truism in cycling, and perhaps it is most applicable to wheels. It’s no surprise that bike brands save money there when they sell you a complete bike. I wouldn’t accuse them of cutting corners—the wheels are safe and functional—but if you have performance objectives, then you’re probably not going to be satisfied forever.

After taking delivery of my Framed Gravier on July 27, it took me only about a week to decide to open the wallet again for new wheels. Shopping for them became an interesting pursuit. At first I did what I had done in the past: I looked at big retailers and found, mostly, machine-built wheels that would be a step up from Framed’s heavy stock wheels but not exactly what I wanted. In the light-strong-cheap equation I had already dismissed cheap, and from there it was a small step to hand-built.

I went to wheelbuilder.com and found a huge array of options. Eventually I decided on HED Belgium+ rims mated to DT Swiss hubs. But there’s more to wheelbuilding than rims and hubs. What spokes did I want? What spoke nipples? Thru-axles? Yes. OK, what size thru-axles? What hub body? Centerlock or ISO disc brakes? What about colors? What about rim tape? The last time I bought a wheelset by itself, none of these things were a consideration. But the wheelbuilder.com website is designed well, and it wouldn’t let me choose things that were incompatible with each other.

So, today I have my first set of bespoke wheels. They were made just for me. And they weren’t inexpensive, but they also weren’t priced too far beyond the range of their mass-produced rivals. For a lot more money I could have gone with carbon fiber rims instead of aluminum—I just couldn’t justify the cost. The new wheelset is almost a full pound lighter than the stock wheels, and I intend to use the Gravier as a high-mileage training bike, not as a race bike. I think I’m going to be happy with the upgrade. My expectations are high.

New Goals, New Calendar, New Equipment

There was a time when I felt like I had to be fit by the beginning of every May. I had WORS and WEMS races to consider … maybe even a Wisport race if it were close enough to West Bend. More recently I have targeted events in late summer or fall, and this season I am shifting the focus even farther into the second half of the calendar year. My 2022 racing season will begin in four weeks, on September 10 or 11. Yes, September 10 is back in play: the Milwaukee Bicycle Co. CX Classic might go on after all. And who knows? With mild weather I might make it all the way to the state cyclocross championships on November 19. But when that season ends, I want to try racing on Zwift.

Last winter I didn’t get out of Zwift everything that I could have, and that’s partly because I didn’t participate in any special events. For me, Zwift was a solo training platform only. Its competitive and social aspects didn’t really appeal. I need to embrace them. Zwift offers a way to do a road race without spending an entire weekend in some remote corner of northwestern Wisconsin. Zwift offers a way to do time trials without a time trial bike and all of its ridiculous accessories. And OK, it’s not the same as racing outside, but it’s still competitive. It’s still something to motivate me at a time of year when almost nothing can. You know I hate winter and you know that our “spring” is an annual disappointment. I can’t continue to write off half of every year. Zwift events have to become objectives for me in the same way that outdoor events have been.

Zwift Racing League offers a chance to race with teammates every Tuesday in the fall and winter, but I don’t think it’s a good fit for me. Not yet, anyway. If riders could compete as individuals, then I would be more interested. Instead, I will look for pop-up races and other challenges. It shouldn’t be hard to find a selection of those that will accommodate my weird work and sleep schedules … if I can be said to have a sleep schedule.

My new Framed Gravier is going to be my Zwift bike. Initially, I thought my Trek Boone would be my Zwift bike once cyclocross season ended, but that’s not going to work. I will be training on Zwift during the cyclocross season, and I really would rather not switch the Boone back-and-forth between trainer and CX racing configurations. The Boone is going to be strictly a cyclocross bike from now on. I hope that will encourage me to practice more, as the bike will always be ready. The Gravier is getting a big upgrade in a couple of weeks: HED Belgium+ rims mated to DT Swiss hubs. Paired with my much-loved Continental Gatorskin 32mm tires, the new wheelset will be for outdoor riding and the Gravier’s original wheelset—very strong but far too heavy—will see only indoor trainer duty. I have a new, trainer-only rear tire for the upcoming season and I’m feeling good about my setup. The Maxxis Raze tires that came with the Gravier are going on a spare wheelset to serve as cyclocross season backups. And since I’m going to try to get through this season without a tubeless setup, I may actually need those pit wheels to get myself out of trouble. I’ve been spending money freely and I’m not done yet, so I admit it’s odd that I have drawn a line at buying new tubeless cyclocross tires. But with two sets of new non-tubeless tires already in my garage, I decided to take my chances.

So, I guess I’m a fall/winter racer now. I’ll get whatever I can get in spring but my expectations will be low, and summer will be a time to fortify that deep base fitness with long road rides. I was moving in this direction for years without a plan. Now I’m more conscious of what I want to do, and this plan should hold up well … unless I return to mountain bike racing.

Over Here, Out Of The Way

The Wisconsin Cycling Association’s cyclocross calendar is always a work in progress. I have no problem with that; I know it’s hard to get commitments from host clubs and communities. But since the announcement of the 2022 calendar on May 24 we have seen significant changes and don’t be surprised if there are more to come.

The first published schedule placed the season opener in Sheboygan Falls on September 3. That race not only moved to October 16, but also moved to Evergreen Park in the City of Sheboygan. And that made the Milwaukee Bicycle Co. CX Classic on September 10 the new season opener … until it got cancelled. So, now we’re looking at a season opener on September 11 in the Town of Waterford.

If I am not mistaken, the cancellation of the Milwaukee Bicycle Co. CX Classic means 2022 will be the first full season in WCA history without a race at a Milwaukee County Parks property. And while I have no insider information about the negotiations between race promoters and Milwaukee County, it seems like that relationship got much harder to manage after the 2015 Halloween race turned Washington Park into a muddy mess. To avoid an encore, Milwaukee County cancelled the 2016 Washington Park race as soon as rain appeared in the forecast, and other Milwaukee County dates have been disappearing ever since. Hampshire Cycle Club moved its long-running race from Estabrook Park, a Milwaukee County Parks property, to Wern Valley Sportsmen’s Club, a private facility in Waukesha County. The only race in Milwaukee County this season will be Hill Bill at The Rock in Franklin, which is privately managed.

So, none of our races are actually in our two largest cities, Milwaukee and Madison. You have to wonder about the long-term effect of almost never racing in front of a crowd, almost never engaging the community beyond the existing pool of racers.

If we omit the non-series Trek Cup, then 5 of our 14 dates are on courses that are privately owned and/or managed:

• The Rock Sports Complex, Franklin
• Englewood Farm, Fall River
• Angell Park Speedway, Sun Prairie
• Wern Valley Sportsmen’s Club, Waukesha
• Trek Headquarters, Waterloo

You wouldn’t expect races at those locations to attract attention from anyone other than the participants themselves. And the situation is only marginally better at these 7 facilities, which are best described as destination parks, not neighborhood parks:

• Waterford Town Park
• Silver Creek Park
• Badger Prairie County Park (Dane County)
• Fox Crossing
• Richfield Nature Park
• Evergreen Park, Sheboygan
• CamRock County Park (Dane County)

That leaves only Waterloo Firemen’s Park and Grafton’s Lime Kiln Park as true neighborhood parks where an unsuspecting public might bump into a cyclocross race and say, “Hey, that looks like something I’d like to try!”

Racers probably don’t care whether they race on public or private property. They’re happy enough just to race. And in some instances, holding a race in an out-of-the-way location is the only way to hold the race at all. But I worry a little about exposure for and access to the sport. How would someone who doesn’t already know about cyclocross find cyclocross? Word-of-mouth promotion still counts for something, but how do people find it on their own?