As Alike As Two Peas

I don’t drink a lot on the bike. On any ride shorter than about 50 miles, I probably don’t need a second water bottle. And most of my rides are shorter than 50 miles. So, why not put that second bottle cage to good use? Years ago I had a Cage Rocket, a storage pod that slipped easily into my seat tube bottle cage and held things like car keys and energy bars. It wasn’t a bad product—you can still find them for sale directly from the factory—but eventually mine failed. It wouldn’t stay closed anymore and that’s a critical failure for a storage device.

I have been using seat wedges ever since, but I haven’t been completely satisfied with them. They can be hard to open and close. In recent years I have found that I use them only for spare tubes, tools, and other things I might need for a mechanical failure. I have been carrying other things—mobile phone, money, ID—in my jersey pockets. But I don’t like riding with things in my pockets. My new “smart” phone is twice the size and weight of my old flip phone, and it fits in my middle pocket only by stretching the pocket walls almost as far as they will go. Some riders are mounting their phones on their handlebars or tucking them into top tube bags. I’m not interested in those options. My phone goes with me only for emergencies. I’ll dig it out if I need it; I don’t want to see it in the meantime.

So, the bottle cage pod is an idea whose time has come again. This time I have gone with the Topeak Escape Pod in its medium size. It solves the Cage Rocket flapper vulnerability with a screw-on top. The pod easily accommodates my roadside repair gear and features a neoprene liner to reduce rattling. (Ever ride down a bumpy road with a couple of CO₂ cartridges banging together? You get sick of that sound in a hurry.) If you have used ordinary water bottles to store small items, then you would appreciate the differences a purpose-built storage pod can offer. I got such a good deal that a bought two pods, one for my road bike and one for my gravel / recreation trail bike.

The 2023 WCA Cyclocross Calendar

Back In Pennsylvania For ... A While

I am back in Pennsylvania. After driving overnight last Thursday, I reached my mother’s house in suburban Philadelphia in time for breakfast on Friday. I left Wisconsin with a list of projects I wanted to complete for Mom, all designed to make her home safer and easier to manage. Mom turned 90 last month, then broke her hip and had surgery from which she is still recovering. Her recovery is going very well and she’s back at home, but she now has caregivers who visit for four hours each day to help with meal preparation, household cleaning, and other common chores. My projects are beyond the scope of their work. I’m doing things like pruning dead tree limbs, fixing the fiberglass insulation in the garage, removing years of lint from the clothes dryer exhaust hose, changing the furnace filter, and installing a new shower head. I will work with an electrician this week to complete projects we began when I was here in April. This is great stuff with immediate, practical benefits. It’s the sort of work that appeals strongly to me when I do it at my own house, but at Mom’s house it rises to an expression of love, something at which I’m pretty clumsy otherwise.

As was true in April, I am working overnight for my employer, handling all of the responsibilities I have when I work from my home office. So, this isn’t a vacation by any reasonable definition. And there’s no pre-defined end date, which is something a real vacation probably would have. My kids will look after my house and yard until the end of summer if necessary, though I don’t expect to be here that long. I will run out of projects eventually. Mom will complete her courses of physical and occupational therapy. She likely will continue to need outside help for a handful of things, but she will return to a mostly independent life. At that point, I will return to Wisconsin.

With many projects already completed, I will devote more time to cycling soon. I have done only short rides so far: 21 miles last Friday, 25 on Sunday, another 25 today. Longer rides are coming. Fridays and Saturdays will be best for them. And I need them. I still haven’t gone beyond 40 miles this year.

Re-tired

The world may never know how many licks it takes to get the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, but we now know how many miles it takes to wear out a Continental Gatorskin:

If I’m being completely honest, then I don’t know how many miles were on the front tire … a few more than were on the rear, but under far less of a load. It was time to replace the pair and start a new counter on Garmin Connect. This time, I’m not just tracking the mileage, but also establishing an upper limit of 3,000 miles:

I went a little too far with the tires I replaced today. I didn’t go this far this time, but still I should have made the swap sooner.

M’aidez!

Somebody help me out with this weather! Crank up your furnaces and throw open your doors. Point a can of hairspray toward the ozone layer and hold down the button until it’s empty. Refuse to accept carbon offset credits … you can do that, right? Do something to speed up this global climate change that, at least to me, appears to hold so much promise for Wisconsin. It’s May 1st, May Day, and it’s 20° below normal. Add the chill of a 20 mph wind and the “feels like” temperature is below the freezing mark. We had snow flurries this morning. Enough!

Despite this poor start, I have high hopes for May. I’m coming into it 6 pounds lighter than I was on May 1, 2022. And I wouldn’t call myself fit, but I have 374 more outdoor miles in my legs than I did last year on this date. April was pretty good to me. As partial proof of that statement, here are the 9 badges I earned last month on Garmin Connect:

Some Garmin Connect badges don’t count for much. On certain holidays, for example, recording any activity of any duration at any level of exertion will meet the criteria. But some badges do offer proof of a real effort. I call your attention to the Highly Improving badge, earned by reaching “an Aerobic Training Effect of 4.0 for an activity.” I did that on April 27, the maiden voyage of my Garmin Edge 830:

Aerobic Training Effect is one of the new metrics the Edge 830 makes available to me. It’s a way to ensure there’s enough intensity in my program to make fitness gains. Doing only easy things is a recipe for being able to do only easy things. On the other hand, performing every workout to exhaustion is also a certain path to failure. Everyone needs to find a balance, and Aerobic Training Effect looks like a good tool. Moving even further toward that balance, the Edge 830 calculates something called Exercise Load:

Each activity carries an Exercise Load score, but the real value of the metric isn’t obvious day-by-day. Some days are supposed to be heavy, others light, so Exercise Load is best used in the aggregate, week-by-week. If you believe in concepts like periodization—e.g., three weeks of load progression followed by one week of recovery before the cycle repeats—then you can target specific Exercise Load scores.

I hope these additional aids will bring real benefits to my training, which for too long has been too imprecise. There have been times when I was great on the bike, or crap on the bike, and I couldn’t tell you why. I’ve said many times that, in general, I ride better as I ride more. But what happens when there’s no time to ride more? I must make better use of the hours that I can devote to training.