Presenting The 2023 Royal Oaks CX Practice Series

See You Soon, Wisconsin

I've been wearing out this route for the last 10 weeks!

Today was the last full day in Pennsylvania on my current visit. I expect to return in October. But tomorrow I at least will begin the drive back to Wisconsin, and I probably will complete the drive in one shot to avoid paying for a hotel. I won’t be on the bike tomorrow and I’m making no promises about Friday. I will be unpacking, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and addressing whatever jobs accumulated around the house during my 10-week absence.

I did one last ride here this afternoon. It was a lot like its predecessors. I didn’t do any special rides during this visit, but I put in my work. My fitness is better and I think I’m a few pounds lighter than I was in mid-May. My bathroom scale will tell the true story. And then we’ll see how well I perform on the familiar roads around West Bend.

Aside from assessing my own fitness, when I get home I will need to decide, quickly, whether there will be a Royal Oaks cyclocross practice series in August and September, whether there will be a Team Pedal Moraine century sometime this year, and whether I’m going to buy a treadmill for my home gym. I’ve been missing my home gym. During my time in PA, I have done no strength training. That’s not good, so I look forward to getting back into the routine.

Routines figure heavily in whatever claim I have to being a successful person. For the last 10 weeks, I stuck to my routines as much as I could. But I’m anxious to wake up in my own bed on Saturday. I’m proud of all the things I did for Mom, and now it’s time to get back to living by myself and for myself.

Shifting Into MacGyver Mode

Being 900 miles from home and having only one bike with me, encountering a mechanical issue was almost the worst thing that could have happened. It’s not as bad as a crash with injuries—something with which I have experience—but it’s still a pretty serious threat to my cycling ambitions. My rear shifter lever had been getting sticky on recent rides, sometimes refusing to return to its original position. On Monday’s ride, the spring responsible for that return failed altogether.

The lever still works, but it dangles comically from its remaining point of connection. That point of connection, though, is what still allows me to shift gears. So, the bike isn’t completely disabled. The local shop was closed yesterday and today, otherwise I may have dropped in to see whether the shifter could be repaired quickly. I plan to begin my return trip next Thursday, so there’s no time for ordering parts and leaving the bike in the shop for several days.

Enter the humble rubber band. This hack is as cheap and simple and they come, and it works!

I got through a 30-mile ride this evening with no problems at all. I could shift up and down the cassette with ease. I will count on this setup to get me through my remaining rides in Pennsylvania.

Some Notes For July 2023

On Friday the UCI announced that it will ban transgender racers from elite women’s competition if they transitioned from male to female after puberty. The UCI cited scientific evidence that the athletic benefits derived from years of elevated testosterone levels are not counterbalanced by subsequently lowering testosterone in adulthood. And this shouldn’t really surprise anyone. For decades, anti-doping agencies have conducted out-of-competition tests for a variety of performance enhancers, including testosterone, because many of them have effects that last long after the substances themselves disappear or return to normal levels. USA Cycling will follow the UCI’s lead … at least, at the elite level.

We could see legal challenges to the ban. At one extreme, some transgender advocates say that the only necessary proof of womanhood is that a person believe she is a woman. At another extreme, some opponents argue that transgender women will always be men, no matter what they do to alter their bodies. In the United States, the UCI’s distinction between pre-puberty and post-puberty transition may constitute an impossible path for athletes to navigate, as many state legislatures and the federal government have considered or will consider bans on gender transition healthcare for minors. Someday soon, there simply may be no pre-puberty transition.

Chicago’s Austin Killips has been at the center of the debate about transgender cyclists. Killips won the UCI’s Tour of the Gila stage race in May and took the bronze medal at the USA Cycling Cyclocross National Championships back in December. Another transgender athlete, Jenna Lingwood, placed fifth in the elite women’s field at CX nationals after winning the Masters Women 40-44 age group championship. I haven’t met Lingwood, but I have met Killips. We worked together very well for the last 50 kilometers of the Little Apple 100 gravel race near Chicago in 2019, and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner. So, let’s not argue about whether transgender athletes should have some place in competition. They should. And let’s not argue about whether they should be treated respectfully and as members of the gender to which they feel they belong. They should. This isn’t make-believe for them. This isn’t dress-up. This isn’t even about sexuality; it’s about identity. Choosing to transition is damned hard, and the only reason to do it is because all of the alternatives are much worse. But at the same time, let’s not ignore biology. Killips and Lingwood had no noteworthy results when they raced in men’s categories pre-transition. It’s difficult not to argue that their success in elite women’s races is largely a result of the enduring effects of male puberty.

In Other News …

On Wednesday’s ride I surpassed 1,000 miles of cycling since I returned to Pennsylvania in mid-May. It’s a big enough number to impress my mother and other people who don’t ride, but I know it’s less than I would have ridden if I had spent all of that time in Wisconsin. I can’t be too critical of myself, though, because I have devoted a lot of time and energy to Mom and to her home, including many hours that might otherwise have been spent on the bike.

Rain turned today into a rest day and robbed me of a 200-mile week. I finished the week with 11 hours of saddle time and a total of 180 miles, my biggest numbers so far this year.

I’m down to my last two weeks here in Pennsylvania. I expect to be back in West Bend on July 28 or 29. I have tentative plans to return to PA for another two-week visit in October that, hopefully, will include a little cyclocross racing.