Pothole Protection Procured

I have been very satisfied with the Swagman XC2 trailer hitch rack I purchased in 2019. It was inexpensive, yet it holds two bikes securely and getting the bikes on and off the rack is quick and easy. Recently, though, I noticed damage to one of the grip arms that ratchet down on the top tube to keep the bike from bouncing out of its cradle. I have no idea how the arm got bent out of shape. The picture above shows the damaged arm on the right and its replacement on the left. Notice the difference in the arcs.

This is how the old arm was engaging with the top tube of my cyclocross bike:

The replacement arm arrived today, and this is how it engages with the top tube:

That’s far more secure. I worried that the angle of the old arm could allow the bike to vibrate out from under it. After tax and shipping, the new arm was $25 and I was happy to pay it. I still have the other arm that came with the rack, and it's in perfect condition. But I do sometimes need to transport two bikes. I need to trust that bike rack to work flawlessly at all times.

2023 Sheboygan County Cycling Classic

Autumn returned to Wisconsin today and I returned to Evergreen Park in Sheboygan for a pair of cyclocross races in the Wisconsin Cycling Association series. It was my first visit to Evergreen Park since September 2015, and the course was at least as bumpy today as it was 8 years ago. It’s a hard place to ride fast. Last weekend at Englewood, my average speed was 12.2 mph in the first race and 12.0 mph in the second. Today I could manage only 10.8 mph in the first race and 10.3 mph in the second, and that wasn’t because I had bad fitness.

I placed 12th out of 36 in the Masters 50+ Cat 4/5 race and 19th out of 31 in the Open Cat 4 race, when I was the last man to finish on the lead lap. And that little fact contributed to my 0.5 mph drop in average speed. The rider ahead of me was out of reach, and there was literally no one who could catch me, as everyone behind me had been pulled off the course by the USA Cycling officials. I conserved energy and took no risks, content at that point just to finish.

I felt some discomfort in my right calf near the end of my second race. I blame the long runs across the sandy beach that flanks the quarry lake at Evergreen Park. My 2022 season ended prematurely due to an injury to my left calf, and historically I have had trouble with both. There was no sensation of the muscle tearing today, so hopefully I will be OK for the races in Richfield next Sunday, October 1. I’m definitely out for tomorrow’s Battle of Waterloo, and I’m probably out for next Saturday’s Badger Prairie CX in Verona.

Days Don’t Come Much Nicer!

Can you believe we hit 80° in West Bend this afternoon? That hadn’t happened since September 6, and I despaired of it happening again before next … June? But it did, and it was an occasion to get outside and celebrate. After back-to-back rest days on Monday and Tuesday, I was full of energy and enthusiasm. My spirits were lifted further by the early completion of yard chores I had been putting off and by a call from my dentist with good news: my bridge came back from the lab a week early, so I will get it this Friday instead of next Friday. That will complete my dental work for 2023, and few things make a person feel as good as being done with dental work!

On the bike today, my objective was to accumulate miles and time in the saddle. I traveled the Eisenbahn State Trail to Eden and back, then tacked on a few miles in West Bend to finish with 50 miles in 3 hours, my longest ride this year. And I probably will re-do that route tomorrow when we might hit 80° again. Friday’s ride will be slow and short in advance of Saturday’s cyclocross races in Sheboygan, where I’m registered for both the Masters 50+ Cat 4/5 and the Open Cat 4.

2023-2024 Hugh Jass Schedule

The Hugh Jass Fat Bike Series has announced its 2023-2024 schedule and West Bend again will host one of the races. Here’s the full schedule, but watch for changes at the series website as the season approaches:

November 11

John Muir Trails, Whitewater

December 9

Trek Headquarters, Waterloo

December 30

Kegel Alpha Trails, Franklin

January 20

Regner Park, West Bend

February 24

Blackhawk Ski Club, Middleton

Sepp Kuss Wins The Vuelta!

Congratulations to Sepp Kuss, winner of the general classification at this year’s Vuelta a España! Kuss is the first American to win a Grand Tour since 2013. It’s a well-deserved victory for a rider known mostly as a domestique who uses his climbing prowess in support of others.

2023 Englewood CX

I did something today that I had done only twice before: I doubled-up at a cyclocross event. It happened in Wausau in 2016 and in Illinois in 2017. I had traveled considerable distances, and I was going to get my money’s worth. Today’s venue was in Fall River, just 52 miles from home. That’s not too much of a travel burden. My decision to double-up was motivated only by the desire to compete, not by the desire to squeeze everything I could out of my investment.

My first race today at Englewood CX was Masters 50+ Cat 4/5, and it was the 100th USA Cycling-sanctioned race of my career. If you can find all of my USA Cycling results—that’s road, mountain bike, and cyclocross—then you might be fooled into thinking I began today with 101 career races. But it’s not true. USA Cycling continues to credit me with one race for which I was registered but did not start and with another race in which I had no involvement at all. I’m not sure why USA Cycling didn’t remove me from those results when I called out the errors years ago. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now. I’ve hit a legitimate milestone. (Thursday’s cyclocross practice was a milestone too. It was the 70th practice I have hosted in West Bend since I started the series in 2012.) My result today was solid but unspectacular: 14th out of 45. I really liked the course, which had lots of hammer-down grassy sections on which I excelled. I wasn’t great on the sandy, twisting descent through the pines, but overall I was very satisfied with my result.

I followed up later this morning with the Open Cat 4 race. Having a 1-hour break after the Masters 50+ Cat 4/5 race is what makes the Open Cat 4 race possible for me this season. I had time to refuel, to ensure I was properly hydrated, and to swap out some sweaty clothes for dry ones. So, I was comfortable when the race started … maybe too comfortable. I didn’t have the same snap in my legs that I had in the first race, and I don’t think that was fatigue as much as it was a shoddy warmup between races. Garmin says my average moving speed in the second race was 12.0 mph, down from 12.2 mph in the first race. That’s not a big drop, but I felt it. And in a race with a lot of much younger guys, that drop in speed translated to a drop in the standings. I placed 28th out of 40.

Look for me on Saturday, September 23, in Sheboygan. I won’t be in Franklin tomorrow for the next event in the WCA cyclocross series. I have to work from 11 p.m. tonight until 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. That’s a typical Saturday night for me, so most Sunday races are out.

Work took an unwelcome turn this week when my 3rd Shift coworker announced his retirement, effective September 29. We work together Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, then he works alone on Thursdays and Fridays, and I work alone on Saturdays and Sundays. Hopefully his position can be filled right away, but no matter how quickly a replacement is found, I can expect to work additional hours until the new hire is sufficiently trained. That could affect my Saturday racing plans if my Friday nights are no longer free. For example, I may have to target the 2:25 p.m. Open Cat 3/4 race instead of the morning races. I would expect to take a serious beating in that race, but at least it would be an opportunity to compete.

My USA Cycling Downgrade

Several factors converged today and forced me to make a choice that I privately considered for a long time. That choice was to downgrade my USA Cycling cyclocross category from 3 to 4. I remember how satisfying it was to upgrade to Cat 3 at the end of 2014—I had made several podiums and accumulated the necessary points—and it all made sense at the time. So, downgrading required me to swallow some pride. But if I’m being honest, downgrading was probably necessary to keep me racing.

After upgrading to Cat 3, I never had an impressive result. I really was just pack fodder, getting clobbered by much better racers. I want to be competitive, but in Cat 3 I can’t be. It gets worse with age: every season I’m another year older than most of the guys. I’m 58 now; the youngest racers in my Masters division are only 49. And I’m probably still feeling the effects of 2 years lost to the COVID-19 pandemic, as I didn’t race at all in 2020 or 2021. I raced only once last year.

This season, then, is going to be a reset. I hope so, anyway. Pre-registration for Saturday’s race ends tonight at midnight and my USA Cycling license was set to expire tomorrow. I used the renewal process as my opportunity to downgrade. For Saturday, I am registered in the Masters 50+ Cat 4/5 race and the Open Cat 4/5 race. There’s a chance I will enter the Open Cat 3/4 race later in the afternoon, but there’s also a chance of thunderstorms.

If I had remained a Cat 3, then my only race on Saturday would have been Masters 50+ Cat 1/2/3, the last race of the day … and only if the thunderstorms stayed away. Looking at the forecast, I didn’t want to commit to a race with such uncertain conditions. It’s funny, but weather is one of the factors that prompted me to downgrade. When I upgraded before the 2015 season, a big part of my motivation was to get out of the morning timeslot and into the warmer afternoon. These days, the WCA schedule gives me more opportunities as a Cat 4. I still can race in the afternoon if the morning is too cold, or I can race in the morning to avoid afternoon rain.

Finally, there’s the camaraderie. Some of the guys I really enjoy racing against have downgraded from Cat 3 to Cat 4 in the last few years. We’re not getting any younger, and downgrading is absolutely a concession to that fact. Nobody gets to do this forever, but we’re not done yet.

Wow, Was I Wrong!

When I said in my last blog post that there would be “a lot of bike riding in my immediate future,” I wasn’t counting on the weather turning sour. We had a couple of summer-like days, then somebody turned off the heat and threw in a little rain. We should be hitting 75° in the afternoon, but we’re not. Tomorrow we’ll be lucky to hit 60° and it’s going to rain all day.

I also didn’t factor in my supplemental cyclocross practice on Tuesday at Riverside Park. It was good to work on skills, but it did nothing for my fitness. And I failed to account for waning daylight. We’ve been losing 3 minutes per day and it’s really noticeable now. Tomorrow begins the last week of 2023 in which sunset will be after 7 o’clock.

I did a 31-mile road ride today to finish the week with exactly 100 miles. That’s my lowest total since June 19-25. I need more long, fat-burning, Zone 2 rides. I’m stuck on 199 pounds, 5 pounds heavier than I was on this date last year. It’s probably time for me to flip my schedule again. I prefer to sleep immediately after my workday ends at 7:30 a.m., then ride late in the afternoon. But afternoons aren’t long enough anymore and I can’t afford to start riding at 5 p.m.

The Royal Oaks cyclocross practice series concludes this week. That will turn my Thursdays back into opportunities for long rides. And because Thursdays and Fridays are my “weekend,” there’s probably no better way to spend them. I spent only 6 hours, 41 minutes on the bike this week. I will lose fitness rapidly if I can’t get back to my usual training load of 10-14 hours.

Summer 2023, Continued …

It’s September 1 and the grocery stores are already full of Halloween candy and pumpkin spice everything. It’s sickening, and I refuse to be rushed into a season for which I have little affection. Autumn doesn’t start until September 23 and I want to squeeze all I can out of the last 3 weeks of summer. The 10-day forecast seems to promise summertime conditions, so there’s a lot of bike riding in my immediate future. I kicked off September with a 32-mile Eisenbahn State Trail ride, cruising leisurely to Campbellsport and then making a little more effort on the return to West Bend to beat the setting sun. The graph above shows the difference in speed before and after the turnaround.

Here’s a weird thought: August was my first full month at home since March. I went to Pennsylvania to celebrate my mother’s 90th birthday in April, then I went back to Pennsylvania in May after Mom broke her hip and I stayed until late July. So, August was a month of catching up on things around my house, in the yard, and on the bike. I got back on the familiar roads of Washington County, rode with friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and started up another season of cyclocross practices. August was productive. I racked up 711 miles to finish the month with 3,021 miles, year-to-date. That’s slightly ahead of last year’s pace. And I lost 4 pounds … not the 7 pounds I wanted to lose, but not bad.

Giving up Coca-Cola was one of my plans to lose weight in August. My goal was total abstinence but I gave in on 2 occasions. The first was a few weeks ago when I had a rare case of indigestion that nothing else would cure. The second was yesterday before cyclocross practice, when I was coming straight from a dental appointment and my energy was low. So, in September I again will try to avoid Coke completely. Losing a few more pounds would be good for any number of reasons, but especially for my racing ambitions.

The WCA cyclocross season begins next Saturday, September 9. Don’t look for me in Manitowoc; I will be working overnight on Friday the 8th to cover for a coworker who’s having surgery. That will be the second of 7 consecutive nights on the job for me. Working all night, then going to a bike race, then working all night again is not a winning combination. I plan to start my racing season on Saturday, September 16, at Englewood CX in Fall River.