My cyclocross season might already be over. It is at least on hold. I won’t be at the Oshkosh race tomorrow or at the Trek Cup races next week. I hope to be a spectator for the World Cup races at Trek headquarters on Sunday the 15th, as those races take place in the middle of the afternoon when I’m free. Gone are my ambitions to return to Pennsylvania this month. I had identified four races in the Philadelphia area that I wanted to do, but then my schedule changed when my coworker retired. Now I’m targeting a return to Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, but the cyclocross season will be done by then.
Instead of letting the cyclocross bike sit idle for at least the next two weeks, today I hooked it up to my smart trainer. There might be a lot of rain next week, and temperatures are dropping. (Was yesterday the last 70° day and the last 60° day of 2023?) Having an indoor training option seems like a good idea, though outdoor rides will be the priority. Only outdoor rides count toward my mileage goals; I treat indoor rides differently. I expect to restart my Zwift membership when I return from Pennsylvania at the beginning of December. In the meantime, I want to experiment with my Garmin Edge 830’s ability to control my smart trainer. And I want to go after the indoor cycling badges offered by Garmin Connect:
Indoor 10-Mile Ride (1 point)
Indoor 20-Mile Ride (1 point)
Indoor 50K Ride (2 points)
Indoor 50-Mile Ride (4 points)
Indoor 4-Hour Ride (8 points, repeatable)
Garmin Connect doesn’t count Zwift rides toward these badges or any others; it counts only data obtained from a Garmin or Tacx device. So, today I finally earned my Indoor 10-Mile Ride badge, though I have done many rides in excess of that distance on Zwift. Today’s ride was very experimental. I wanted to ensure everything was set up properly before I committed to a longer ride. The Edge 830 did vary the trainer’s resistance as I simulated the first 10 miles of the real-world route I completed yesterday. Now I can move on to more ambitious things.
Today’s trainer ride was my first since March 12 and my first use of my heart rate monitor since July 31. I’m still not sure the HRM is working properly. It failed outright on a couple of occasions in July and, frustrated, I stopped using it. But I really want a working HRM for indoor training. I’ll get a new one if the current one proves unreliable.
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