A Walk, A Ride, And A Goodbye To November

With 156 walks since October 1, 2020, today these shoes are officially worn out!

Tuesday broke the streak. (Actually, it broke a couple of them.) Before Tuesday, I had gotten some kind of exercise every day since arriving in Pennsylvania on November 13. Tuesday morning featured snow flurries and high winds. Despite the bright sun of afternoon, the temperature never got out of the 30s and the wind never stopped. I was content to stay indoors, rest, and enjoy a brief visit with my nephew from Montana. I hadn’t seen him in years, as he rarely visits Pennsylvania and never visits West Bend, and as I never have been to Montana.

On Tuesday I finally got a break after 12 consecutive nights at work. My employer continues to have staffing issues and I am covering the gaps. Wednesday was another night off. I’ll be back at work tonight, though, as it’s the end of the month. In the world of information technology, monthend always means more work and more problems. Wish me luck.

Wednesday’s high temperature, like Tuesday’s, was significantly below average for this area at this time of year. As November ends, 8 of the last 10 days were below average. If I had wanted January temperatures, then I could have stayed in Wisconsin! So, I didn’t get everything I expected out of November. I covered 280 miles on the bike, did 34 miles of fitness walking, and grabbed another 9 Garmin Connect badges. On Wednesday I surpassed 200 miles of fitness walking in 2023, but I am unlikely to reach my goal of 260.

Today’s bike ride brought my outdoor mileage total to 4,246 this year, and there’s still a chance that I will reach my goal of 4,422. If getting 176 more outdoor cycling miles doesn’t sound like much, then remember I will be looking for most of them in chilly West Bend. I expect to be back in Wisconsin sometime next week.

Wilma Quinlan Nature Preserve

Eastern Pennsylvania was sunny today and yet not warm: 42° was the high temperature in Mom’s neighborhood. I took a break from the bike after three straight days of riding. Today was perfect for a cross-training hike to, through, and then back from Wilma Quinlan Nature Preserve. It’s remarkably like West Bend’s Lac Lawrann Conservancy, but smaller. It’s owned by the municipality, features a network of easy turf and gravel trails, and it’s off-limits to bikes. If bikes were allowed, then it would be an excellent training spot for cyclocross. The preserve doesn’t have any abrupt elevation change like Lac Lawrann’s, but it does feature a couple of longer, steadier climbs like the ones we use for CX practice at Royal Oaks Park in West Bend.

With each passing day I am less confident of my ability to get the 206 outdoor cycling miles I still need to reach my 2023 goal. The weather simply isn’t going to be good enough for long enough. Realistically, I hope for 1-2 more rides while I’m here. In the week ahead, I expect to do more walking/hiking than riding. I still have a couple of important-to-me walking goals to hit.

Still Reaching For 2023 Goals

Thursday's ride was the big one this week.

Today is the end of my training week. Since arriving in Pennsylvania on Monday, I have completed 4 bike rides for a total of 111 miles spread over a little more than 7 hours. And I have done 5 walks for a total of 9 miles spread over a little more than 2.5 hours. That’s just short of 10 hours dedicated to exercise this week, which ain’t bad! Consider that I had to drive 963 miles from my house to Mom’s, and that I had to work overnight on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It's another vacation that's not really a vacation: Mom's kitchen table is my temporary office. This was a busy week.

I hit a couple of modest personal milestones on the bike here in PA. This season now ranks 15th out of 20 for total miles, and 10th for number of rides. That tells you a little something about my 2023 season: ride length is down. My average ride this year is only 27.11 miles. It will be a little lower before the year is over, as colder temperatures and shorter daylight hours conspire against me.

I’m still working toward several cycling goals. I need 44 miles to beat my total from last season. I need 275 to reach 90,000 lifetime miles, which was the goal I set at the beginning of 2023. Those are the big ones; the rest are Garmin Connect challenges that would be nice to complete but aren’t as important. The weather forecast through November 28 shows an average daytime high of 48° here compared to 38° in West Bend. While that’s not as warm as I would like—and it’s below average for this area—it’s still better than what I would get at home. I will try to take advantage of the difference, because when I return to Wisconsin in December there won’t be any outdoor riding in my plans.

Coming Soon: Santa Ramp-Up 2023

Click here to jump to the Facebook page.

4,000 x 15

Computers are great at doing the same thing again and again. It’s usually when you make a change that things go wrong. With the expiration of Daylight Saving Time last night, my company needed to update the time on the mainframe manually. And falling back to Central Standard Time appeared to create an extra hour during which we could perform additional maintenance without affecting the 6 a.m. up time we promise our customers. In the end, we gave back that hour and then lost almost two more. First, the system didn’t come down cleanly at the start of the maintenance window. Later, the system didn’t come back up cleanly. It was ugly. I console myself with the knowledge that I didn’t cause the problems and that my efforts reduced the duration and severity of the outage. But those efforts were fatiguing, and I didn’t have enough free time in an almost 12-hour shift to get a decent meal.

So, I came into today a lot tired and a little pissed off. Maybe it would have been smarter to go directly to bed. But daylight is even more precious now and I didn’t want to risk sleeping through all of today’s, so I stayed up and got my bike ride done. By itself, it was nothing special: I covered 20 miles in 83 minutes. I was just riding, not really training. But with those 20 miles I surpassed 4,000 miles for the 15th consecutive season. Oh, and I completed another Garmin Connect badge. That was a good way to put a bad night behind me.

Tomorrow should be warmer but the winds should be much higher, so it could be a big day for yard work. Suddenly, my next trip to Pennsylvania is only a week away and I have a long To Do list on which cycling is a maybe and not a must.