The 2024 WiSport Schedule

Presenting The 2024 Cheesehead Roubaix

Cheesehead Roubaix XIII will begin at Newburg Fireman’s Park on Saturday, April 27, at 9 a.m. CDT. Inspired by Spring Classics like Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, Cheesehead Roubaix is a 63-mile ride that features almost 10 miles of gravel roads. The ride will test your fitness with rough road conditions and about 1,600 feet of climbing.

Cheesehead Roubaix is free of charge, but please consider making a voluntary contribution to the Newburg Fire Department to show your appreciation for the use of its facility. Donations will be accepted at the concessions stand before and after the ride. NFD is a small, all-volunteer department. Your generosity will make a big difference!

Enjoy the free mid-ride rest stop at Community Park in Belgium! At the Facebook event page, please confirm your attendance to help us ensure adequate quantities of food and drink.

Cheesehead Roubaix is designed for self-sufficient cyclists. Be prepared to handle your own flat tires and other minor mechanical issues. The ride uses only open public roads and park paths. You are responsible for your own safety and conduct, and you are expressly not exempt from Wisconsin traffic laws. Represent the sport well. Please visit the Cheesehead Roubaix website and print out your own copy of the cuesheet and map. The website also offers data files for GPS devices.

See you on April 27!

Hugh Jass Day 2024

Steve Jeske photo

Today, the Hugh Jass Fat Bike Series was back in West Bend for the 5th consecutive season. If you like winter, then this was a good day to be at Regner Park. There was abundant sunshine, deep snow from last week’s storms, and below-zero wind chill. The timing was perfect. Last Saturday, you might not have been able to drive to Regner. Next Saturday, the course might be little more than a muddy track.

Winter is not for me! I may have been the only person at Regner who looks forward to the above-freezing days promised in next week's forecast. But I’m glad Hugh Jass is having success and I’m especially glad that the series continues to come to West Bend. So, I did my small part: I delivered the coffee. Thanks to generous contributions from its partners, Kohn’s Filling Station and The Shadow Man, Team Pedal Moraine gave away coffee and donuts today. Hopefully, that gesture will raise the team’s profile a little bit. And, hopefully, TPM’s partners will benefit too. All partners were represented on the banner at our table, and special recognition went to Kohn’s Filling Station and The Shadow Man on the sign outside:

Steve Jeske photo

If you would like to join Team Pedal Moraine’s roster of partners for collaborations like today’s, then please contact me via the email widget on the right side of this page.

New Treadmill

I set up my new treadmill in the home gym today. It’s a big upgrade over the old one, as it comes with preset workouts that adjust the speed and incline automatically. Because of its bulk, it was difficult to bring in from the garage, where it was delivered last Saturday. And because of lousy instructions and extraordinarily tight tolerances for some of the parts, assembly was much more challenging than I expected. Now that it’s in place, however, I expect to be very happy with it.

My first workout was a success. I spent an hour on the treadmill tonight and everything worked beautifully. Now I probably should read the owner’s manual to figure out how to use all of those new features.

The treadmill will share the home gym with my strength training equipment. For cycling-specific workouts, I keep my smart trainer in the home office instead. I tried to use it in the home gym, but that area must be a bit of a dead spot in my home WiFi, as I struggled to stay connected to Zwift there. I have not yet restarted my Zwift subscription this winter and I’m not sure that I will. If all goes as planned, then I am 10 weeks away from my next trip to Pennsylvania. When I return to Wisconsin in mid-April, I should be riding outside regularly. To commit to Zwift for only the next 10 weeks probably doesn’t make sense. I can use my Garmin to do smart trainer workouts without Zwift, they just aren’t as much fun because they lack the imagery of Zwift’s virtual world.

The 2024 WORS Schedule

Do Cyclists Dream Of Biphasic Sleep?

Lately I have been wearing my Garmin watch for more than just walks around the neighborhood. I’m trying to get deeper into all of the health metrics that it can provide, including sleep. I started to look into these numbers more than three years ago, but I didn’t stay consistent. Maybe there isn’t that much to see and I will give up on it again. Right now, though, it’s kind of interesting.

I’m a biphasic sleeper: on a typical day, I sleep in two distinct periods instead of getting all of my sleep in one block. It’s not uncommon for me to be mentally fried at the end of an overnight shift, so I usually go to bed shortly after I’m done with work. What follows is something like this:

And that’s clearly not enough total sleep, especially because there’s so little deep sleep. (The heart rate bottoming out at 39 beats per minute is pretty cool though!) I’m always up again by early afternoon, when I have a very active period that might include exercise, grocery shopping, yard chores … anything you might do between the end of your workday and your bedtime. But after dinner—and especially in winter, when it’s already dark outside—my energy drops and I return to bed for as much sleep as I can get before my next overnight shift:

Add those up and it’s about seven hours of sleep in a typical day. A lot of people would take that if they could get it, but how many of them would still consider it a good deal if they had to get it in two blocks instead of one?