Twilight Zone-2 Ride III

Meet at the downtown West Bend train depot for a twilight ride on the Eisenbahn State Trail to Campbellsport and back, with a mid-ride snack stop at Kohn’s Filling Station. That's 28.5 miles and we'll average about 15 mph. The ride will finish after sunset, so headlights are required. If you’re a Facebook user, then please click here to visit the event page and indicate whether you plan to participate.

Presenting The 2024 Royal Oaks CX Practice Series

Cyclocross practices at Royal Oaks Park in West Bend will begin in just 4 weeks! That’s right: we’re moving to Wednesdays. Why? Well, Mondays don’t make sense because a lot of people use them to rest after a big block of training or racing over the weekend. Tuesdays are dominated by a group mountain bike ride at Glacial Blue Hills. Thursdays are now set aside for a group road ride. Some of those Tuesday mountain bikers and Thursday roadies are cyclocross racers. I want to give them an opportunity to practice without making them miss out on the other disciplines that they enjoy. Fridays are too close to the weekend. If you were to break your body or your bike on Friday evening, then you might not have time to get things fixed before your Saturday race. Wednesday feels like a good fit. Attendance will tell me if I’m right. See you on August 14 for the start of our 11th season!

Next Sunday: Bikes & Brews In Kewaskum

 

After Nuun

In January 2019, Trek had such an incredible deal on Nuun hydration tablets that I still wonder about it. I wasn’t in the habit of exploring Trek’s website for sports nutrition. I’ve been a Nuun fan for more than 10 years, but usually I bought it from Nashbar, Performance Bike, or at a local shop. However, Trek’s deal was too good to pass up. I hope nobody got fired for getting the price wrong, if indeed it was wrong, but I should have kept pressing the Buy button until there was nothing left. Showing some restraint, I purchased 8 boxes for $6.99 apiece. Each box contained 8 tubes. Each tube contained 10 tablets. From other retailers, a single tube of Nuun was selling for about $6.99, so to get 8 tubes for that price was suspiciously good. That’s a total of 640 tablets for $58.72 after tax!

At the time, I told a friend I had just purchased 3 seasons’ worth of Nuun. That estimate was a bit off, as sometimes I ride with only water. Today, more than 5 years later, I am down to my last tube. And Nuun tablets are great! Unlike powders, there’s nothing to measure and nothing to spill. I’m still a fan. There’s still a place for Nuun when I am taking my bike somewhere to ride or to race. But to buy 640 Nuun tablets today, I would have to pay more than $500! For everyday rides that leave from my driveway, I’m going back to homemade sports drink. Tap water, granulated sugar, salt, and flavoring agents like lemon juice are cheap. It will be a long time before I go through $500 worth of those.

I use water bottles with a capacity of 750 ml. I have a plastic pitcher with enough capacity to make five 750 ml servings. So, my recipe is this simple:

Add 1 cup of granulated white sugar (775 calories).

Add dash of ordinary table salt (sodium chloride).

Add dash of salt substitute (potassium chloride).

Add ½ cup of lemon juice (25 calories).

Fill with water (approximately 1 gallon).

Stir ... and re-stir before the next serving if necessary.

Chill in the refrigerator.

That’s a sufficient supply of electrolytes and about 160 calories per serving, almost as many as the equivalent amount of classic Gatorade and far more than the 15 calories I was getting from Nuun. Sometimes I will need the extra energy source and sometimes I won’t. In any case, I should be doing a better job of staying hydrated. Nuun is very thinly flavored and I have finished many rides with a nearly full bottle. I think the extra sweetness of my own mix will encourage me to drink more.

Looking For Lemmiwinks

I got back on the bike today for the first time since Wednesday evening and for only the second time this month. That’s not typical for July and no, the weather doesn’t get all the blame this time. I lost Thursday and Friday to a medical procedure that was long overdue. I turned 59 in June and should have had my first colonoscopy a decade ago. I finally got the job done yesterday. And it went well. It’s true what they say: the preparation is worse than the procedure itself. I spent most of Thursday in bed or in the bathroom, and by the time I had a meal on Friday afternoon I had gone almost 48 hours without eating. In that span I lost 6 pounds! A lot of that was just water, for sure, but not all of it. It takes more than a few calories to keep me going even when I’m not doing anything athletic, so I burned off a little fat.

As I recover from the dehydration that accompanied the colonoscopy, I will gain back some of that 6-pound weight loss. That’s OK; I’m more interested in the How and Why of the weight I won’t gain back. Should I experiment with intermittent fasting, which has shown a lot of promise as a weight loss tool? One day per week without food wouldn’t be that unpleasant—I didn’t feel uncomfortably hungry at any time during my colonoscopy prep—and it could coincide with a rest day in my training plan. I did have noticeably less energy on Thursday and Friday, which says something about the extent to which I rely on carbohydrates for fuel. I’m sure part of the reason my weight hasn’t really come down this year is the absence of longer, slower rides on which fat is burned preferentially.

Whatever adjustments I may make to my diet and training, I have a good digital scale that I should be using for more than just overall weight. I bought the scale in May 2014 to replace an inaccurate analog scale. It’s pretty sophisticated but I have asked it to perform only its most basic function. Most of the research I’ve seen on the subject concludes that while digital scales do a very good job with total body weight, they are not very accurate with lean muscle weight, body fat percentage, hydration status, and other metrics. Nevertheless, I’m going to track my own numbers for a while. Even if the absolute values aren’t very accurate, the trends should be trustworthy. Up and down should still work.

Garmin offers a scale like mine but includes wireless data uploads to Garmin Connect. I would love to have that feature, but I’m not ready to pay $150 for it. I may be ready to pay $150 for Garmin’s blood pressure monitor. It also works over WiFi with Garmin Connect and it has come to my attention at a time when I’m somewhat dissatisfied with my existing monitor. I have high blood pressure and I probably should be checking it more than once per week. My current monitor is a little clumsy, though, so I use it with some reluctance.

Friday’s colonoscopy was the latest in a series of important investments in my health that go back to last year. As I said before, it doesn’t make sense to worry about cycling performance if the very foundations of health are crumbling. So, there’s more to come. I will have a routine checkup with my primary care physician on July 26 (with blood tests a day or two earlier) and a dental cleaning on July 30. And then I should be done with pokings and proddings for a while.

Halftime 2024

As silly as this looks, I am warming to the idea.

We have entered the second half of 2024 and I’m just about where I was at the end of the first half of 2023. That’s not good. I hoped for more, but hope doesn’t count for much. The truth is that I haven’t had a lot of motivation this season. As July begins, I have done 56 rides for a total of 1,523 miles. At the midway point last year I had ridden 59 times for a total of 1,568 miles. The difference is negligible, so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on myself. And if you want to find a bright spot, then look to my per-ride average, which is higher this season.

I spent last June in suburban Philadelphia where I find miles harder to accumulate. I spent this June at home where longer rides should be easier. And I did ride more this June—504 miles, compared to 483 last year—but I was expecting something like 700-800. It’s impossible not to view June as a disappointment. We had a ton of rain in Washington County. Entire days were wiped out by it, and it came so frequently that I lost an extra day or two to lawn care when the fast-growing grass was finally dry enough to cut.

Frequent and heavy rain has been a problem since early spring, so it’s no surprise that my treadmill has gotten a lot of use. I have done 342 miles of fitness walking so far this year, much more than the 140 miles I had racked up by June 30 last year. That’s also far in excess of my final total of 238 miles in 2023, and it already beats the target of 260 miles that I established for 2024. I walked 463 miles in 2021 and that personal record is looking vulnerable this year.

I wasn’t idle in the first half of 2024, but I wasn’t ambitious. The 10-day forecast doesn’t promise a good start to the second half of the season. We’ll be at least 10 degrees below normal today and tomorrow. We’ll get about another inch of rain tomorrow. There’s just no end to it. On last Wednesday’s ride, I had to turn around in Quaas Creek Park because the bridge over the creek was under water. On Saturday’s ride, I observed that the Milwaukee River is overflowing its banks along River Drive north of Green Tree Road. Another inch of rain could bring flooding to the road itself. The pure mountain bikers are screaming that their trails have been open only occasionally this year. If the rain keeps up, the roadies will have cause for their own complaints.