When Did 45 Miles Become A “Long” Ride?

I did my longest ride of the year today: 45.00 miles in 2:45:31. That surpassed the 36.16 miles I completed in 2:29:24 back on June 28. Go back to 2010 and my average ride was 33.94 miles. This year I am averaging only 25.71 miles per ride. I used to do centuries and metric centuries. I used to do 200-mile weeks for several weeks consecutively. My biggest week so far this year was 170.23 miles, June 23-29. What’s going on?

Believe it or not, the answer is sleep. I’m sleeping better and longer, which means I’m usually sleeping into afternoon hours that used to be available for cycling. It’s not a bad trade. I feel like my fitness right now is at least equal to my fitness from a year ago, though I have ridden 500 fewer miles.

But I need to make some adjustments, and I need to make them quickly. Summer is fleeing Wisconsin with a swiftness I don’t think I have seen before. By this time next week, I might have to turn on my furnace. Summer, by the way, doesn’t officially end until September 22. That means nothing here. I’m already in long sleeves most of the time and in thermals with increasing frequency. I will be able to outdress the weather for a little while, but there’s not much I can do about waning daylight hours. Today was our last day in 2025 with a 7:30 sunset. We’ll be down to 7:00 on September 16. Almost all of my rides this month have started after 5:30, and that won’t work much longer. I consider 1 hour to be the minimum duration for an outdoor ride; anything less than that is a waste of time. And 90 minutes is probably the sweet spot, so what can I do?

As the days get shorter and colder, my options become more limited. Grabbing my headlight for another trip up the Eisenbahn State Trail is the easiest and safest option – I’m very conscious of the dangers of riding into a setting sun – but riding after sunset won’t be the warmest option. The best thing I can do is to start earlier. I want to wrap up my outdoor season by the end of October, by which time sunset will be earlier than 6:00. That makes 4:00 the most attractive start time, effective immediately. By starting at 4:00, I will hit the warmest hours of the day most of the time, and all route options will remain available to me.

Sleep, though … is it going to take a hit? That depends on how disciplined I am. If I force myself to be in bed by 8:00 each morning, then a 3:00 wakeup time gives me a 7-hour sleep window. During the last four weeks, my average sleep duration was 6:23, so this new schedule might work. I have to try. Doing nothing would just be failing gradually.

The 2025 Royal Oaks CX Practice Series

Photo credit: Mitchell Vincent

Cyclocross practice returns to West Bend this evening and I’m happy that there are people who want to do it and at least one person who wants to lead it, because I’m no longer in charge. I presided over 75 practices:

I hope this year’s series is a great success, but it is time for me to move on to other objectives.

Addicted

At this time last year, I surpassed 30,000 lifetime miles on my 2013 BMC Granfondo GF02, which is still great today after even more time and more miles. However, it is an aging 2x10-speed aluminum bike with rim brakes. That’s not where the industry is today, much less where it will be tomorrow. When things break or wear out, finding replacement parts will only get more challenging and more expensive.

I’m close to 6,000 lifetime miles aboard my 2022 Framed Gravier, a capable bike for a ride on the Eisenbahn State Trail, but not something I would want to ride on the road any more than necessary. It’s heavy and the gearing is all wrong for me. On one hand, I like the simplicity of the single chainring. On the other, I’m usually riding at 40x11 and wishing I had more gears.

You already should have guessed where this is going.

All year long, I was thinking about a new bike that could replace both the BMC and the Framed, simplifying things for me in my most common riding scenarios. After much deliberation, last week I decided the 2025 Scott Addict is the solution.

Scott makes different versions of the Addict. For me, the right choice was the Shimano 105 12-speed mechanical version. I think it’s a better value with less hassle than the Shimano 105 Di2 version; the bikes are identical otherwise. I’m not a fetishist when it comes to bike technology. Electronic shifting is cool, but it comes with its own set of worries and a much higher price tag. Today’s 105 group performs as well as yesterday’s top-of-the-line DURA-ACE group with only a small weight penalty. I’m getting more climbing gears (11-34) than I have with the BMC (11-28), more top-end gearing (50-tooth big ring) than I have with the Framed, and hydraulic disc brakes, an improvement over both the BMC and the Framed. And like all modern road bikes, the Scott has clearance for wider tires. Its stock 32mm tires will be fine on the road and on a gentle gravel trail like the Eisenbahn, where I have been using similar 32mm tires on the Framed for the last three years. The Scott’s stock wheels are surprisingly good and contribute to a noticeably smoother ride. They are only slightly heavier than the wheels on the BMC and they are almost a full pound lighter than the wheels that came with the Framed! They’re even lighter than the custom wheels I ordered to replace the Framed’s stock set.

While Scott began as an American company, it is now headquartered in Switzerland, and its product offerings are known better to the European market. In the US, you can find versions of the Giant Defy and the Trek Domane that are almost identical to my new Addict – carbon frames, Shimano 105 12-speed mechanical drivetrains, unspectacular yet eminently serviceable house brand wheels, saddles, handlebars, etc. – but they don’t come close to the Addict on price. And price is always a consideration. As I was reviewing my options, total cost of ownership was a thought. So was timing. I think we are heading into a period of significantly higher prices driven by new tariffs. Anything coming from overseas – and that’s almost everything in the bike industry – is going to cost more. I didn’t want to wait any longer. You can still find deals on stuff that is already in the US. A lot of companies in a lot of different industries front-loaded their shipments this year to get ahead of the tariffs. But once that stuff is gone, the next wave of stuff will be more expensive.

I don’t plan to part with the BMC. If it is to become only a backup road bike, then it will be a great backup road bike. The Framed, though, is looking for a new purpose. I already have stripped it of its pedals, bottle cages, computer mount, and saddle. (The stock saddle on the Addict was too short for my riding style, and it’s 30 grams heavier.) As a single chainring bike with mechanical disc brakes and plenty of tire clearance, a pair of flat pedals could turn the Framed into an all-season, urban errand runner. Or this could simply be time to find a new owner for it.

On today’s 35-mile shakedown ride, the Addict performed flawlessly. The only thing that would have made it better was a heater. What’s up with our weather? Is this August or October? It would be typical of my luck for me to have purchased a great bike right before the early arrival of a chilly autumn. Give me at least a few more nice weeks, please!

Ups & Downs

Getting more sleep is irrefutably a good thing for my overall health. Today, though, I slept away my chance to get on the bike. By the time I got out of bed, another nasty line of thunderstorms was about to hit West Bend with more rain that we don’t need. I was determined not to let the remainder of the day go to waste, even if I did have to spend it indoors.

Here was an opportunity to use my new Garmin Instinct to track an activity I couldn’t track before: floor climbing. Last week I did a short test of this feature, climbing 20 flights at home. That’s 20 trips from the first floor to the second floor, and back again. Garmin gave me credit for only 18 flights (90%). Today, I went longer: 50 flights. Garmin’s accuracy was even worse, as I was credited with only 43 flights (86%). But I guess it’s close enough. There just isn’t that much elevation change between the two floors of my home. I’ll bet the accuracy is better outdoors. And given that I performed today’s test during a thunderstorm, I suppose there’s a chance that Garmin was thrown off by rapid air pressure changes. Garmin does advise against descending too soon after reaching a higher level, as the tracker may need several seconds to detect a pressure change. Air pressure changes during the storm may have blinded my device to some of the 7 climbs it omitted from my official total.

Today’s effort, while imperfectly measured, was sufficient to earn me a new Garmin Connect badge.

“Virtual Climb - The Narrows” is one of four badges available for floor climbing. It will be the only one I earn at home! If today’s performance is a good indication of the effort required for each of these, then the shortest of the three that remain would take me about three hours and 100 trips up and down my staircase.

No, thanks!

Garmin Instinct 2

I treated myself to a new fitness tracker last Tuesday, one so feature-rich that many more weeks may pass before I discover everything it can do for me. After a fair amount of research, I bought it with some expectations, of course, but I have barely made a beginning with its 66-page owner’s manual.

Anyway, the Garmin Instinct 2 is now my primary wearable, replacing my Garmin Forerunner 35. Although the Forerunner is still functioning perfectly, it is nearly five years old. Health and fitness statistics have become so important to me that I cannot bear the thought of breaking my tracking streaks for any reason, including a technical glitch. So, now I have two devices that can track the metrics I value the most.

Incidentally, both the Instinct and the Forerunner could be used as cycling computers, but I will continue to use my Garmin Edge 830 for those statistics and for navigation, which is much better viewed on the handlebar than on the wrist. If the Edge 830 ever dies, then I can revert to my Edge 500 … until I upgrade again. Yes, I have a little money tied up in Garmin devices. (Can’t forget about the smart bathroom scale or the blood pressure monitor.) I’m living in a Garmin Connect world where each device motivates me to be healthier.

The Forerunner turned me into an avid fitness walker. The Instinct will encourage a wider variety of cross-training activities by measuring things I couldn’t measure before. I’m counting on it to motivate me to spend more time on strength training, which has been very sporadic this year. I fell out of the habit when I was recovering from my hip replacement surgery last winter. And the Instinct’s built-in barometric altimeter will track elevation gain when I do a climbing workout on stairs or hills.

A better fitness tracker will give me not only more features, but also greater accuracy. However, it still won’t give me perfect accuracy. During a short stair climbing workout last Thursday, my new device counted only 18 of the 20 floors I actually climbed. That’s 90 percent, an A- on the report card. And it was way off during a couple of tests on my treadmill. Fortunately, that one is fixable: Garmin has a calibration feature that allows the user to override its measurements with the treadmill’s measurements. The treadmill knows how long its belt is, and it knows how many times that belt went around, so you can trust it for distance and speed. Garmin is really just making a guess based on your self-reported stride length and the number of steps captured by its accelerometer. Using my Forerunner on the treadmill, sometimes I would grab the handrail for several seconds to arrest the accelerometer when I knew my device was getting ahead of the treadmill’s calculations. The Instinct, now calibrated for my treadmill, should be accurate as long as I am using the “Treadmill” function. But for some insane reason, Garmin treats “Treadmill” workouts as running activities only; there is no walking option. After I complete a walk, I will need to change the activity type from running to walking on Garmin Connect. That’s not great. Garmin fares much better outdoors, where walks can be tracked via GPS.

The Instinct and I are still getting to know each other. Its sleep tracking and heart rate monitoring are getting better the more I wear it. So far, so good, I guess. It’s going to be a great tool once I get past a couple of growing pains.

Hi, Maintenance?

If you're wondering what this

did to the Eisenbahn State Trail in Washington County, then I have news! I rode the full length of the Washington County segment today and found only a couple of serious issues. The most serious is the landslide at the Woodford Drive underpass:

Looks like the county maintenance team already came through with heavy equipment to reopen the trail. It's going to need a fresh topping of crushed limestone as soon as possible. The Woodford Drive bridge appears to have been somewhat undercut by the landslide. I don't know whether it can be saved. As a wooden-deck bridge, it's a piece of history. I would be sorry to see a plain steel-and-concrete span in its place.

There's also noticeable erosion where the Moraine Park Technical College connector meets the Eisenbahn, but that's nothing new. The connector was constructed at too steep a pitch. It really should be ripped out and replaced.

I found only one tree toppled by the weekend storm:

Until the county arrives with a chainsaw, you'll find that obstacle between mile markers 4 and 5, just a little south of County Highway H.

The Friday Night Shift

Join me for an easy 28.5-mile, Zone 2 ride (14-15 mph average) on the Eisenbahn State Trail from the downtown West Bend train depot to Campbellsport and back, with a brief mid-ride snack stop at Kohn’s Filling Station. This ride will finish after sunset (8:05), so headlights are required. Please visit the Facebook event page to indicate that you plan to join the ride.