Greetings From Grafton

They're racing under the lights at the Tour of America's Dairyland!

For Immediate Release

Approval Of The County Bike Plan

Last Wednesday our County Board approved the Washington County Bikeway & Trail Network Plan. I was hoping to have more to say on this subject, but even the people who were strongly in favor of it have been very quiet. Was I wrong to think that approval wasn’t guaranteed? Did everyone know this was a fait accompli except me? The proposal passed by a 25-1 vote, with only District 15 Supervisor Marilyn Merten of Richfield dissenting.

Happy 54th Birthday

Today's present to myself: a full-distance Eisenbahn State Trail ride.

I can’t complain about today. I did that goofy cyclist birthday thing, riding a mile for every year. The sun was out for a change. The winds were light for a change. The temperature was pleasant for a change. Gosh, we actually hit 70° today.

But it wasn’t much of a weekend. Take your pick: too cold, too windy, too wet. If you went up to Mt. Morris for the WORS race on Sunday, then you endured a mudfest in 50-something-degree temperatures. Me? I spent the first half of Father’s Day waiting for the temperature to crack 60°, then spent the second half working on my yard. It was another lost weekend on my cycling calendar in what is becoming a lost year. I’m going to reach the halfway mark of this season hundreds of miles behind last year’s pace.

Cycling ambitions aside, Father’s Day wasn’t a super happy Hallmark moment. It was a bummer to realize that this was probably the last year that both of my children will be living under my roof. The oldest graduated from college in May and the youngest will begin college this fall. Don’t get me wrong: there are many things about the Empty Nest lifestyle that I will enjoy. (I’m already benefiting by no longer having to negotiate the nightmare parking lot of the West Bend high school campus.) But I would rather have my children with me than not with me, and the journey that I have been on as a father since 1998 feels like it’s ending abruptly. When the nest is empty I still will be a father, of course, but the dynamic will be different. I must have done something right to bring my children to this point: two honors students ready to take on new challenges without me. But damn it anyway.

There are good family memories to make this week, as my mother and one of my nephews will be flying in from Philadelphia to visit from Thursday through Sunday. That won’t be good for my training, though, so I’ll make an effort to ride hard tomorrow and Wednesday in anticipation of yet another lost weekend. Cyclocross season begins just 9 weeks from Saturday. It’s getting harder to imagine that I will be in race shape by then. Oh, well. There’s more to life.

CC Rider

Veni, Vidi, Bici!

Seven days, seven bike rides, 200 miles. Those are my totals since Sunday. I haven’t done a block of training like that in a long time. But the weather has been favorable and I have been motivated. (Cyclocross season opens 11 weeks from today!)

I also have been a little worried about what the next seven days will bring, so I’ve been “making hay while the sun shines,” as my father would have said. Rain in tomorrow's forecast could mean a rare Sunday without cycling. Monday and Tuesday look OK (maybe), then more rain arrives with a big cooldown mid-week and we will struggle to hit 60° for a couple of days. It’s definitely still spring, not summer, despite a couple of recent 80° teasers.

One Last Push

If you genuinely care about bicycling in Washington County, then the stakes don’t get much higher than this.

It’s time for the County Board to vote on the Washington County Bikeway & Trail Network Plan, a comprehensive study of current conditions and future opportunities. This is the most important moment in history for bicycling in our county. Adoption of the plan will begin a process that will take years to complete, but don’t be discouraged by the long timeline. The process has to start sometime, and future generations will applaud us for having had this vision. Or they will curse us for our shortsightedness if we allow the plan to fail. The County Board will meet next Wednesday, June 12, at 6 p.m. in Room 1019 of the Government Center, 432 E. Washington St., in West Bend.

Please contact your County Supervisor to express your support for the plan. It’s easy!

1. Go to the county’s website.
2. Zoom into the map and click the location of your residence, as in this example:

3. Click on the  >  symbol to get your supervisor's contact information:

4. Click the EMAIL hyperlink. Depending on your browser settings, your email program may launch at this point. Otherwise, use your mouse pointer to hover over the EMAIL hyperlink. Make note of the email address and then enter it into your email program.
5. Compose and send your email. Be sure to include your name and street address. Use your own wording or simply Copy & Paste this text:

Please support the adoption of the Washington County Bikeway & Trail Network Plan when the County Board meets on Wednesday, June 12. The plan includes much needed enhancements to the pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure of Washington County. The multi-use paths in the plan are especially important in providing safe recreation and transportation for me and my family. Thank You!

That’s it!

Contact from constituents is extremely influential at the county level. You can make a difference in this process!

Re-shoein’ The Boone

Over the years I have used this blog to affirm and reaffirm my affection for Continental Gatorskin tires. They are great, great, great. I recommend them without reservation. I have used the 700x25 Gatorskins for tens of thousands of road miles, both in training and in competition. And my recommendation now extends to the 700x32 variety, which I experienced for the first time on Sunday and again this afternoon.

Having retired the trusty Diamondback Steilacoom (still looking for a buyer, by the way), I’m asking my Trek Boone to do triple duty as a responsive cyclocross racer, a stalwart gravel grinding steed, and a reliable recreation trail bike. I have two hot-swappable sets of Shimano Ultegra wheels dedicated to the Boone. The wheelsets were identical out of the box, but I have set them up differently for my particular needs. The cyclocross race set is tubeless with, of course, race-only cyclocross tires and a wider range cassette. The gravel grinder / recreation trail set has a smaller cassette—rec trails are almost dead flat, after all—and now these new Gatorskins, which are more than enough for the tame gravel roads and rec trails of southeastern Wisconsin. I’m expecting much longer tire life from the Gatorskins than I was getting from the second-tier cyclocross tires I had been using on the Eisenbahn, the Wild Goose, and the like.

Fifty miles down … who knows how many miles to go?

Over Before It Began

Gatherin' dust ...

September 23, 2017. Remember that date. It was the last time I went mountain biking. When I will go again is anyone’s guess. I wanted to return to mountain biking in 2019, but that’s probably not going to happen. At least it doesn’t look like I’m going to be racing.

I wanted to do the WEMS Championships at New Fane in September and I thought I might hit Stump Farm (August 10) in preparation, but now both are off my calendar. The plan now is to concentrate almost exclusively on cyclocross with maybe a gravel race or two for a change of pace.

Mountain biking simply doesn’t fit right now. This year my time and financial resources are very limited. I don’t want to spend the better part of an hour just driving to and from New Fane or Pleasant Valley. I don’t want to spend the money to acquire a state parks vehicle sticker and a state trail pass. To be honest, I’m tempted to sell my mountain bike. As rough as this year has been, I’m optimistic about 2020. With more time, more money and a new mountain bike, I think I would rediscover my motivation for that side of my cycling obsession.

Getting Only A Glimpse When I Want To Stare

The first 80° day of 2019—the first 80° day since October 9—didn’t come soon enough for me. For more than 6 months I needed not just a day like yesterday, but an unbroken series of them. Warm weather inspires and motivates me and I probably will always wonder what kind of athlete I could be if I had more days like Saturday and fewer like the typically cold, dark days that make Wisconsin only the latest stop on my journey through life, not the last. Days like, say, tomorrow and Tuesday:

There’s another couple of rest days I don’t need.

But I did good work on the road yesterday and I was doing good work on the Eisenbahn State Trail this afternoon until a front tire puncture stopped me halfway between Kewaskum and Campbellsport. I swapped in the only spare tube I had and then headed back to West Bend. I finished the week with 8.5 hours in the saddle and a total of 141 miles. That’s my best week since April 22-28, which doesn’t speak too well for our May weather. With only 13 more weeks until the cyclocross season opens, I continue to struggle with consistency in my training and it’s all weather-related. I haven’t had a 5-day week on the bike since December 10-16, and at this time of year I should be shooting for 6 days on, 1 day off.

That Pesky 3-Kilometer Rule, Again

The Amgen Tour of California concluded yesterday, crowning Tadej Pogačar as its overall champion after seven stages and no small of amount of controversy. Fortunately, none of the controversy will diminish Pogačar’s achievement; the 20-year-old UCI WorldTour newcomer was outstanding all week and proved himself a worthy winner by distancing all rivals Friday on Mt. Baldy.

But the story that dominated the tour was the decision of the race referees to keep Tejay van Garderen in the leader’s jersey at the end of Stage 4 on Wednesday. Van Garderen crashed with less than 10 kilometers to go and was attempting to rejoin the peloton when another crash—one in which he was not involved—impeded his progress. That second crash occurred with 3.4 kilometers remaining. There’s a UCI rule that protects a rider’s position on general classification if he is involved in or delayed by a crash in the last 3 kilometers, giving him the same finishing time as the others with whom he was riding when the crash occurred.

That’s 3.0 kilometers. And 3.4 is more than 3.0, isn’t it? The difference appeared not to matter to the race referees, whose very liberal interpretation of the rule allowed van Garderen to retain the top spot on GC when otherwise he would have fallen hopelessly far behind. Van Garderen’s collapse Friday on Mt. Baldy ensured that he wouldn’t be the overall winner, Pogačar or no Pogačar, so it all worked out in the end, right? Well, not really. What consolation is there for Kasper Asgreen, who would have become the race leader if not for the referees’ intercession? How would the race have changed with Asgreen in the yellow jersey on Thursday?

From race directors to fans airing their grievances on social media, a fair number of observers thought Wednesday’s ruling smacked of favoritism for an American rider in an American race. VeloNews captured much of that sentiment and it cannot simply be dismissed. Remember that plenty of American fans accused European commissaires and journalists of anti-American bias during the Lance Armstrong days. Creating an environment where these kinds of accusations take root will lead only to an even looser interpretation of the rules as local judges protect their favorites or get revenge for some earlier slight.

The VeloNews article also questions whether the 3-kilometer rule should exist at all. Fine: by all means, question that. But for now the rule does exist. And don’t confuse a rule with a guideline. We’re not talking about give-or-take 3 kilometers; we’re talking about exactly 3 kilometers. Only the strictest interpretation, applied every time the rule is invoked, can ensure fairness and impartiality. Make the rules apply the same way to all riders at all times and there’s nothing more to discuss, no matter how harsh that may seem. On Wednesday, van Garderen wouldn’t have lost the jersey because of the judges’ decision; he would have lost the jersey because he crashed and later went off course. Things like that happen in bike races and we can’t administer them away. We can’t give greater precedence to what should have happened—or, perhaps, to what we wish had happened—than we give to what actually happened.

Writing about the 3-kilometer rule back in 2015, I predicted a change that would allow GC contenders to stay out of the way of the sprinters without costing themselves any time. That change hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it never will, but I’m not the only one thinking about it. Speaking to VeloNews after Wednesday’s stage, CCC team director Jackson Stewart said, “If the rules are going to be subjective, then we should look at every sprint stage, pick a safe point, get the GC guys there and then stop the watch.” As I noted in my blog post, there still would be a point on the road that every rider is willing to break his neck to reach, so maybe we’re only moving that point. But something’s got to change, and the first step is to enforce the existing rule, every time.