Some Notes As April 2024 Ends

I got a sunburn on Saturday at Cheesehead Roubaix … and I’m not complaining! Uncharacteristically fair weather had a big effect on the turnout. More than 100 riders started, but not all of them finished the full route. Some people found shortcuts on the return trip from Belgium or bailed out even sooner due to high winds. I don’t blame them. It was brutal! The average wind speed was above 20 mph for the entire ride, bringing unseasonable warmth from the southwest. By 4:15 p.m., West Bend hit 80° for the first time since October 24. The ride was over by then, of course. But I was never cold for a moment on this year’s Cheesehead Roubaix and I don’t know if I ever could say that before. And this year’s improved attendance resulted in a nice payday for the Newburg Fire Department: $1,809 in cash donations and post-ride concessions. Thanks to everyone for their generosity!

Cheesehead Roubaix was my first ride on my BMC road bike since October 1. Yikes! My Framed gravel bike got most of the work in the meantime. And no, it’s not ironic that I went back to the true road bike on Saturday. Cheesehead Roubaix is principally a road ride—one with a couple of hills on which the BMC was obviously the better choice—and the gravel sections aren’t so nasty that anything more than a road bike is required.

There was good news for local mountain bikers last Thursday. West Bend’s Park & Recreation Commission enthusiastically approved a plan for new trails at Regner Park. Sounds like these trails could be ready this summer! The planned course is mostly rake-and-ride, with no heavy earth moving.

There’s mixed news about my fitness as we enter May. I’m happy to say that I already have exceeded my walking mileage goal for 2024. My goal was a very modest 260 miles, the same target I missed in 2023, when I walked only 238 miles. And just to be clear, these are miles I walk for the express purpose of improving my fitness; I do not track incidental steps as I cut the grass, shop for groceries, or go about other mundanities. My personal record of 463 miles, set in 2021, is within reach. I’m at 270 miles today, more than halfway to a new PR with 8 months to go. The bad news is that I barely sleep anymore and I am 6 pounds heavier than I was at this point last year … and I was no lightweight then! I have been very inconsistent with my time on the bike this year. Ride frequency and total mileage are down slightly from last year’s pace. That needs to change immediately and I think it will, as better and more predictable weather arrives.

No CX World Cups, But …

Last week’s disappointing news from the UCI was a bitter reminder to American cyclocross fans that we love a very Euro-centric, niche sport. Having no World Cup races on this side of the Atlantic in 2024-2025 will reduce fan engagement. But today’s announcement from the USCX series takes away some of the sting. Trek has stepped up as title sponsor for the upcoming season, ensuring its Trek CXC Cup will continue as a top domestic event. So, we’ll continue to have a UCI race here in Wisconsin, and plenty of Americans and Canadians will be on hand to fight for points that will qualify them for the world championships. However, don’t expect the big European stars at these C1/C2 races, as the cost-versus-benefit equation simply won’t make sense to them.

It will be interesting to see whether the revamped USCX can grow even further in the 2025-2026 season. This year’s schedule misses some regions of the country that traditionally have supported cyclocross well. I’m thinking particularly about New England, the Ohio Valley, Colorado, and the Pacific Northwest. And then there’s Jingle Cross in Iowa, with its rich history. And would you bring back a night race in Las Vegas, even if it weren’t tied to a bicycle industry expo? CrossVegas was always a good show. Is that only because it had the star power of prominent European riders? Well, maybe, but we can’t count on that anymore. Let’s see if USCX can tell a story that keeps us wanting another chapter.

Mountain Bike Trails At Regner?

Local mountain bikers will present a proposal for new trails at Regner Park in West Bend when the Park & Recreation Commission meets at City Hall this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. CDT. The plan would create a 2.2-mile trail in the woods at the west end of the park. According to the proposal, this would be “an easy course with no high risk features” and an ideal alternative for new riders who may be unprepared for the more challenging trails of Glacial Blue Hills. The proposal is a joint effort of GEARS and the local chapter of NICA, whose middle school and high school riders need a practice area that is safe and easily supervised by their coaches. GEARS and NICA would create and maintain the trails, providing a new recreation amenity without cost to the city. (This is very similar to the idea I had for Park Site O back in 2014.) Not mentioned in the proposal, but certainly obvious to the local cycling community, is the potential for fat bikes when these trails are covered by snow. It’s easy to imagine Regner Park as an annual destination for the Hugh Jass Fat Bike Series. If your schedule allows, then come to City Hall on Thursday to support the proposal.

From Aigle, With Love (Part II)

You could see this coming last year, and here it is: the UCI Cyclocross World Cup has abandoned North America with the release of its 2024-2025 schedule. Never mind that the United States is the biggest economy in the world. Never mind that North Americans supported past World Cup events on this continent both by racing in large numbers and by attending in large numbers. Tell me again how American cyclocross is supposed to grow when we don’t have a coherent national series and all of our best riders are forced to base themselves in Europe. There will be UCI cyclocross in America this fall, but it will be the C1/C2 variety, which lacks the prestige of the World Cup series. Domestic pros will battle for points in the hope of qualifying for the world championships, where the lucky few will be crushed mercilessly by the top international pros who had the benefit of competing at the highest level all season. So much for the “internationalization of cycling” that the UCI likes to congratulate itself for promoting.

Happy 91st, Mom!

Today is my mother’s 91st birthday and I am privileged to be with her in southeastern Pennsylvania. I don’t need to remind myself how fortunate I am or what’s really important about my time here. But as a “spring training” destination for my cycling season, the Philadelphia suburbs have been a bust. Since I arrived on March 26, a typical day has been wet, windy, and 10° colder than average. Last Friday we felt an earthquake centered in New Jersey, only 42 miles away. Today we had a solar eclipse. A superstitious man would wonder whether an angry god were out to get him. Seems like wherever I go, bad conditions follow.

Things look like they are finally turning around. Yesterday and today were the first back-to-back >60° days here since March 14-15. Tomorrow will be the first 70° day here since March 15. There’s mostly 60s in the forecast for the week to come, then the promise of 70s again next week. I will try to make the most of better weather. Today’s ride was just my fifth on this visit. I have ridden only 118 miles since arriving in Pennsylvania. Yesterday’s ride was my first 2-hour ride this year. That’s not getting the job done.

Home (Gym) Away From Home (Gym)

It’s the first week of my four-week visit to Pennsylvania, and so far the weather hasn’t been appreciably better than the weather in West Bend. I’m feeling a little cheated, as far as that goes, because a combination of cold temperatures, high winds, and rain has greatly limited my time on the bike. I’ve spent more time walking, and for at least the next week I am likely to continue to walk more hours than I ride.

But the weather has been my only source of dissatisfaction. Things are going really well otherwise. I have knocked out a couple of projects at my mother’s house, I’m getting much more sleep than normal, and today I found a corner of Mom’s garage than I can use as a home gym … of sorts. Back in West Bend, my home gym includes not only free weights, but also a collection of fitness bands that connect to wall anchors at four different points. The fitness bands are my go-to tools for back and shoulder exercises. Because they are so lightweight and easy to move from place to place, I brought them with me on this visit. I purchased four heavy duty screw eyes and sunk them into an exposed 2x4 in Mom’s garage. It’s almost a perfect replica of what I have at home, and the workout I completed this afternoon felt very familiar.

I wish I would have thought of this last year, when I was here for a total of 16 weeks and neglected my upper body the entire time! Now I can bring my fitness bands whenever I visit and keep up with a big component of my strength training program.

The Riverfront Parkway’s New Relevance

I made a blog post called “The Split Personality Of The Riverfront Parkway” back in 2016 and, for the most part, my observations still hold up. The parkway is wildly inconsistent in its surface material, its maintenance, and its utility from one section to the next. Most of the parkway is just as it was 8 years ago. The section that passes through downtown West Bend, however, is utterly transformed. In recent years, the city has realized that people like to be close to water … even something so plain as the very narrow, very shallow Milwaukee River. In 2023, the city completed a new “riverwalk” on the west side of the river. It’s not just a complement to the multi-use paths on the east side. In some respects, it’s better.

On the east side of the river, you can take the parkway past the Museum of Wisconsin Art up to Rivershores. You can cover the same ground on the Eisenbahn State Trail. Either way, you have to cross busy Washington Street. The new riverwalk lets you pass under the street, as I have been doing on recent rides like today’s:

And, just as significantly, the new riverwalk connects more things. Some downtown businesses are already pivoting toward the riverwalk, treating the back door as a second front door. West Bend’s newly reconstructed Main Street boasts many improvements, but more parking isn’t one of them. As more people discover the riverwalk, parking on the east side and then walking to downtown businesses should be more common. Outdoor dining will become more common too, not just because of the river, but also because we like to watch people.

I still think very few people will travel the parkway from end to end, and that’s OK. The new riverwalk would be an asset to West Bend even if didn’t connect to anything to the north or south. In the past 10 years we have witnessed the construction of hundreds of new residential units downtown, and more are coming. We’re moving toward a very dense urban core that can thrive because of our recent investment in bike- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

2024 Kenosha Velodrome Racing Schedule

Wrapping Up February 2024

Does anyone really like leap years? In the Southern Hemisphere, I guess it’s a good deal to have an extra day in February—it was sunny and 77° in Johannesburg today, if you were wondering. Here in the north, February 29 is usually just another deep winter day. We did better than average this time, so I won’t complain. And taking stock of the entire month, February 2024 wasn’t too bad.

Tuesday was the first 60° day in West Bend since November 16 … and then it turned into the first 70° day since October 27! Unreal. We peaked at 71° early Tuesday afternoon, obliterating the old record high of 52° from 1976 and our 36° average high for February 27. Then the wind shifted to the northwest, and taking wind chill into account, we dropped all the way to 1° in only 18 hours. We also picked up a trace amount of snow. On Tuesday afternoon I applied sunscreen and rode outside in shorts for the first time in months. By Wednesday afternoon I didn’t even want to walk to the curb to pick up my mail.

March is expected to begin with temperatures in the low 50s to low 60s, which is good enough to get me back out on the bike. I rode outside on three occasions in February, matching last year’s total. Those 63 miles won’t impress anyone, though, and I’m hoping for better things in March. Last year, March was a bit of a disaster: I rode only six times for a total of 141 miles. I should be able to beat that, especially as I will spend the last week of March in southeastern Pennsylvania, where the temperature historically is 10° warmer on average. I’m planning a three-week stay in Pennsylvania. If the weather is good, then that visit should be something of a training camp for me.

Training in February mostly consisted of upper body strength workouts and treadmill walks. I shattered my old record of 74.08 miles of walking for fitness, set in September 2021. In February, I walked exactly 100 miles. Garmin Connect tells me that February also was my best ever month for steps—203,115 of them—but I don’t know what the old record was. And 203,115 is still short of the 10,000 steps per day ideal that so many fitness experts recommend. I needed almost 29 hours to get my 203,115 steps, which comes out to almost 60 minutes per day. I don’t think I want to devote more time than that to walking. But the new treadmill certainly has been a great addition to the home gym. It’s so much easier to do an indoor walk than to bundle up against the cold. With better weather I will return to hikes and ruck marches, but the treadmill has been the solution for walking this winter.

February was a surprisingly good month for Garmin Connect badges. I earned 12 of them, as shown above. I credit the treadmill for almost all of those achievements and for keeping my weight stable throughout the month. I seem to have reached equilibrium in the calories in / calories out calculation. I’m still far heavier than I would like to be, but at least things didn’t get worse this month.

The 2024 ToAD Schedule