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.

Another One Lights The Dusk

On Tuesday, training partner Jeff Wren and I went down to Cedarburg to watch some Tour of America’s Dairyland action. We didn’t get back to West Bend until 9 p.m.  But it was a gorgeous evening and neither of us had ridden earlier in the day, so we fired up our bike lights and hit the Eisenbahn State Trail. I knocked out 20 miles in 1:16:36, a 15.7 mph average. That’s alright under the circumstances. (Jeff’s ride was a little shorter. I started from my house on the south side of town; he started from Barton. Downtown Kewaskum was our turnaround point.) I could have been persuaded to stay out much longer if not for my work schedule. I had to log in from my home office by 11 p.m.  Doing a ride so late in the day was taking a chance. Something as simple as a flat tire might have made me late for work.

No misfortune found me, but I did have only minimal performance from my headlight for the last couple of miles. That was my fault: the light wasn’t fully charged when I started. I use a 700-lumen Bontrager Ion. It serves not only as a great bike light, but also as a powerful and compact flashlight. I travel with it, carry it on nighttime walks/hikes, use it in tight spots while performing home maintenance or auto repairs … it’s super handy. And I always have appreciated that it recharges via USB. I can recharge it in the car or by attaching it to a laptop or by plugging it into a wall outlet. Very versatile. Very convenient.

So, I bought another one! Trek has them for just $49.99 right now. That’s 50% off and it’s a steal. If you think that’s still a lot of money for a bike light, then you’re underestimating the value of never having to replace batteries. I think my first Ion was about $80, discounted, in 2015 and it’s still going strong. Even at that higher price, it has paid for itself. But it can’t back itself up, and recharging takes about 5 hours. I’m going to like having a second one. These lights are so compact that it will be no hassle to take both on a nighttime ride.

Some night when I don’t have to work, maybe I’ll take the Eisenbahn all the way to Eden and back. The Ion’s runtime at maximum power is a little more than 1.5 hours, and a full-distance Eisenbahn ride takes me about 3 hours. The math works, but to be safe I probably should start while there’s still some daylight left, then deploy the first Ion when I arrive in Kewaskum at about 30 minutes elapsed. The more I think about that ride, the more I want to do it. I will watch the forecast for a warm, dry Thursday or Friday.

About That West Bend Bike Route …

This spring, the City of West Bend quietly dismantled its bike route. The signs are down. The sharrows will wear away or be paved over. I think there’s a good chance you didn’t notice. I think there’s a good chance you don’t care. And I don’t care as much as you might expect, though I was involved in the design of the route. I never believed it would lead to an increase in ridership. I wanted only to give Bike Friendly West Bend the best opportunity to succeed. By the time I was drafted into that advocacy group by Craig Hoeppner, the city’s parks director until 2019, it was clear that BFWB would never get what it really wanted. Physically separated infrastructure is the gold standard of bike routes, and in fiscally conservative West Bend that simply was not a realistic goal. So, from the outset I was working on a consolation prize.

Known to some as the “orange loop,” the route was never intended to stand alone. BFWB envisioned four interconnected loops to create a network throughout the city. We gave them color-coded names to make them easy to discuss as we pored over the map of our future system. It looked like a big city transit map with routes that connected schools, parks, and other places of interest by utilizing low-traffic residential streets and the Eisenbahn State Trail. Ultimately, it was too ambitious for West Bend’s elected officials, who refused even to vote on the proposal in 2017. It was too ambitious even though it could be established with just signs and paint.

In 2021, the orange loop was implemented by itself. It was a mostly east-west route to complement the mostly north-south Eisenbahn State Trail. We will never know whether the original concept would have had more success. Would ridership have been more robust if more neighborhoods had been linked together? I doubt it. The orange loop and the others that might have followed all suffered from an absence of physically separated infrastructure. Prospective riders were not convinced that signs and sharrows provided the safety they needed.

City staffers weren’t sold on the safety of the route either. They insisted on some alterations to the orange loop that I thought made the finished product less effective and, oddly, less safe. For example, the route ran on the sidewalk between the Eisenbahn State Trail and Eastern Avenue instead of on Decorah Road itself. But any cop in town will tell you that most car-versus-bike collisions in West Bend occur in crosswalks as riders come off the sidewalk and into the path of motorists. Between Eastern Avenue and Sheridan Drive, the route had to run on Redwood Street, one block north of Decorah. By demanding that the route avoid Decorah, the city missed an opportunity for traffic calming on the north side of the busy high school campus. If the route had served the campus as the original design intended, would more students have viewed it as a transportation option?

By late 2020, Bike Friendly West Bend was so desperate to implement a bike route that it accepted all of the compromises to its original plan. And the voices within BFWB who believed the tired mantra, “If you build it, they will come,” were wonderfully naïve. There was a presumption of demand for cycling infrastructure that far exceeded actual demand. The success of the Eisenbahn State Trail as a destination for recreational riders was erroneously taken to forecast success for on-street bike routes. But the prospect of sharing even low-speed, low-volume residential streets is now such a horror for the average person that the BFWB plan probably was doomed from the start.

This morning I talked to Jay Shambeau, the city administrator, about the bike route’s past and present. I was surprised to learn that there may still be a future for it. Dismantling the route was motivated largely by poor road surface conditions, especially along Kilbourn Avenue, where some of the fading sharrows are painted on broken asphalt. Reconstructing Kilbourn is one of the city’s most immediate priorities. We could see the bike route return after reconstruction is complete. The signs haven’t been discarded, just stored. But the most important sign has to come from you. If you want a bike route in West Bend, then you have to let City Hall know.

Never Will I Ever, Vol. 2

It’s time for another round of things about cycling that either don’t appeal to me or that I find ridiculous or distasteful. Let’s start off gently with something that simply doesn’t appeal to me. Never Will I Ever …

Go Downhill Racing

Despite having had some success as a cross-country mountain bike racer, I am not a great technical rider on singletrack. Downhill racing is so far beyond my skill level that I would never consider it for a moment. But it does look cool! I’ve watched my fair share of downhill racing, especially when it was featured on Red Bull.tv.

Compete For Strava Segments

This was a stupid idea even before e-bikes flooded the market, so it’s a really stupid idea now. If you want to compete against your own times, then fine. If you want to compete against other people, then get together with them in the same place at the same time. You’re lying to yourself if you think people aren’t cheating on Strava. Motor doping is real.

Count Trainer Miles The Same As Outdoor Miles

Either the bike moved from one place to another or it didn’t. Time spent on stationary riding, no matter how closely it mimics outdoor riding, is just time. (For what it’s worth, I do count my treadmill miles the same as outdoor walking miles. I guess the difference is that treadmill walking still requires balance and is almost indistinguishable mechanically from outdoor walking.)

Install White Handlebar Tape

White handlebar tape is only for professional riders whose team mechanics wrap their bars with new tape before every race. They have money to burn. I don’t. You probably don’t either. Keep your bike looking clean, not like a cigarette butt on wheels.

Ride With A Mirror

If you’re the sort of person who gets startled by every passing vehicle, then by all means get yourself a mirror. I don’t have one and I don’t want one. I realize that I am sharing the road and that periodically I will be overtaken. I always ride as far to the right as I can; it’s the responsibility of drivers to pass me safely. The idea that a glance in the mirror would tell me I am about to be rear-ended and that I then would have time to make an evasive maneuver is laughable. Riding on open roads is a calculated risk, and mirrors don’t change the math.

Buy A Jersey With A Short Zipper

I demand full-length zippers on my jerseys. Full-zip jerseys are easier to put on and so much easier to take off when they’re wet with perspiration and sticking to your back like fly paper. And if you crash, then you’ll appreciate being able to slip out of your jersey instead of having it unceremoniously and expensively cut off at the hospital. I had a couple of jerseys with short zippers when I was a new cyclist, so I guess this one is really a Never Will I Ever Again.

Ride In A Sleeveless Jersey

Here’s another Never Will I Ever Again, because back in 2007 I actually wore a sleeveless jersey on the MS 150 Best Dam Bike Tour. This was not a Team Pedal Moraine thing; I was riding with a team put together expressly for that tour. When it was time to distribute the jerseys, the only one that would fit me was sleeveless. I didn’t feel good about it, but I wore the jersey in the spirit of team unity. I looked like the world’s ugliest female triathlete.

Ride With No Jersey At All

Riding with no jersey/shirt is a bad look. I’m a cyclist, not a 10-year-old boy on his way to the swimming pond. I don’t see a lot of this, but when I do it’s usually a middle-aged guy whose physique doesn’t merit any kind of public display. He probably doesn’t consider himself a “cyclist” but probably does consider himself a man whose driver’s license is suspended because of his latest DUI.

Not Everyone Hates Us ...

Here's proof that not everyone hates cyclists! You can find this little slice of heaven on Wausaukee Road south of Newburg, along the Cheesehead Roubaix route.

Finishing 2024's First 1,000 Miles In Style

Here are some of the guys, relaxing for a few minutes at the mid-ride snack stop.

There was a good turnout for this evening’s Twilight Zone-2 Ride from downtown West Bend to Campbellsport and back on the Eisenbahn State Trail. It was an intentionally easy effort with an emphasis on camaraderie, not competition. But stats are stats! This was the ride that pushed me past 1,000 miles, year-to-date, and every mile counts.

In recent weeks I haven’t had much to say about my own cycling achievements or ambitions. This year is not progressing as I had hoped. I can blame the weather even more than I ordinarily would. Southeastern Wisconsin is experiencing one of the wettest springs in its history. May was especially disappointing. Wednesday, Thursday, and today constitute the only 3-day rainless stretch we had all month. And where was the warmth? At this time of year, we should be hitting 70° routinely, but today was the first time we did so since last Saturday.

For me, inconsistent weather means inconsistent training. If I had any real competition goals, then I would be much better off riding indoors. I rode only 16 times this month. I feel like half of May was wasted, and that’s not a good feeling. I also feel like my goal of 100,000 lifetime miles by the end of the 2025 season is slipping away. Today I surpassed 91,000 lifetime miles. It will take a big effort to reach 95,000 by the end of the year, then another big effort to find the last 5,000 miles in 2025. I finished 2023 with only 4,423 miles. At the end of May 2023, I was sitting on 1,085. For 2024, I’m at 1,019, and the best indication that I still have a chance at 5,000 this year is how poor my June 2023 was! I rode only 483 miles. Surely, I will beat that total this year. I might even double it. Right?

Return To The Twilight Zone

Let's do this again! I introduced this ride last year and it was a lot of fun. We'll start at the downtown West Bend train depot and take 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.

The 2024 WCA Cyclocross Calendar

Trail Building At Regner Park

We had a good crew this evening at Regner Park as work continued on new mountain bike trails. I missed Monday’s session, but today I enjoyed two hours in the woods at the west side of the park. Much of the trail will be rake-and-ride; there will be very little earth to move and very little vegetation to cut. Much of my job today was garbage collection and garlic mustard eradication. Reducing the foothold of invasive species was a target of opportunity as we progressed through the undergrowth.

This will be a 2.2-mile loop when it’s done. And the trails will be beginner friendly: a training course for the NICA kids and a nice place just to ride without any features that demand advanced skills. I'm looking forward to riding here later this summer when the loop is complete.