Out Of Office

Three weeks ago, when I was preparing for my latest trip to Pennsylvania and didn’t want any new complications, my primary laptop freaked out. I’m talking about the laptop I use for my job, so it has to work properly at all times. I was prepared to buy a new laptop off the shelf if I couldn’t apply a fix; there would not have been enough time for a custom order. And fortunately I found that fix. The best explanation of the problem seemed to be that some of my old software was incompatible with the new operating system, Windows 11. By installing a fresh instance of Windows, I was able to get a stable laptop again.

An old version of Microsoft Office is the most likely culprit here. I continue to run it on one of my other laptops, but I will not reinstall it on the primary machine. And this decision has led to a change in my fitness tracking.

On September 1, 2003, I began using an Excel spreadsheet to track my cycling, walking, and strength training efforts. Over many years, it grew to include body weight, body mass index, resting heart rate, blood pressure, and other metrics for health and fitness. In many ways, it grew to be needlessly complex. And now I have abandoned it. Final entry: April 18, 2025.

Sure, I could continue to use a nearly 30-year-old version of Excel on an older laptop, but I was almost happy for an excuse to stop. This year I added a couple of new tools for health and fitness metrics. Combined with the tools I already had, they make me more reliant than ever on Garmin Connect. Someday that could be a bad thing–Garmin has had a couple of noteworthy service interruptions in recent years–but for now I am very satisfied with the new tools.

Just what are those new tools? I mentioned them last July, and earlier this year I took the plunge: I now have Garmin’s scale and blood pressure monitor. They weren’t cheap and it might be hard to argue that they offer more accurate data than the devices they replaced, but their WiFi connectivity and their native compatibility with Garmin Connect were impossible for me to resist. When I take a reading, it shows up instantly on the website, and my Garmin cycling computer and my Garmin sports watch always know my current weight. I may have bought only convenience, but I’m OK with that. I like having everything in one place with no duplication of effort in data entry. And ease of use makes me more likely to be consistent with data collection, which I could not claim to be before.

Back To Baggies (Sometimes)

My first cycling shorts were baggies. Those were the days of riding around town just for a little exercise. I didn’t even think of myself as a cyclist yet; I simply wanted a chamois to provide more comfort than I could get from casual cargo shorts.

Then came my first road bike, and with it came my first Lycra cycling shorts. A little while later, I discovered the benefits of bibs. And bibs will remain my shorts of choice when I’m on the open road, but I’m going back to baggies for some of my easier rides around town or on recreation trails.

I found a killer deal on Endura’s Hummvee II baggies last month. They performed well on today’s maiden voyage, an easy 10 miles. I’m in eastern Pennsylvania once again, visiting my mother and planning to do some longer rec trail rides in this area.

Going back to baggies is something of a psychology hack. I have been one of those guys whose “easy” rides have suffered from intensity creep. Zone 2 isn’t supposed to drift into Zone 3, as mine almost inevitably do. When I do base training on a rec trail this year, I’m going to leave the skin-tight team kit at home. Wearing baggies will signal to my sometimes too competitive brain that such rides are meant to be completed with less intensity. And I’m not just hacking myself; I’m hacking you too. When you see me in baggies, you’ll know I’m out for some fat-burning, mitochondria-building Zone 2 time.

Images Of Cheesehead Roubaix XIV

Approximately 150 riders turned out this morning for Cheesehead Roubaix XIV. Skies were overcast as the ride began from Fireman's Park in Newburg, but the sun started to peek through the clouds by the time the riders reached the mid-ride rest stop in Belgium. By the end of the ride, the sun was shining strongly and the temperature had climbed into the mid-50s. A good time, I think, was had by all the participants.

A couple of strong groups went off the front of the pack in the early moments of the ride. Things were already broken up by the time this group hit the first gravel sector, St. Augustine–Blue Goose:

Team Pedal Moraine sponsored the rest stop. Here is TPM's Steve Jeske preparing food for the riders:

The first group to reach the rest stop included some real hard chargers! They would go on to finish the 63-mile ride in just 3 hours:

A tailwind made Willow Valley Road a very fast gravel sector today:

Team Wheel & Sprocket came out in force:

Thanks to everyone who came out today and contributed to another successful Cheesehead Roubaix! And thanks for your generosity: between cash donations and post-ride concessions, we raised $1,531 for the Newburg Fire Department!

The 2025 Wisconsin Cyclocross Calendar

Is This The End For WiSport?

Things are looking grim for WiSport, Wisconsin’s non-USA Cycling organization for road racing. This email hit my inbox today:

Not too many years ago, WiSport could boast a very full schedule of road races and time trials … more of both, in fact, than were held in the criterium-heavy Wisconsin Cycling Association series. My very first bike race was a WiSport road race in Omro in 2006, and I did a handful of others over the years when the organization still had a presence in southeastern Wisconsin. Recent seasons have been dominated by races in corners of the state that are too far from me to be appealing. Washburn, for example, is almost 400 miles from home.

At the height of its popularity, WiSport could draw hundreds of racers to remote locations like Washburn, Grand View, and Park Falls. There was a strong sense of community, fueled in no small part by a prevailing anti-USA Cycling sentiment. Now, it looks like the game is up, and that’s a shame.

In With The New Fane Mountain Bike Association

In the last 5 years, riders in our area have witnessed the creation of brand-new mountain bike trail systems at Heritage Trails County Park near Slinger and at Regner Park in West Bend. They also have seen the construction of new features to complement the existing trails at Glacial Blue Hills Recreation Area in West Bend. And everybody loves new. New is exciting. New offers the undeniable appeal of making a reality from what had been only a dream.

Fortunately, the mountain bike trail system at New Fane—not so new anymore—has not been forgotten. In late 2024, a nonprofit group of volunteers was formed for the express purpose of maintaining, enhancing, and promoting the New Fane trails. Co-founded by Washington County residents Steve Schoen and Kayla Weiss, the New Fane Mountain Bike Association has a list of initiatives that includes:

• Addressing drainage issues and adding dirt where needed to help control erosion
• Splitting the entrance to create separate entrances and exits to/from the trails
• Adding a bike repair station
• Keeping plant overgrowth under control

Trail work at New Fane means coordination with the landlord: the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“We have a strong partnership with the DNR and work closely with them,” Weiss says. “We have a recreational land use agreement in place with the DNR that was approved on February 19, 2025. This document outlines which projects we can move forward with and which ideas will need to be reviewed during the upcoming master planning process. We keep in touch with them on a regular basis.”

The organization’s agreement with the DNR allowed for mechanical grooming of the trails when they were covered by snow this winter, a big benefit for the fat bike community. Now it’s time to think spring: NFMBA will perform trail cleanup next Saturday, April 5, from 9 a.m. until 12 p.m.

Click here to indicate “Going” on the Facebook event page.

“The best way to get involved is to visit our website and fill out a volunteer form or email us,” Weiss says. “We’re a new organization, and we’re doing about as much as we can handle right now. We’d love to have more folks join us in areas they’re passionate about. For example, if you enjoy planning events, we’d be happy to give you the reins.”

You can follow NFMBA on Facebook and Instagram.

Live Racing On YouTube

We probably need a new definition of television. We already accept that “phone” now means a pocket-sized mobile computer. A modern TV is really a computer too. And if your TVs are like mine, then they have apps just like a modern phone. YouTube, for example, is literally built into all of my TVs. That’s convenient when I want to watch a bike race. These days, almost all of the races I watch are on YouTube. I miss the days of RedBull.tv and Versus, and I certainly don’t watch as much bike racing as I used to, but YouTube provides more options than you might expect.

The Absa Cape Epic concluded early on Sunday in South Africa. Thanks to YouTube, I watched all eight days of the mountain bike stage race. The broadcast went on for hours each day and it didn’t always have my undivided attention, but it was strangely comforting in its ubiquity. I could leave it for a while, then come back later, treating it much like I used to treat multi-hour Tour de France stages during the good ol’ days of OLN and Versus.

While the Absa Cape Epic was the premier mountain bike race during the last week, it wasn’t the only mountain bike race. The US Pro Cup was in Fayetteville AR for a very full schedule of cross-country Olympic and short track events, all of which aired live on YouTube. That series doesn’t have the star power of the UCI World Cup, but it’s worth watching if you’re a fan of that style of racing. And just because you won’t see the top European pros, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any recognizable faces. Christopher Blevins, Kate Courtney, Gwendalyn Gibson, and Riley Amos are at or near the top of the series standings. The next US Pro Cup event is at Englewood Grass Farm in Fall River, May 2-3. That coincides with a WORS weekend, so lots of Wisconsin mountain bikers will be on hand. But if you can’t be there to cheer on the pros in person, then you can watch them on YouTube!

The UCI has its own YouTube channel, of course, and it streams many of its events across a variety of cycling disciplines. Several national federations do too. Australia’s national federation, for example, provided an astonishing 20 hours of live coverage of its juniors national track championships over the last three days. The next five days belong to the grown-ups. I’m going to continue to skip it, but maybe track cycling is your thing.

Subscribing to a bunch of YouTube channels to get your fix of live bike racing isn’t an ideal solution. But we’ve never really had a single, comprehensive source for all disciplines, either online or on linear TV. My point is that there is still live coverage to be had, for free.

Stepping Up 30K

By now everyone should have heard the warnings about prolonged sitting. The research is clear that our modern lifestyles, largely free of the manual labor that agriculture and manufacturing used to demand, have made us soft. Most jobs are desk jobs now, and all those hours of sitting need to be counterbalanced somehow to avoid negative health effects.

Standing desks and under-desk walking pads have emerged as alternatives to prolonged sitting at a traditional desk. If you feel like you have been sitting too long—and your smart watch probably has a setting that will remind you to move at certain intervals—then you can hit a button to raise your motorized desk for use while you stand. And why just stand at your desk when you can walk at it? Motorized walking pads are scaled-down treadmills that allow you to walk in place as you work.

I have a traditional desk in my home office and I don’t plan to replace it. I also don’t plan to buy a walking pad. They are inexpensive but appear to be poorly made in most cases—online reviews are generally unfavorable. But I do have a cost-free option already: pacing. Yes, pacing! Done in the company of others, it’s sure to get on everyone’s nerves. For someone like me who works exclusively from home, it’s an easy way to burn a few extra calories. Last night’s shift was especially quiet, so I made lots of laps of the home office and built my step count without neglecting my responsibility to my employer. By the end of my shift I already had surpassed 13,000 steps!

Starting the day so ambitiously put an idea into my head: why not go for Garmin Connect’s Stepping Up 30K badge today? I earned the Stepping Up 25K badge back on February 26; the 30,000 steps required for the Stepping Up 30K badge would be a new single-day record for me. So, I went for it … and I got it. I had to spend about 2.5 hours on the treadmill in the home gym later in the day, but I got it. And it kind of fried my legs. I was glad to be done.

The Stepping Up 25K and Stepping Up 30K badges seemed like improbable goals when I mentioned them last September. Now I’m wondering when I will go for Stepping Up 40K and Stepping Up 50K. One thing seems certain: I won’t try to earn those badges with only indoor activities. The tedium of today’s effort was almost too much. Nice, long, multi-hour hikes in the woods … I think that’s the right approach for those higher levels. But that also means I will need good weather, and I wonder when such long hikes will be more attractive options than long bike rides.

How Could I Not?

West Bend surpassed 60° today for the first time since November 5, the date on which I had my hip replacement surgery. It was a gorgeous afternoon that felt more like May than March. Although I had intended to confine my cycling to the turbo trainer this month, today was too nice to spend indoors. I did an easy 10 miles around town, riding outside for the first time since I crashed way back on November 4. We’re going to cool off considerably overnight and then stay in a more typical weather pattern for a few days, but there might be another outdoor ride in my plans on Friday, as temperatures are expected to rise into the 60s again. I still won’t be pushing hard. These early rides will test my new hip joint even at low intensity. I need time before I can be completely confident in it.

The 2025 Cycling Season Begins

It wasn’t much, but it was something! Today I got on the bike for the first time since I crashed and broke my leg back on November 4. Yes, that’s 17 weeks ago. And yet I felt … not terrible. I have a long way to go and today was only the first step. It was as much a test of the equipment as of myself. I spent 30 minutes on the turbo trainer in relative comfort. I need to work up to 60 minutes of riding comfortably, then I will introduce some discomfort of the sort that builds fitness. These stats won’t impress anyone:

I have transformed half of my home office into a cycling studio, and I have brought all of my sports memorabilia out of storage. I hope this combination of convenience and inspiration will lead to more enthusiasm for indoor training.