95,000 Lifetime Miles

I "created" this AI image in the Pointillist style with exactly 95,000 dots ... I think. Not gonna count 'em. 

For a long time, I targeted 2025 as the season in which I would hit 100,000 lifetime miles. I define “lifetime miles” as miles since I became a serious cyclist. That didn’t happen until 2004. Lifetime–just “lifetime” now, not lifetime miles–goes back to 1965. I thought there would be something poetic in reaching 100,000 miles in the same year that I reached my 60th birthday. But I won’t reach 100,000 miles this year.

Coming up short has nothing to do with the injury that ended my 2024 season. My crash in November probably didn’t cost me more than a couple of hundred miles. The truth is that I had fallen off the pace already. In this post from September 2, I acknowledged that I wasn’t going to reach 100,000 miles on my preferred schedule.

I hit 90,000 lifetime miles on December 24, 2023.

Today, I hit 95,000 lifetime miles. If I reach this year’s mileage goal, 3,161, then next season another 3,160 will get me to 100,000 lifetime miles. I can live with that. It’s still going to be a significant accomplishment.

Changes Coming To Rusco Drive In 2026?

Many riders know Rusco Drive as the location of the southern terminus of the Eisenbahn State Trail. There’s a convenient trailhead that includes parking, a portable toilet, and a bike maintenance station with tools and a tire pump. It’s an important location not merely for trail-only users, but also for roadies who are heading out to or returning from a ride in the country. Sometime in 2026, significant changes could be coming to Rusco Drive, and it’s not clear how they will affect cyclists.

The City of West Bend is considering a plan that would incorporate land south of Rusco Drive for both industrial and residential use. This necessarily would increase motor vehicle traffic in the area. That might not affect trail-only users at all, as they either are driving to the trailhead or are using it as a turnaround point after starting their ride farther north. Roadies likely will see a difference. Having more vehicles on Rusco means more potential conflicts between South Main Street to the west and South River Road to the east. The city seems to be convinced that more traffic on Rusco could be a problem–whether the city is considering the impact specifically on cyclists is doubtful–so, within the city’s plan is the possibility of a new roundabout at Rusco and River.

Drivers hate roundabouts because they fundamentally misunderstand them. All they know is that they now have to slow down where they didn’t have to slow down before. It doesn’t occur to them that the alternative is to stop where they didn’t have to stop before. On River Road today, there’s a roundabout at County Highway NN and a roundabout at Paradise Drive, but no traffic controls in the intervening 2 miles. Rusco Drive is smack in the middle, and traffic on River Road flies through that intersection while traffic on Rusco waits at a two-way stop. A roundabout should make crossing River Road safer and easier for everyone, including cyclists.

It’s important to remember that planning isn’t construction and timelines are just a guess. Bad weather, problems with funding, problems with permits, problems with insurance, problems with staffing … any number of things can cause delays or outright abandonment of a big infrastructure project. I do like this one, though, as I think the prospect of a roundabout at Rusco and River benefits cyclists more than extra traffic on Rusco hurts them.

The Proof Is In The Pedaling

This season I have really embraced the Zone 2 mindset. In a nutshell, that training philosophy tells me to spend most of my ride time at a moderately low level of intensity to maximize fat oxidation and to increase mitochondrial density. Why I need to maximize fat oxidation should be obvious even to the least critical observer, and I dropped 6.2 pounds in June, so the plan seems to be working. Whether I increased mitochondrial density last month is less certain–I suppose I would have needed sophisticated lab tests at the beginning and end of the month to know for sure–but I feel like I must have, because I followed the advice of the experts. And increased mitochondrial density means increased energy capacity at the cellular level. If you could get it from a pill, then you would swallow the whole bottle.

But riding hour after hour in Zone 2 is an ego check. You know you could go faster and sometimes you would like for other people to know that too. The joke is on you, though, if you give in to pride. When you leave Zone 2, even briefly, it takes a while for your body to go back into maximum fat oxidation mode. During that interval, your heart rate says Zone 2 but your muscles say it’s still time to dip into their glycogen stores.

If you follow my workouts on Garmin Connect, then you know I have been doing a lot of slow rides on the Eisenbahn State Trail. Statistically, these rides have been unimpressive: 90 to 120 minutes at 13-14 mph. On Tuesday, when I took my road bike out for the first time this year, it was something of a relief to find that I could ride faster.

A much bigger test came earlier today: the Thursday evening West Bend group ride. I had not done one since last year, and I didn’t know how well I was going to perform. But on familiar roads and in familiar company–there were 10 of us–I did my fastest ride since August 29, 2024. Uncoincidentally, that also was a Thursday evening West Bend group ride. Ego checks are fine, even essential, when the training plan calls for Zone 2. But ego was prominent this evening and I succeeded in not looking like a schmuck. I was grateful for the compliments of friends with whom I had not ridden since before my hip replacement surgery in November. I didn’t need special accommodations; I was just one of the guys, which is exactly what I wanted to be.

So, am I all the way back to pre-injury form? I don’t know, but my trajectory has been on a steady upward swing since the beginning of June.

Finally: A Post-Crash Test On The BMC

I rode 26 miles on my BMC today. I felt great and the bike did too. In myself I had some confidence as the ride began, but in the BMC my confidence was well below normal. That’s because I had not ridden the bike since I crashed on it in November. I didn’t really start riding again until I went to Pennsylvania in May, and on that trip I took only my Framed gravel bike. After returning to Wisconsin, I just kept riding the Framed … not because it’s a better bike, but because it’s better suited to the Eisenbahn State Trail, where I have been doing so much Zone 2 training.

But, yeah, today is July 1. It’s the first day of a new month. It’s the first day of the second half of 2025. It feels like a good time to do something different, even if that means returning to something familiar that I just had not done in a while.

Confidence in both man and machine is now high. Today’s ride was, by a comfortable margin, my fastest ride so far this season. Improving fitness accounts for some of that. Choosing a 100% paved route instead of one that includes a gravel trail accounts for some more. But the biggest factor today was the massive efficiency boost of the BMC. The Framed is a good bike, but compared to the BMC it feels like it’s towing something. With today’s shakedown ride completed successfully, there’s more open road riding in my immediate future.

Halftime 2025

No matter how you slice it, my cycling season is off to a slow start.

Today I surpassed my goal of 550 cycling miles in June. This was my first 500-mile month since last September. You now have to go back to last July to find a month with more miles (675). In the week that ended on Sunday, I rode 170 miles in 12 hours, my highest totals this year. Things are trending up for me, and they must continue to trend up: I am far behind my usual pace at the midpoint of the season.

My mileage total, year-to-date, is only 894. When I hit 1,000 later this week, it will be the latest date on which I have reached that target since 2004, my very first season. I didn’t get to 1,000 until September 4 that year.

Here at the midpoint of the season, I have only a few noteworthy fitness accomplishments. Perhaps the most noteworthy is that I have been active every day so far this year. I have always done at least a walk that was purely for fitness. On some days, I have done multiple walks. As the weather has improved, I have done walks and bike rides on the same day. This won’t be a record year for cycling miles–I may even miss my goal of 3,161–but today I set a new personal record for walking miles, 555, with half a year still to come!

Heating Up

Regner Park was a popular place to cool off this afternoon.

Saturday was West Bend’s first 90° day since August 26, 2024. It was an unapologetic, swaggering, “here I am in all my magnificence” summer day fit for hamburgers, ice cream, and listening to the Allman Brothers Band. It was a rare occasion on which my neighbors with swimming pools didn’t look like complete idiots. It was my kind of day: the kind of day that the true Wisconsinites hate to the very bottoms of their souls.

And Saturday was only the beginning of our three-day heat wave. Late on Sunday night, my oldest kid and his cat came to visit, as the air conditioning in their Milwaukee apartment had failed, making sleep impossible. Today was hot and windy again until rain broke the spell in the evening. I rode my bike on each of those days, troubled less by the heat than by the high winds. It never really gets hot here unless there’s a howling wind from the south.

Now, even I admit that 90-something should be hot enough. But if the temperatures are going to reach the mid-90s anyway, then I wouldn’t mind just a little more. We haven’t had a 100° day since July 4, 2012, and I have been sitting on this Garmin Connect goal for too long:

You will notice that I have already earned the companion Frosty badge. No shortage of opportunities there. But it may be a while before we get so close to 100° again. Good weather last week contributed to my most productive week on the bike so far this year: 145 miles in 10:20 of ride time. That’s still not good enough, obviously, but things are moving in the right direction. And my weight is dropping: -5.5 pounds since June 1. An emphasis on Zone 2 riding, better diet, and more productive sleep seems to be working.

Reaching My 2025 Walking Goal

I reached my 2025 walking goal today: 500 miles. I probably should have been more ambitious. My total last year was 554 miles, a personal record. So, with 205 days remaining this year, I need only 55 more miles for a new PR. I might have it by the end of June, especially if we continue to have cool, wet weather that limits my time on the bike. I’m looking forward to riding tomorrow and Wednesday, but when it’s raining and the temperature is struggling just to reach 60° later this week, I’ll be back on the treadmill.