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.

Garmin Connect Level 6

When I reached Garmin Connect Level 5 late last March, I wrote that reaching Level 6 could take years. I wasn’t counting on all the points I could pick up by tracking my steps. Just 11 months later, here I am at Level 6! I completed Level 5 in style on Wednesday by recording my highest single-day step count ever, 25,386, which earned me this badge and the last 2 points that I needed:

Those are probably my last points in February. I expect to complete the 8-point 60-Day Goal Getter challenge this Sunday, March 2, to get the new month off to a good start. That’s nice, but I will be working on Level 6 for a long time to come. Level 7 is a staggering 640 points away! That’s more than all of the points I have accumulated since I became a Garmin user way back on March 29, 2013. In a way this feels like starting over … and most of the easily earned badges are gone. I will rely on repeatable challenges and the occasional blowout effort.

My bigger objective in March is to get back on the bike. It will be all indoor work at first. There are some indoor cycling challenges on Garmin Connect, but none of them look very appealing at the moment. I want to prove to myself that I can tolerate 1 hour in the saddle before I commit to the 2-4 hours needed to satisfy Garmin.

The 2025 Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Series

On Tuesday, USA Cycling announced the dates and locations of the 2025 Cross-Country Mountain Bike National Series, and Wisconsin features prominently in those plans:

The National Series will share its weekends in May and August with the Wisconsin Off-Road Series, giving our elite racers opportunities to test themselves against the best racers in America ... and giving everyone else opportunities to be fans. It's a little strange to see a national series with no races in the Pacific Northwest or in the heavily populated northeast, but this certainly is a big honor for Wisconsin.

Wrapping Up January 2025

Garmin Connect rewarded me with 15 badges and 25 points.

How was your January? If you made any resolutions for the new year, then how are those going? I didn’t make any resolutions—I never do—and yet I have developed healthy new habits and reinforced a few others that began to emerge organically back in December. This month I walked on the treadmill for at least 1 hour every day, finishing the first 31 days of 2025 with 34:25 of fitness walking and covering the equivalent of 104 miles. Along the way, I have become one of those 10,000 steps a day people: today was my 25th consecutive day above that popular threshold. On a typical day, most of my steps are coming from my treadmill walk, but I am consciously increasing my step count off the treadmill too. Working from home makes it too easy to sit for several hours at a time. That always has been bad for me, and it became very obviously bad after my hip replacement surgery. Since early December, I have been much more deliberate about getting up periodically to take a couple of laps of the house to avoid stiffness and soreness. These incidental steps add up more quickly than you might think, and they contributed significantly to some of the Garmin Connect badges I earned this month.

I made dietary changes in January too, but so far the combination of more walking and less junk food has not moved the bathroom scale. While that is disappointing, I don’t consider January to be a lost month. My treadmill workouts have returned to almost a pre-injury level of effort. Rehab has gone well. As February begins, I will mix things up to get off the current plateau and reach for something higher. I plan to incorporate high-incline treadmill workouts again. I got a taste of those in October, but only for a couple of weeks before the bike crash that sent me to the operating room. And, weather permitting, some outdoor walks would be good for me, particularly if I take my weighted rucksack.

I’m still taking a long view of cycling-specific training. I plan to resume turbo trainer workouts at the beginning of March and to continue with them until the end of April. I expect to spend the entire month of May in Pennsylvania, where I should be able to rack up several hundred miles of outdoor riding. If I race at all in 2025, then it probably won’t be until the cyclocross season begins. I won’t be fit when spring returns to Wisconsin—I may not be fit when summer returns—but I don’t need to be.

In January, I hosted the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Cycling Association and I completed some of the preliminaries for this year’s Cheesehead Roubaix, but mostly I worked, I walked, I watched hockey games on TV, and I read. A little ashamed to have read only 10 books last year, I have begun 2025 by reading 5 novels before February 1. I’m progressing nicely through No. 6 already, but don’t expect that pace to last the whole year!