2015 WCA Cyclocross Schedule

The Wisconsin Cycling Association announced its 2015 cyclocross schedule today. I got what I really wanted and what I earnestly felt was best for the series: a more compact season that will conclude in November, not mid-December. There are a couple of surprises, but overall the schedule looks much like I thought it would.

Smokin’

A controlled burn along the Eisenbahn State Trail this afternoon in Fond du Lac County.

I am starting to get the “switched on” feeling that always seems to coincide with the completion of the first 1,000 miles of each new season. I surpassed 1,000 miles on Saturday. And while that ride was not especially fast overall, I felt very good on the climbs and could sense that “form” was returning.

Today on the flat Eisenbahn State Trail, I established a new personal record of 48:25 over the 15.6 miles from Campbellsport to my house. The old record—set on September 1, 2013—was 50:47, so that’s a massive improvement. I averaged 19.33 mph on my cyclocross bike over a mostly gravel trail.

Improving my time to Campbellsport is a task for another day. My PR is 53:00, set on August 4, 2012. That’s a 17.66 mph average … not bad when you consider the clock starts when I take the first pedal stroke out of my garage, with no warmup. Today’s ride to Campbellsport was a leisurely 1 hour flat, including the handful of seconds it took for me to snap the picture you see above. The picture below kind of speaks for itself:

I do this "time trial" several times each year, and I can't remember any previous occasion on which I made such a big jump in just 4 weeks. That's a good sign.

A Grand In Hand

Today’s road ride put me over 1,000 miles for the year. April 11 is now the earliest date on which I have hit that milestone. Here’s the breakdown going back to 2004, my first year as a serious cyclist:

2015 April 11
2014 May 08
2013 May 13
2012 April 14
2011 May 16
2010 April 29
2009 May 12
2008 May 22
2007 May 28
2006 June 14
2005 June 22
2004 Sep. 04

I didn’t keep statistics in 2003, but I know I didn’t reach 1,000 miles that year. I rode just a couple of hours per week from spring until early autumn, using the bike only as an exercise machine to make my legs strong for softball. Even 2004 is a statistical outlier in many respects. I finished that year with just 1,454 miles. At the time, that number represented a major shift in my commitment to cycling, but it was quickly surpassed.

My Back Pages

Don’t let the hairline fool you: I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now.

For most Major League Baseball teams, yesterday was Opening Day. That’s always a fun occasion and a time to be hopeful, even if your team comes up short. Nobody ever goes 162-0.

I am hopeful too: not just about a baseball season in which my Pittsburgh Pirates have a legitimate chance to win their first division title since 1992, but also that my employment prospects are improving. I have been looking for a new job for almost three months. Thanks to a generous severance package from my last employer, I haven’t had to take just any job. Everything for which I have applied has been something I could imagine myself doing with satisfaction for years to come. My most recent job was in information technology, but I wasn’t always an IT pro and I might be something completely different in the future.

As a high school student, I wanted to be a journalist. Working part-time for the Racine Journal Times seemed liked a promising start. For the first two years I worked the telephones in the sports department, edited wire copy from the Associated Press, and learned good page design. My bosses thought I was too young to be taken seriously out in the field.

Things changed in 1984 when the Minnesota Twins moved one of their minor league franchises to Kenosha. Playing in the Midwest League, the Kenosha Twins would compete against affiliates of the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox, each of which had a strong following in Racine. We couldn’t ignore the Kenosha Twins, but we couldn’t afford to cover every game. As a compromise, we set up a Sunday feature called Minor League Notes. It was my baby. The emphasis was on the Kenosha Twins but I had the freedom to grab stories from every minor league team. I even got to cover a Brewers-Yankees game at Milwaukee’s County Stadium to see the contrast between the minors and “the show.”

Being a sports reporter was cool. I met a lot of big stars and got to experience things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. All these years later, it’s still true that the only NFL games I have attended are the three Green Bay Packers games on which I reported for the Journal Times. Those were good assignments: parking right next to the stadium, a pre-game buffet, a heated press box and someone else to keep the statistics. Most of my assignments were less glamorous. I covered a lot of Racine-area high school and college teams, plus individual athletes in just about every sport you can imagine.

But not cycling. I still have copies of every story from my Journal Times career—1982 until 1988—and I can’t find a single mention of cycling. We didn’t cover track racing at Kenosha’s velodrome, and there certainly wasn’t a road racing or mountain biking scene to rival what exists today. Perhaps most importantly, kids weren’t racing. Things would have been different if there had been a Wisconsin High School Cycling League back then, or a local racer as accomplished as Kaitie Antonneau. Even when Greg LeMond won the world championship road race in 1983 and the Tour de France in 1986, his victories were little more than footnotes.

A new media landscape led to more coverage when Americans dominated the Tour de France from 1999 through 2006. We were fascinated by the accomplishments … and later by the depths of the deception. Now it seems like we have taken a step back. We enjoy specialty news sources that didn’t exist in the 1980s, but mainstream American media once again regards bike racing as interesting only when it produces a high-profile doping case or a spectacular crash. Shimano’s bad day at the Tour of Flanders made the highlight reels on Sunday and Monday. ESPN probably still doesn’t know who won, but why would anyone care about that?

Would I go back to journalism if I had the chance? Maybe. I have dabbled in it occasionally since those early days at the Journal Times. In the 1990s I expanded my reach beyond sports and into the significantly less fun arenas of local government and school board meetings. Writing for a cycling publication would be a great marriage of personal interest and professional ability. But those positions are rare and the best of them are based in Europe. As my job hunt continues, I still hope to find something I can do for cycling here at home.

Fixing A Flat Like Never Before

As much as I ride, you might think it’s common for me to suffer flat tires. Actually, it’s exceedingly rare. In a typical year I might have to make one roadside fix. Most of my flat tires are the result of slow leaks, something discovered in the garage on the day after a ride. On a solo road ride today, I noticed that my rear tire was going down and it wasn’t going to get me home without a new tube. That was an unwelcome situation, of course, but also an opportunity to try something new.

A couple of years ago I bought a Planet Bike Air Kiss CO₂ inflator. I had never used such a device before, so I did one practice tube change at home and then stuffed the inflator and a cartridge into my seat bag. And there they stayed until today. The few flats I had in the meantime were on other bikes, fixed with trusty low-tech frame pumps.

I approached today’s innertube swap with a little apprehension. CO₂ inflators can be unforgiving. I had just one tube and just one CO₂ cartridge, so any mistake might leave me stranded. But I did a good job to ensure no pinching of the tube and a proper seating of the tire’s bead within the rim, and the inflator worked exactly as advertised.

Finding things that I haven’t encountered during a bike ride is getting harder. Every experience—even a humble one like today’s—makes me a little more capable and confident. But I still don’t know what I will do if I snap a chain in the middle of nowhere …

Pedal Fest 2015

Pedal Moraine Cycle & Fitness

1421 S. Main St., West Bend

(262) 338-2453

A Second Mileage Record In 2015

This was today's short, counter-clockwise spin around West Bend.

March goes out like a lamb: 55 degrees with brilliant sunshine! I finished the month with 538 miles, a personal record that beat the 516 miles I rode in March 2012. Add that total to my record-breaking January (241 miles) and predictably quiet February (50 miles) and I’m at 829 so far this year. That’s a month ahead of last year’s record pace.

Early-season miles, while slow and frustrating at times, really matter to me. Maybe it is just a psychological hurdle, but I always feel like I am “back” to being a cyclist once I get to 1,000.

After 4 straight months of weight gain, I dropped 2 pounds this month. I am 1 pound lighter than I was on this date last year, a statistic I almost don’t believe because I feel so heavy. The numbers don’t lie, but I remember the form I had during the cyclocross season. I’m a long way from that, and simply running up a big mileage total won’t bring me back. Last year I didn’t drop a lot of weight until the ’cross season started. Then the combination of high-intensity training sessions and weekend races really worked. With the goal of competing as a Cat 3 this fall, I want to be lighter than I was when the 2014 season began. That means more high-intensity workouts, starting in April.

Roo Baby

It has been a while since I mentioned Cheesehead Roubaix, but with less than 4 weeks to go the ride is increasingly on my mind. Several friends have ridden the route already this year and their reports have been encouraging. The unpaved roads that give the ride its character are drying out and firming up ahead of schedule. Prior to today I had seen only bits and pieces of the route, and only the final unpaved sector.

My wife’s sister and brother-in-law were in town for the last couple of days and, as I told them more than once, it’s a shame that they missed the great weather we had earlier this month. Glen has ridden here with me before and we hoped to share a couple of long rides during this visit. But yesterday was rotten: rain and high winds kept us inside. Glen did a solid trainer workout in my home gym, an unusual but productive experience for a guy who is used to rollers when stuck indoors. Today, then, was our only chance to ride outside. We grabbed that chance enthusiastically.

Glen wanted to see the Cheesehead Roubaix route, but with only 3 hours at our disposal we knew we couldn’t complete it. What we ended up with was a scaled-down but still satisfying version of the ride. After an 11-mile ride from my house, we jumped into the route at Lovers Lane near Boltonville, the signature feature of Cheesehead Roubaix. It did not disappoint: it was every bit the ugly mess of a road that people both desire and dread. On the full route, Lovers Lane appears at Mile 8.5. We then stayed faithful to the route until Mile 20.9 when we took a shortcut through Fredonia to ensure our timely return to West Bend. We rejoined the full route at Mile 47.3 and kept to it until Mile 58.8, so Glen got to experience not only the first unpaved sector but also the last. Blue Goose and St. Augustine were a little wet and dotted with potholes, as expected.

Thanks to Jeff Wren for the use of his cyclocross bike. None of my bikes would have been a good fit for Glen. I used my cyclocross bike today rather than my BMC, which currently is equipped with 700x23 tires that probably would have failed me on Lovers Lane. I was able to ride the entire mile without putting a foot down, but I didn’t set any speed records! If conditions are wet on April 26, I may opt for the cyclocross bike again.

If you’re a Facebook user, then please let me know if you plan to attend Cheesehead Roubaix. Go to this page to sign up. As always, the ride is free but it’s good to know how many people will want snacks and drinks at the mid-ride Belgianwerkx rest stop.

First Full-Length Eisenbahn Ride Of 2015

Spring officially arrived today, though we have had very spring-like weather for the last two weeks. I welcomed the season with a full-length Eisenbahn State Trail ride. At 47 miles, today’s ride was my longest of the year.

On Monday I took the trail into Fond du Lac County and then headed for New Fane over county highways and town roads. On Wednesday I took the trail to Campbellsport and back. Now that I have gone all the way to the end of the trail in Eden, I’m happy to report that the whole thing is free of snow and ice. Some spots are a little softer than others, but the entire trail is firm enough to ride. However, the community park at the north end of the trail has not re-opened yet, so there’s no access to bathrooms or drinking water.

Riding The Wheels Off

An old railroad car axle and wheels as seen today on the Eisenbahn, just north of the Fond du Lac County line.

OK, so I didn’t really ride the wheels off my cyclocross bike today, but I did cover 33 miles with an average speed of 17.2 mph and that’s pretty good when you consider that the first 13 miles were on the Eisenbahn State Trail. Unpaved sections of the trail were dry and firm—not summertime hard, but firm enough to ride without leaving ruts. Maybe it was the joy of gravel beneath my tires that led me to push a little harder. Whatever the inspiration, today’s mixed-surface ride was more than 1 mph faster than my best all-road ride so far in 2015.

When I left home, the plan was to go easy on the final day of a 10-day block of rides. I expected to be fatigued but I wasn’t going to let a 60-something-degree afternoon go to waste. I racked up 313 miles during the last 10 days and now have 333 this month. In March 2012, I set a personal record of 516 miles and with half of this month remaining I feel good about my chances of beating that mark. But I’m taking a rest day tomorrow. I am overdue and the weather won’t be nearly as nice.