If This Is Winter, Then Bring It On!

Taking it all in at Glacial Blue Hills! (Nathan Patton photo)

In West Bend, today’s high of 53° broke the old record for this date: 52° on December 22, 1957. The average high for this date is only 29°. Today was the first 50° day since November 21, and that was the only 50° day in November. Today may prove to be the only 50° day in December; we’ll see what Thursday brings.

As I hope you would expect of me, I spent the day outdoors. In the morning I hiked the Ice Age Trail from Washington Street to Glacial Blue Hills and back, covering almost 4 miles in about 1.5 hours. That’s not a bad effort on rocky, up-and-down terrain that still wasn’t completely free of ice and snow. In the afternoon I rode my cyclocross bike around town … not fast, not far, but as much as I felt like doing. I would have been more ambitious if not for the brisk wind that always seemed to be holding me back.

Above-average daytime highs are in the forecast every day between now and next Sunday, so there should be additional opportunities for outdoor adventure. I’m going to soak it up, but I’m not going to do structured workouts. I will ride if I want to ride, hike if I want to hike, and not worry too much about my statistics. It’s just nice to be outside this late in the year.

Week 1 Of … Let’s Say 15

During warm weather months, Saturday mornings can be occasions for bike rides, bike races, yard work … any number of outdoor activities. But during cold weather months, Saturday mornings are nothing special. Even today—a very nice day for December 21—the morning was significantly colder than the afternoon, and I’m always going to choose to be outside for the warmest hours of the day if I can.

So, I did wait until late afternoon to ride my bike today, but I didn’t waste the morning. When my overnight work shift ended I checked into the company’s fitness room for an upper body strength training session. My workout looked a lot like my home gym routine. The difference, though, is significant. At home, all of my weightlifting moves are “push” moves. It’s hard to do “pull” moves with free weights. But the big cables-and-pulleys machine at work makes these moves easy. I’m talking about things like rows and lat pulldowns, centerpiece moves for strong back muscles. And hamstring curls … can’t forget those. These are exercises I have missed for a long time. I’m going to give them my Saturday mornings between now and, I think, March 28. By then I should be riding the bike outdoors on a regular basis again, and it will be time to update the strength training program to fit my new cycling objectives.

There’s a stationary bike in the fitness room. There’s also a pair of treadmills. Don’t know if I’ll bother with the stationary bike when I have a pretty nice turbo trainer setup at home, but I might put in some treadmill time. I don’t have that option at home anymore, and with the incline cranked up it’s not a bad change-of-pace workout.

I had the fitness room to myself today and that’s not likely to change, as my office is only sparsely staffed on weekends. That’s more than OK by me. Even when I have no other plans for my Saturday, I won’t want any delays in executing my morning workout.

Remembering The Washington County Bicycle Club

Here’s Jimmy on a WCBC ride in 2014. (Denny Bolinger photo)

Five years ago today, the Washington County Bicycle Club voted itself out of existence. Nothing has sprung up to take its place on the road, and locally-organized group rides are now exceedingly rare. But there’s hope, says Jim Scharrer, who was perhaps the WCBC’s most enthusiastic member.

“I have wondered if the old WCBC group would like second Saturday show-and-go rides during summer,” Scharrer said recently. “And maybe there would be interest in a Thursday night ‘Bikes, Bands and Brews’ ride starting and finishing at Music on Main in downtown West Bend.”

Since the demise of the WCBC, Scharrer has continued to ride locally as a member of Milwaukee’s Cream City Cycle Club.

“They schedule Washington County rides every year,” Scharrer said, “and they are great at planning camping and touring events.”

Milwaukee’s Bay View Bicycle Club also makes occasional visits to Washington County, and the Ozaukee Bicycle Club includes our roads on almost all of its weekly rides. But Scharrer says it’s not these dedicated road clubs that offer the greatest potential for growth.

“Metro Milwaukee Mountain Bikers has filled the (Washington County) bike club gap,” Scharrer says, highlighting the group’s strong advocacy for the development of Glacial Blue Hills Recreation Area as a true mountain bike park. “And there is a great high school mountain biking program/team. Maybe some of these riders will find their way onto the road.”

Offering an extensive mix of on-road and off-road options, the newly-adopted Washington County Bikeway & Trail Network Plan also offers hope for the growth of local cycling, Scharrer says.

“The Washington County plan has benefits for all types of cyclists. Washington County and the surrounding area has some great low-traffic, well-maintained country roads. The Eisenbahn State Trail developed into a handy, safe way to access those scenic side roads from West Bend. Now, the county plan ties in perfectly with the Route of the Badger. Tie this into Dodge County and the progress being made on the Gold Star Memorial Trail connecting Mayville to Beaver Dam and the Wild Goose State Trail, and wow! Thanks to the people advocating and helping to connect all the trails.”

Enthusiasm for the bike park project at Glacial Blue Hills has led to a popular mountain bike ride there on Tuesdays, organized by Pedal Moraine. The new network of paved bike paths in the county plan may lead to group rides of a very different kind, something that is neither mountain biking nor traditional road riding. Whatever may come, as long as people are enjoying themselves on bikes, you can be sure Scharrer will welcome it. But when asked about his most enduring memory of the old Washington County Bike Club, he recalls perhaps the most hard-core ride in its history.

“The Alps of Ashford Ride!” Scharrer remembers: October 10, 2009. “Snow flurries, hills, more hills, scrapping the cuesheet and following bike tire tracks in the slush, post-ride beers at the Riverside Brewery … good times with good folks!”

It was like that sometimes, and maybe it could be like that again.

Slow But Still Moving

Partly inspired by a pair of really entertaining cyclocross races over in Belgium this weekend, and partly inspired to ride on what could be the last 40° day for months, today I got out for an hour and a half to do the ride you see on the map above. It wasn’t statistically impressive, but it didn’t need to be. I just wanted to ride.

Yesterday’s Ethias Cross in Essen and today’s Superprestige in Zonhoven featured outstanding competition in both the women’s and the men’s elite races. Watching them definitely influenced my choice today: I wanted the cyclocross bike to take me wherever my mood pointed. In Forest View Park, Quaas Creek Park, and Royal Oaks Park, I got to enjoy turf trails that would have been no fun with road tires.

The 2020 ToAD Schedule

Look Sharp!

I still have every pair of cycling shoes I’ve ever bought, but that will change with tomorrow’s garbage collection now that I have these new Shimano SH-XC501 beauties. These will be the go-to, everyday shoes for training. I expect to race in them too … perhaps only in fair weather until the “new” is gone. There might be a new helmet in my future too, but even without it I will be steppin’ out as one well-dressed cyclist in 2020!

Statistically Insignificant

Yesterday I did my first bike ride since October 27. That’s 4 full weeks out of the saddle. Searching my training logs, I had to go all the way back to December 24, 2015 through January 24, 2016 to find a longer break.

I gained 6 pounds in January 2016. Part of my motivation to ride yesterday came from the suspicion that I have gained a couple of pounds this month. I’ll know for sure when I do my December weigh-in next Sunday. This is a dangerous time of year for me. My activity level drops dramatically and I gain weight easily. It’s never a matter of whether I will, only a matter of how much before things turn around again in early spring.

By riding on Sunday, I kept alive a streak of consecutive months with at least 1 outdoor ride. The streak began in February 2014, so I’m now at 70 straight. That’s neat, I suppose, but it’s hardly one of my most cherished records. With snow in the forecast for next weekend, I don’t have high hopes for December.

I rode again today … and got rain blown into my face for all my sins. A slow hour of that was all I could stand, and the sun mocked me by reappearing almost as soon as I finished. Oh, well. It’s time now for laundry, dinner, and a nap before my new work week begins.

West Bend Says Goodbye To ToAD

Good luck, Manitowoc!

The Tour of America’s Dairyland will not return to West Bend in 2020, a city official confirmed on Monday. ToAD came to West Bend in 2016, but during its 4-year run it failed to generate the excitement that we see at other locations like Grafton, Downer Avenue, and Wauwatosa. And the city wasn’t happy about the extra street maintenance and law enforcement costs. Racers loved the West Bend course—it was so much more interesting than a standard 4-corner criterium course—but the event never put “heads in beds.” If local hotels and restaurants got any bump from ToAD, then it wasn’t much. Falling on the Monday after the first weekend of ToAD, the West Bend race occupied the least desirable spot of the 11-day series: potential spectators went back to work, and promoters struggled to find enough volunteers to staff the event. Manitowoc will take West Bend’s spot in 2020. ToAD will announce the rest of the schedule soon.

Stationary, But Not Fixed

The next time you’re in the pain cave cursing your indoor training routine, remember: it could be worse. You could be riding a stationary bike outside. Imagine going nowhere on this:

Ouch! Please tell be there used to be a proper seat of some kind. These days, you might want to bring a stadium cushion and a handful of chamois crème. In fairness, this torture device never was intended to be used for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s part of a circuit training course at Ridge Run Park in West Bend. And the course is not without merit. Moving from station to station, you use your own body weight for resistance on some pretty ingenious machines. That “bike” though … wow.

If you simply must see it for yourself, then you will find it just west of the University Drive entrance:

Rucking

My new cross-training tool is simple, cheap, and effective.

I may ride my bike again this year, or I may not. It doesn’t matter much, as my racing season is surely over. And with the early arrival of winter weather, my thoughts have turned to offseason cross-training options. I like to hike, but I want to make my hikes more challenging without turning them into trail runs.

The simple solution is to hike with a weighted backpack. There’s actually a word for that: rucking. It’s an activity with military roots reaching back to the earliest days of organized armies. Modern armies still march with heavy rucksacks, both in training and in combat. The physical benefits of rucking are so clear that in recent years the activity has gained popularity with civilians looking to increase their fitness. Who wouldn’t want greater aerobic capacity, stronger muscles, and better posture? Rucking offers all of those without the impact of running. We’re talking about functional fitness, not some weight room exercise that looks cool but has little practical value. You might actually have to carry something heavy someday! And unlike so many fitness routines, with rucking there’s no learning curve: just walk.

Rucking also appeals strongly to the cheapskate in me. I paid $3.79 for 40 pounds of wood pellets—the smallest quantity I could buy—and transferred 25 pounds to a barely-used book bag from my children’s elementary school days. I’m considering a repurposed book bag to be fully amortized, so I’m all-in for $3.79! How’s that for a low cost of entry to a healthy new activity?

There are many ways to weight a backpack. I chose wood pellets not just because they’re super cheap, but also because they’re small and biodegradable. Being small, the wood pellets fill the pack in every dimension. That prevents the weight from shifting, which is a problem if you use something like a weightlifting plate or a couple of bricks. Being biodegradable, the wood pellets will do no harm if the pack ruptures and the contents spill onto the trail. They’re also not food. To avoid the attention of animals and insects, I didn’t want to go with something like rice or dried beans … probably not a concern while I’m in motion, but it could be an issue when the pack is in storage.

I mentioned last year that on a couple of hikes I was probably going too hard for the friends who accompanied me. Adding weight is going to make my effort harder at the same speed. Soldiers carry considerably more than the 25 pounds I’m using. Perhaps someday I will get a bigger rucksack and go heavier, but I have to experiment first. My chief concern is that my frequently damaged left shoulder will fatigue under the weight. I did my first ruck march on November 9 and my second on November 15. Each was 40 minutes on the Eisenbahn State Trail, through a subdivision, and around Forest View Park. The terrain wasn’t strenuous and the shoulder held up, but I could feel the extra strain the weight was putting on my hips and knees.

I went hiking again today: 2 hours, 15 minutes on the Ice Age Trail from Ridge Run Park down to Paradise Drive and back. But I gave the rucksack a rest. I didn’t trust my left shoulder to hold up that long, and I didn’t want to throw off my center of gravity on a day when the trail was sure to be slippery. In the week to come I will experiment with at least one 1-hour ruck march. If the shoulder still feels good over that duration, then I’ll try 90 minutes. Like any new workout, rucking comes with a break-in period and for a while I’ll be giving my body an unfamiliar challenge. But that’s the point. Let’s find the weak spots and make them strong.