Cycling’s Disappearing Calendar

All joking aside, educate yourself about this imminent threat to public health.

Today I watched the final stage of Paris-Nice, compelled by morbid curiosity. Was it the last major bike race of the 2020 season? Is the coronavirus pandemic going to wipe out everything else? I’ve never seen anything like the measures that are being taken right now. And it’s not just cycling. The NBA and NHL seasons are on hold, NASCAR has canceled a couple of races, the start of the Major League Baseball season is being pushed back, and the NCAA basketball tournament will not be held. This is extraordinary stuff, the social and economic impact of which will be huge.

Cycling is getting off relatively easy, given that it doesn’t really generate attendance and concessions income from its fans. Paris-Nice held 7 of its 8 scheduled stages, canceling Sunday’s finale. In that respect it was still a proper stage race, but some riders stayed home or went home early. Some teams stayed away altogether. It wasn’t the race that it should have been, but at least it went on. Cyclingnews now has a running list of races that weren’t so fortunate, and it’s probably going to grow. In a world turned upside down, Australia-based Mitchelton-Scott has replaced actual racing with virtual racing … only temporarily, let’s hope.

Here in Wisconsin, American Bicycle Racing has canceled tomorrow’s criterium in Kenosha and may cancel the crits scheduled for March 22 and March 29. We’re still several weeks away from the WCA, WEMS, Wisport, and WORS season openers. Hopefully they will be spared, but the impact of the epidemic is still expanding. We don’t really know how bad it’s going to get and how long it’s going to last.

Watching Paris-Nice today was the extent of my personal cycling plans for this weekend. I’m picking up 24 hours of overtime at work—12-hour shifts today and tomorrow—so I won’t have a chance to get back on the bike until Monday afternoon. That’s OK; it’s going to be a chilly weekend. I wasn’t sure about this when I wrote last Sunday’s post, but apparently West Bend hit 61° that afternoon, making it our first day in the 60s since October 21. There isn’t another day remotely like that in our current forecast.

Flirting With Spring

(It wouldn't kill you to read something other than cycling blogs.)

Decent weekend, wasn’t it? We got into the 50s and had plenty of sunshine, but we also had an abundance of wind. That’s not uncommon at this time of year. It was limiting, though: I rode far fewer miles than I would have otherwise. I’m also still limited by the snow and ice that lingers on many of our trails and park paths. I’m really looking forward to a firm, dry Eisenbahn State Trail, as its unpaved miles are essential to my training.

For several of my friends, this weekend was the start of the road season. Until this weekend they were training indoors only or riding fat bikes on snow-covered mountain bike trails. My ride this afternoon was my 9th, and it got me to 200 miles, year-to-date. Those aren’t boast-worthy numbers, but they do put me about 10 days ahead of last year’s pace.

My Sunday began with Stage 1 of Paris-Nice on NBC Sports Gold, and I’m looking forward to daily coverage for the next week. Typically regarded as a Tour de France scouting trip rather than a major objective in its own right, Paris-Nice is going to get some extra attention this season because it’s the only option. Fear of coronavirus has decimated the spring calendar in Italy: no Tirreno-Adriatico, no Milano-Sanremo, no Tour of Sicily, no Strade Bianche, no Settimana Coppi e Bartali. Italian racing is closed for business until at least the beginning of April. We'll see if some of the events get rescheduled, but things don’t look good.

On Friday I posted my tentative 2020 calendar and, as you can see, it’s pretty light. This is starting to look like a high-mileage spring and summer followed by a (hopefully) long cyclocross season. And the full cyclocross calendar probably won’t be out until May at the earliest, so it could be a while before I know how I’m going to justify my USA Cycling license. Keep checking back. The calendar is always a work in progress.

A New Spin On Track Cycling

Berlin's velodrome is a stunning architectural achievement.

Last week I invested considerable time in the UCI Track Cycling World Championships, held in Berlin and available to me on NBC Sports Gold. It was a staggering amount of coverage—21 hours, 38 minutes, 18 seconds—starting on Wednesday and ending on Sunday. (I got off easy: for the fans in attendance at the velodrome, those were 8-hour days!) I watched all of the broadcasts … perhaps not with complete absorption, but certainly with a greater appreciation of track cycling than I could muster before. I had seen only a handful of World Cup events and had failed to achieve a full understanding of the structure of the competition. I get it now and, for the most part, it’s OK.

But it’s only OK. The points race and the Madison are a total mess, incomprehensible without an announcer and a scoreboard. With so many riders on the track, it’s impossible to watch everything. Who’s in the lead? Who’s a lap up or a lap down? Who’s actually racing and not just riding around? Who thought it was a good idea to invent races where the person who crosses the finish line first isn’t necessarily the winner? The pursuits, sprints, and elimination races do work. They’re short and exciting and easy to follow. If it were up to me, then I would build my tournament around those and throw out the longer events. I would drop the Keirin too, on the grounds that it’s just too goofy to start a 6-lap race on Lap 4 after being paced up to full speed by a bowlegged man on a Derny.

I’m not the only one who thinks track cycling could use a facelift. The UCI has announced sweeping changes to begin next season. Its partnership with Eurosport will result in track events that are condensed into a TV-friendly, 2-hour schedule. The Keirin is still in the plans, despite being a real race for less than half of the time it takes to complete. But team events are out. Traditionalists will hate that, but the UCI and Eurosport appear to believe it will be easier to create a narrative around a handful of individual stars to compel fans to watch the broadcasts. And that’s not a bad idea. You’ve heard of American swimmer Michael Phelps, right? With 28 medals, he’s the most decorated Olympian in history. Now, name any of the other three men with whom he won the 4x100 medley relay at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. Each one is a gold medalist, after all, and they did set an Olympic record on that occasion. Still drawing a blank? Exactly.

Having come through so many hours of track cycling in the last few days, I’m looking forward to a pared-down presentation when this year’s Olympics begin in Tokyo. It’s probably enough to see just the gold medal races and not the qualification runs or bronze medal matchups. Yesterday in Berlin, one of the races was run only to determine places 7-12; a separate race for the top 6 qualifiers determined the medals. Come on. It’s time to cut track events down to a size that modern audiences can swallow.

Lamb-tastic

Today was the first 50° day in West Bend this year. We haven’t had the coldest of winters—in both January and February we had days that topped out at 49°—but 50° had eluded us since December 29. This was a good day to climb aboard the road bike and dare to hope for an early spring. The current weather forecast suggests today’s ride was just the first of several in the early days of March. Who knows? Maybe I can make a run at my personal record for March miles: 538, set in 2015. That’s one of my oldest records, and I didn’t set any new monthly marks in 2019, so it’s a good target.

If Not Great, Then At Least “Grand”

This is my 1,000^th post on the Bike Washington County blog. I wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary for this occasion, so I waited until today, February 29. We get a February 29 only once every four years, and this one is extra special because it’s also the fifth Saturday this month. Squeezing five Saturdays into February is possible only in a leap year, and not even every leap year: it happens at 28-year intervals. I might be tired of blogging by 2048, so this seemed like a good date for a personal milestone.

When I started this blog almost 10 years ago, I imagined I would have a little bit to say every day. That idea lasted just one month! If I had continued on that pace, then today’s post would be number 3,585. Can you imagine? The only way I could have managed that feat would have been to opine on every piece of news from the cycling press, however insignificant. And perhaps not every post here has been a gem, but in giving you new content every 3.585 days on average I hope I have been more engaging than overwhelming.

There is weight, though, to 1,000 blog posts. It’s a big body of work. Take out all the training log entries and race reports—take me out—and it’s still a decade of the history of cycling. Yes, there has been opinion, but I have never misrepresented it as fact. I have always been honest with you, even when doing so shone a less than flattering light on my own performance or behavior or appearance or … you know, you can stop me anytime. Most people see self-deprecation for what it is: pushing you away weakly with one arm while drawing you awkwardly but inexorably to an embrace with the other. Bike Washington County has not changed the world, but it has influenced the cycling scene locally, across Wisconsin, and maybe even farther afield. My ideas and observations have been shared and debated on other social media platforms and have been seen here something like 175,000 times. So, yeah, I’m proud of what I have done.

Thanks for allowing me to be a little self-congratulatory today, but thanks even more for continuing to visit Bike Washington County. There’s more to come.

2020 Little Switzerland Schedule

Brief Relief For Cabin Fever

(Jeff Wren photo)

This was a nice weekend for February. The last time we had a matching Saturday and Sunday above 40° was December 21-22, and this weekend we had lots of blue sky and bright sun to add to the cheer. I rode for more than an hour yesterday and for about an hour and a half today. But that’s all until March; there won’t be any rides for me in the week to come.

Monday will start with a meeting between Bike Friendly West Bend and Jessica Wildes, the new Marketing and Communications Director for the City of West Bend. BFWB wants to build a closer relationship with the city to bring bicycle tourism to the area and, of course, to develop new amenities for local riders.

Monday will continue with a 12-hour shift at work, the first of five consecutive 12-hour shifts. That’s 60 hours total, and the 20 hours of overtime pay will be very welcome. But it’s going to be a challenging week. On a normal week it’s all I can do to get enough sleep to keep going, and in the week to come there will be fewer hours in which I can make my feeble attempts. Whatever may come, I will gut it out at work. I have no other choice.

The wildcard is the weather. We may receive several inches of snow on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that would add significant hardship for me. I’m rooting against it, of course, but if it does come then I might be back on the snowshoes next weekend.

Save The Date: April 18

In conjunction with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy’s nationwide Opening Day For Trails celebration, our own Eisenbahn State Trail will be getting lots of love on Saturday, April 18. Washington County, Bike Friendly West Bend, The Hub - Social Good Brews, and the Volunteer Center of Washington County will co-host. Here’s a preliminary schedule:

 8:00 AM -  9:00 AM -- Volunteer Check-In and Registration
 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM -- Trail Cleanup
11:00 AM -  1:00 PM -- Tailgate Event
11:30 AM - 12:00 PM -- Presentation
 1:00 PM - ??:?? PM -- Bike Rides

Show your support at the Facebook event page and watch for more details as we get closer to April 18! Who knows? If the weather is nice, then maybe I'll lead one of those bike rides ...

Shaking Things Up

There’s a new Adventure Cycling Association initiative to improve safety for cyclists by identifying unsafe rumble strips on roads across America and recommending a set of design and implementation criteria. It’s a very reasonable framework, and Adventure Cycling wisely has chosen not to begin the conversation as another episode of Cars vs. Bikes. The recommendations don’t say rumble strips never have a useful place on our roads; they do say that the needs of cyclists must be taken into account.

Here in Washington County, rumble strips are uncommon. We have a few examples of perpendicular rumble strips whose purpose is to warn drivers of upcoming intersections, but the Adventure Cycling Association is principally concerned with the shoulder rumble strips whose purpose is to stop inattentive drivers from drifting off the road. Last weekend I looked at three examples of shoulder rumble strips in Washington County and found that they are not uniform in their execution, and in no case do they come up to the Adventure Cycling Association standards.

Here’s State Highway 167 (Holy Hill Road) in the Town of Erin:

In this case the rumble strip and the fog line occupy the same space, leaving 32 inches of additional paved shoulder on the right. It’s not badly done; it’s just too narrow to meet the Adventure Cycling Association criteria.

This is the situation on State Highway 28 east of Kewaskum:

There’s a total of 5 feet of paved shoulder to the right of the fog line, but only 40 inches to the right of the rumble strip. I can’t tell you why the rumble strip wasn’t carved out closer to the fog line. The space between them is effectively useless. Still, I travel this section of road frequently and I feel perfectly safe between the rumble strip and the edge of the road.

The rumble strips on Highway 28 come closest to the Adventure Cycling Association standards. They even include periodic breaks to allow easier movement from one side of the strip to the other. That’s important to a cyclist who sees debris or an obstruction ahead and wants to move back to the left. Centerline rumble strips are a feature of that same section, but in my experience they have not had the effect of directing vehicles closer to the fog line and, therefore, closer to me.

Finally, here’s County Highway I (Decorah Road) east of West Bend:

This very short rumble strip section occupies the entirety of the 9-inch paved shoulder. You won’t be riding on this, and you have to question how effectively it would serve its purpose. How would an inattentive driver hitting this rumble strip react in time to stay on the road? I remember riding on the newly-repaved road before the rumble strip was carved out, then shaking my head in disbelief on my next visit. This section feels like the answer to a question no one was asking.

It will be interesting to see how the Adventure Cycling Association initiative fares. Plenty of good ideas attract support in principle but fail to materialize in the real world of budget constraints. But regardless of whether these recommendations become nationwide standards, they at least deserve consideration in Washington County as our new bicycling master plan moves toward implementation.

That Satisfying Crunch

(Nathan Patton photo)

Snowshoeing remains my one true winter sport, but this winter’s conditions have been unfavorable: not much snow to start with, and too many melt days between new accumulations.

Today, though, conditions were pretty close to perfect: 35° and partly sunny, with just a hint of a breeze. Last Sunday’s snowfall was significant enough that a groomed base of several inches is still present at Lac Lawrann Conservancy and Royal Oaks Park on the north side of West Bend. My 3-mile / 70-minute lap there was my first snowshoeing adventure since March 2, 2019. I would go more often if there were more opportunities … tomorrow, perhaps, when another 3-inch snowfall arrives. But if the forecast is correct the new window of opportunity will close quickly: we could be somewhere around 40° next weekend. That would put me back on the bike.