Pass The Gravy

Today I reached 4,000 outdoor miles, year-to-date. I had been telling people that I might stop on 4,000 miles. But that wasn’t a promise, and I’m not stopping. It’s true that I have no more really meaningful mileage targets this season. However, it’s also true that I would be cheating myself if I opted for Zwift over this:

Another 101 miles would move this season up to 14th all-time. Three more rides would give me my 13th highest ride total ever. In November there will be two mileage-based Garmin Connect achievements that might be worth the effort. And, of course, I’m still working on that multi-season goal of 100,000 lifetime miles. I want to reach 100,000 in 2025 when I turn 60, so I want to be on 90,000 by the end of next year. I’m on 85,388 right now. Any miles I can add before the end of 2022 are miles I don’t have to worry about in 2023.

Next Sunday we’ll be back on standard time and sunset will be at 4:39 p.m.  Don’t miss the chance to ride outside in warm sunshine this week!

Zero Point Zero

By now you know I’m a Zwift rider. I started using the virtual training platform last November. What you might not know is that Zwift is also built for runners, and after almost a full year of Zwifting these are my running statistics:

If you find those interesting, then commit them to memory or bookmark this page. There will be no updates.

Past Peak

Well, that was fun while it lasted. We don’t often get four consecutive 70° days in October, but that was our good fortune this year. And last Thursday wasn’t too bad either. So, over the five-day period that ended today, I rode a total of 179 miles. But tomorrow will be a chilly rainout and the rest of the week will be in the 50s. Whether we will see 70° again before next May is anybody’s guess. Getting back to 60° will be hard enough.

I now need only 50 more miles to reach 4,000 this season. I expect to get them this week, then I will shift the focus to indoor training with Zwift. It’s not just that the temperatures are dropping; it’s also that the days are getting too short. My job demands a lot of attention and can be fatiguing, and on most days I prefer to go to bed immediately after my overnight shift. Sleeping deep into the afternoon greatly limits the amount of time I can spend on the bike. I will get better, more consistent workouts inside. I really miss the late sunsets of mid-summer!

And I have projects to complete around my home before winter gets here … yard cleanup, mostly, but I’m also planning to install a new TV antenna and to do some exterior house painting. The nesting instinct is strong at the moment. My pantry is now stocked with cans of chili and chicken noodle soup, and today I subscribed to ESPN+ to get access to most of the National Hockey League schedule. On my shopping list: new pillows and bath towels. I don’t allow myself many comforts or luxuries, but very much on my mind these days is how I will spend those long, dark hours after we fall back to standard time on November 6. This winter I want to work out harder than ever before, but I also want to relax harder than ever before … if you know what I mean.

First (Only?) Metric Century Of 2022

Today's counterclockwise ride was a fun solo adventure.

What a day in southeastern Wisconsin! I think we got as high as 75° this afternoon, which is about 20° above normal. Of course, the warm temperatures arrived on a stiff breeze from the south, but we’re not going to complain about that. You can’t have 75° at this time of year without substantial and sustained wind from that direction. I celebrated the day with my longest bike ride of the year: 63 miles on roads that, inexplicably, I had almost to myself. Today’s metric century was my 95th all-time but my first since September 24, 2021. I took one bottle of Nuun, one bottle of water, no food, no bathroom breaks, and I never got off the bike. This was one of those “get empty” rides that I like to do from time to time, and it worked.

The Great Career Of Philippe Gilbert

As the 2022 road racing calendar winds down, so too do the careers of prominent UCI WorldTour racers like Alejandro Valverde, Vincenzo Nibali, and Niki Terpstra. But the racer I am really going to miss is perhaps my favorite racer of all-time: Philippe Gilbert. The Belgian raced on guts and instincts. He was tactically brilliant, attacking at times when his rivals couldn’t see an opportunity. And that self-reliant, attacking style made him a man for the one-day races. Just look at this list of major victories:

2006 Omloop Het Volk

2008 Omloop Het Volk

2008 Paris-Tours

2009 Paris-Tours

2009 Giro di Lombardia

2010 Giro di Lombardia

2010 Amstel Gold Race

2011 Amstel Gold Race

2011 Liège–Bastogne–Liège

2011 Strade Bianche

2011 Brabantse Pijl

2011 Clásica de San Sebastián

2011 Belgian National Time Trial Championship

2011 Belgian National Road Race Championship

2012 La Flèche Wallonne

2012 UCI World Road Race Championship

2014 Brabantse Pijl

2014 Amstel Gold Race

2016 Belgian National Road Race Championship

2017 Amstel Gold Race

2017 Tour of Flanders

2019 Paris-Roubaix

Gilbert appeared 3 times in the Olympic Games and 25 times in Grand Tours:

Giro d’Italia: 4 appearances, 3 stage victories

Tour de France: 12 appearances, 1 stage victory

Vuelta a España: 9 appearances, 7 stage victories

Overall, Gilbert had 80 victories in a professional career that began in 2003. Now he’s a 40-year-old retiree living in Monaco, and it’s still good to be Phil!

Back From Vacation, Back To Normal

Today's fun route was completed clockwise.

Yesterday was unconventional. As October 8 began, I was at a highway rest area, desperately trying to sleep in my car after completing half of the drive back from my mother’s house in suburban Philadelphia. I got about two hours of fitful sleep before I resumed. When I got to West Bend at 7 a.m., I still wasn’t done. I hit the grocery store, knowing that if I allowed myself to go home first I wouldn’t want to go out again. I had emptied the house of food before my vacation, and on Saturday I bought just enough to keep me going until Thursday, my next day off. Last night was the start of my new work week. I didn’t do much during the day. I even got a little more sleep, and my energy level was sufficient to get me through the night. Being a bum on Saturday was the right call. I would have been a fool to ride my bike for the sake of a few low quality miles.

Things are back to normal today. I did a good 40-mile road ride to complete a 9-hour, 150-mile week. During my vacation, which began on September 29, I rode a total of 160 miles. Curse you, Hurricane Ian, for preventing me from doing even more. I surpassed 85,000 lifetime miles on October 6, which also means I surpassed my goal of 3,612 miles in 2022. It would be nice to complete another 4,000-mile season and to earn a couple of additional Garmin Connect badges. However, I won’t endure too much cold weather in those pursuits. And cold weather is imminent: we may see overnight lows below the freezing mark by Thursday, and by next Sunday we will struggle to reach 40 degrees in the afternoons! But so far Saturday afternoon looks OK, and if that forecast holds then I might line up for the WCA cyclocross race in Richfield. A lot depends not just on the weather, but also on my training and on my left calf muscle, which has felt good for the last week but hasn’t really been tested. I still worry about having to run. I thought I was fit enough for the Manitowoc race until I felt the muscle snap.

There was no strength training for me during my trip. I’m looking forward to my return to the home gym tomorrow. And I chose not to attend today’s UCI World Cup cyclocross races at Trek headquarters in Waterloo. After working all night and with another overnight shift coming later today, I needed to use this afternoon for my own training ride. Like I said: back to normal. This week needs to be a return to normal hours, normal diet, normal training, and so on.

Freein’ Myself Of Ian

If you could travel in a straight line from my mother’s house in suburban Philadelphia to the Atlantic Ocean, then the distance would be only 63 miles. And you can’t cover that distance in a straight line, but a hurricane can. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and much of today got wiped out by almost endless rain and occasionally high winds as Hurricane Ian continued its march up the East Coast. This is emphatically not what I had in mind when I planned my vacation. Average afternoon highs should still be in the low 70s here, but we’ve been spending most of our time in the 40s and 50s. Locals are complaining that it feels like winter and they’re not wrong. It’s nothing like a Wisconsin winter, but still.

After three days of forced rest, today I took advantage of a break in the rain to knock out a 50-mile road ride. I don’t have the same familiarity with these roads as I do with Washington County’s, so I stayed close to Mom’s house and did loops through and around Doylestown (imagine Cedarburg with a county courthouse and bumper-to-bumper automobile traffic). It’s nice here, but it’s hard to get around. Tomorrow and Friday I will point the bike toward some roads in a less congested pocket of Bucks County, and by mid-afternoon on Friday I will begin the long drive back to Wisconsin. I’ll be home on Saturday, but don’t invite me to ride. I’ll be looking for an evening nap to put myself back on a nighttime schedule. Technically my vacation ends tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. CDT, but I won’t really feel it until 11 p.m. on Saturday when I begin my new work week.

Rubber Side Down

Greetings from Bucks County PA, where today I did a 30-mile road ride that did not include a crash resulting in significant injuries! I liked not crashing so much that I intend not to crash again on future rides as my vacation continues into next week.

Fall 2022

It’s 8:03 p.m. Central Daylight Time, the moment autumn officially begins. And today certainly feels like the start of a new season. West Bend touched 60° for only a few minutes today and we will struggle to reach that modest plateau for at least the next week. We should still be averaging 70° for an afternoon high, so I’m not wrong to be disappointed. But again I’m left to wonder whether our historical averages are accurate. They must be inflated: we almost always seem to be below them.

Adding to the sense of change, this evening I hosted the final Royal Oaks Park cyclocross practice of 2022. My still sore, still tight left calf kept me off the bike. I directed the setup and teardown of the course … not a big job, but it’s still a job. Much like Cheesehead Roubaix, cyclocross practice at Royal Oaks is my show. I’m the one person who has to be there, no matter what. Today’s practice was number 8 this season and number 64 since the series began in 2012. I didn’t run the series during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, so it was nice to come back this year for Season 9. Attendance wasn’t great—our best turnout was 10 racers—but this season was notable for its appeal to first-time participants. The newbies learned a lot, progressed quickly, and now can look forward to success in actual races.

I’m looking forward to vacation, starting one week from today. On Sunday, three of my favorite TV shows will have their season premieres. Two weeks from tomorrow, the new NHL season will begin. So, there are some good things coming my way this fall, but the clock is definitely winding down on my outdoor cycling season. In addition to the falling temperatures, we’re losing about three minutes of daylight per day. Soon I will be riding more inside than outside. But watch out for Thanksgiving, nine weeks from today. After my upcoming week-long vacation, I still will have a four-day block of time off to spend before the end of November. Don’t be surprised if I skip the turkey and head south in search of warm weather and big miles.

2022 Flyover Silver Creek CX

My first race of the 2022 WCA cyclocross season also may have been my last. Today at the eighth running of Flyover Silver Creek CX in Manitowoc, I re-injured that left calf muscle, this time with a discernable “pop” and a sharp pain that almost certainly means a torn gastrocnemius. When the injury occurred, I was in no danger of winning the Masters 1/2/3 50+ age group. I knew before the race began that even the lower steps on the podium are not meant for me. But I was on my way to a 14th place finish in the 18-man field, and I was OK with that. In the end, I yielded 14th and 15th to riders who caught me on the last lap when I no longer could run with the bike or climb hills. I was still able to apply force to the pedals while seated, though, and I preserved 16th place by outsprinting my last challenger. It was my first bike race since CrossFire in Sun Prairie on October 26, 2019, and I had high hopes for it and for the season in general. Now I just want to be able to walk without a limp when I visit my mother in two weeks.

I’m assuming there will be no more cyclocross races for me in 2022, so my training focus is going to shift back to high-mileage weeks on the road for as long as the warm weather holds. As of today, I am still 300 miles short of my goal for the year and 688 miles short of my 15th 4,000-mile season. I will shoot for those marks. When the weather turns, I will get more serious about Zwift. Clearly, this isn’t how I wanted my season to go, but I will try to salvage something from it.