Orny's Cycling Journal

How do I even start to summarize my experience of the 2026 Red Poppy Ride?

Let’s start with the ominous omens. Last month I did my first event ride of the year – the Rosedale Ride – and endured a litany of frustrating mishaps, as explained in that blogpost. The only previous time I’d ridden the Red Poppy Ride was in 2024, when the route was terribly marked, and I suffered a flat tire and limped home gingerly (ride report). I also mused about whether my 113th imperial century would be an ominous number or not. And as I got ready to drive to the start at 6:20am, I spilled half a glass of orange juice all over my computer desk. Hmmm…

Counterbalancing that, I thought I was ready to undertake my first 100-mile ride since a very satisfactory Livestrong Challenge six months ago. I’d done 100k rides on three consecutive weeks, along with steady Friday Truancy group rides and a good night at the Circuit of the Americas F1 track. And knowing that 160 kilometers would be a major increase in distance, I’d been careful to taper my training so that I’d be fresh for that challenge.

That’s the mise-en-scène. But before I describe the ride, a quick diversion…

About 700 riders at the start

A very sprinkly rollout

Three days before the ride, Inna and I bought a new car. As we sat in Jason the financing guy’s office, out of the blue he looked at me and asked, “So how long have you been a cyclist?” Apparently he’d noticed the tan lines on my hands: what Inna calls my “distinctive markings”. That was a surprise, but even more noteworthy was that he would also be doing the Red Poppy Ride that weekend, as his own first 100-mile ride. Small world!

With a field of around 700 riders, I was surprised when Jason found me as I was pulling my bike out of the car before the start. I wished him well, checked in, made double-sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything on my pre-ride checklist, then lined up for the start. Conditions looked perfect for a Texas ride: not too warm at 24°C, not too sunny with a heavy overcast, and a benign 7 km/h south wind… although the weather was predicted to clear and warm up considerably.

The ride begins in Georgetown and takes in some of the same familiar farmland and rural roads northwest of Austin that are covered by the Barrow Volksride (starting in Salado) that I rode back in October; the Rosedale Ride (in Taylor) that I completed in March; and the Stampede on the Chisholm Trail (in Belton) that I hope to do next month. But those are all 60-mile “metric centuries”, whereas Red Poppy is a full 100 miles.

This year’s revised route was an odd one. In 2024 we rode a big outer loop and then a smaller inner loop to round out our century. But this year it was structured as an out-and-back, doing 80 percent of that big outer loop and then turning right around and heading back to the start by covering the exact same roads in the opposite direction. At least this year the organizers provided downloadable GPS routes!

The century route comprised four equal segments: a long drag northeast, turning southwest into the wind to the halfway turnaround, then returning northeast before a long final haul against the wind. So I’ll use those four segments to describe my ride.

The first segment went easily, and I covered 40 km in 2½ hours. The weather repeatedly fluctuated from overcast to misty to a steady sprinkle… Heavy enough that water droplets reacted with my bike computer’s touchscreen, somehow causing the power and distance fields on its display to swap places! I had a funny exchange at the first rest stop, overhearing one rider say he was from Dover, Massachusetts, and the volunteer he was speaking to from Andover, whereupon I offered up my hometown of Gloucester. Ominously, my Garmin offered two foreboding data points: my “Performance Condition” had dropped from +4 to -3, and it estimated I would run out of stamina 20 km before the end of the ride. I had no idea why its estimate of my stamina had fallen so precipitously, but those were just numbers, right?

Welp, the next 40 kilometers were into what was now a 17 km/h headwind, and the sun was starting to burn away the clouds, yielding a warm and very muggy 27°C. I pulled into the turnaround rest stop at 11:15am with 51 km ridden, but I was struggling, as my Garmin reflected with a Performance Condition of -5. Jason pulled in while I was grabbing a much-needed ten-minute rest. Although I was hurting, I was still firmly in the middle of the pack, and I was looking forward to having the wind at my back for the next section.

That did help keep my speed up, although my legs were starting to cramp and could only put out half the power they had at the start of the day. I took a couple micro-rests while recording some video with my selfie drone, then had to take my first impromptu roadside break just as the route turned back into a 24 km/h headwind (gusting to 43 km/h) for the brutal slog home in the oppressive 32° heat.

Those short roadside breaks – plus spending much more time at the rest stops – are a sure signal that I’m on the ropes, and as they became increasingly frequent, I really started to lose time on other riders (and draw attention from the support crew). I reached the final rest stop just as they started packing things up, and I was the last rider to leave, with the event’s “SAG wagon” patiently trailing behind me. Fortunately, I shook the SAG wagon and saved myself the ignominy of being the last rider on course by passing another lost soul a couple kilometers from the finish.

I finally finished at 4:20pm, having taken a dismal 8⅓ hours to cover 163 kilometers. My little friend told me that my Performance Condition was -7.

I can’t put into words how much I suffered and how utterly drained I was. I had already been operating on fumes by the halfway point, and it took me an additional five hours of abject torture to slowly and painfully crawl my way back to the start. The only thing that kept me going was the desire to check off another century ride, which has long been how I’ve judged my fitness. And even after the ride, I had to sit down and take multiple breaks just to muster the strength needed to pack my bike into the car in the empty parking lot.

Am I glad I did it? Well, it certainly was a valuable sanity check on my fitness level, and a stark warning to take these extra-long rides seriously. If you can somehow set aside the immense suffering, it was a pleasant enough day. But the ride really kicked my ass.

And therein lies the salient mystery. Since moving to Austin, I’ve done six hundred-mile rides; four of those went fine, but two were brutal sufferfests (the other being my 2023 Livestrong ride). It sure would be nice if I could figure out what was the determining factor in how painful a ride would be, but I suspect there’s no obvious smoking gun. So as yet, no real insights. Just gotta keep putting myself out there and hope for the best.

The Rosedale Ride is an annual fundraiser for Austin’s Rosedale School for students with disabilities. While previous editions began in Austin, this year they moved it half an hour out of town to more rural Taylor, TX. I had never done this early-season metric century before, so I decided to check it out as my first organized event of 2026.

It was cursed. I mean, the ride itself was fine, but I suffered one mishap after another. Nothing too serious, mind you, but a dozen of them… So many that I’m structuring this ride report entirely around my pratfalls, with a brief reflection from a broader perspective at the very end.

Typical central Texas farmland

So what went wrong? Let’s start with the weather. After eight straight sunny days with highs exceeding 87°F, my ride never got above a temp of 63°. Chilly enough that this spokesmodel for cycling sandals donned socks and regular shoes, a baselayer, arm warmers, and a windbreaker! The sky was socked in with heavy clouds that never cleared, instead dropping a few isolated raindrops on riders partway through the course.

But worst of all was a cold north wind that blew steadily at 15 mph gusting to 21. It made the first third of the ride a slog before riders turned eastward, only to discover that the wind had shifted with them toward the northeast. We fought against the wind for about 70% of the ride.

But I’m getting ahead of my narrative. My problems began as soon as I parked the car. Somehow while donning my cycling kit, I managed to lose my cell phone. After considerable searching I enlisted another rider to try calling my phone number so that it would ring, only to realize that it was still silenced from the night before. At the last minute, I realized that it had somehow fallen down into the back of my bibshorts, where it was comfortably nestled between my cheeks! Good thing I had yet to jump onto my saddle! But that delay flustered me and put me under time pressure to get registered and line up for the start.

Not having time to go through my usual preride routine, I started noticing problems as soon as we rolled out. First was that my bike computer was displaying no heart rate data. That wasn’t a huge surprise, because my HRM had been complaining about low battery for days, and I was just waiting for it to run out completely before changing it. So its time had come, and I wasn’t going to bother fixing it until I got home. No heart rate data isn’t the end of the world.

But what would be the end of the world is having no power data. It seemed like my bike computer decided that if it couldn’t connect to my HRM, then it wasn’t gonna connect to anything at all. So the first few miles of my ride were spent fiddling in my Garmin’s menus to manually reconnect my power meter pedals, then again to connect to my electronic shifters.

At that point I thought everything was settled. I was wrong. A couple hours later, I noticed that my phone had made a couple notification chimes, but nothing had come up on my bike computer, and another light bulb went off. I had failed to open the Garmin Connect app on my phone, which meant I wouldn’t get phone notifications during my ride. Or weather updates. Or a lot of other useful information. So I spent another few minutes soft-pedaling while I opened the app and got that connected, too.

After 55 kilometers and more than two hours fighting the headwinds, I pulled into our second water stop in Granger and went to record my usual rest stop voice notes… but my phone’s screen was frozen. Unhappily, it refused to respond, and I could neither reboot it nor power it off without screen input. While not having voice notes isn’t the end of the world, I worried about what I would do if I couldn’t rely on Google Maps for the drive back to Austin!

Granger Dam reservoir on a grim day

Next, as I approached the third water stop, I started feeling a pain in my inner thigh, as if it was rubbing against something sharp with each pedal stroke. As it become more intense, I felt down there and discovered that there was a hole in my bibshorts. At the rest stop, I found the culprit; the hard plastic hook-side of the Velcro attaching my saddle bag to my seat post was sticking out, and had abraded my bib shorts. It had torn clean through them and started abrading my inner thigh, had ripped through my skin and muscle before opening a hole in my femoral artery, whereupon I died from blood loss. Well, maybe not that last bit, but after 16 thousand pedal strokes it sure hurt a lot, and now I have to throw away an otherwise good pair of $200 bibshorts.

After all these minor mishaps, I started getting jumpy, questioning every rattle coming from the bike as it traversed the rough roads of Texas farmland, vowing to hand-check every bolt after I got home.

But Pæthos held together and I completed the 100 kilometer course in 4h8m, which is very respectable given the pervasive headwind, with an average power of 151 Watts.

But lest any of us thought all my mishaps were over… When I packed up and drove off, our 2009 Accord started flashing a “check gas cap” warning. Yeesh! So that was my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

But stepping aside and reflecting, I’m still glad I did it. It was great to introduce myself to another popular local event. This one has a generally nice, flat route that briefly runs alongside the Granger Dam reservoir. And it’s a good season-opening metric century to build up a little training stress to start the year. For all these reasons, I was glad to have ridden it.

But from a course perspective, it was extremely similar to the Red Poppy Ride and the Fire Ant Tour. These events are all held in the flat farmlands north and east of Austin, presumably because the organizers think cyclists prefer avoiding the lumpier Hill Country to the west. However, they’re really only exchanging hills for brisk headwinds, which are just as physically demanding. So I’ve come to expect windy conditions on these rides, while casting a more interested eye toward any events being held to the west of here.

But despite the cool weather and misfortunes, I’d say Rosedale was a good ride and worth a place in the annual ride calendar.

In mid-October of 2000, I bought a bike: my Devinci Monaco. Although I’d done a little riding off and on before then, that’s the date I began logging how many miles I rode. And thus, I consider that the start of my career as an adult cyclist.

A little over 25 years later, today my cycling log ticked over 100,000 miles. Mathematically that averages out to 4,000 miles per year. Or roughly an hour-long, 11-mile ride, every single day for 9,226 consecutive days without break.

That may or may not sound like a lot to you. But as I said in my recent 2025 year-in-review, 100,000 miles is a common expected lifespan of a typical automobile. It’s the equivalent of riding around the Earth at the equator… four times. Or perhaps it’ll make sense if I tell you that it’s like traveling the whole Oregon Trail 46 times, without dying of dysentery!

Of course, it’s not that accurate a measurement. I did a bit of riding – on two previous bikes – before I started my mileage log, so those miles weren’t counted. And some of my riding – such as pre-ride warmups and pre-Zwift indoor trainer rides – never got logged. And all the miles I’ve done on Zwift are only estimates based on their rather optimistic algorithms. And 100,000 miles has no inherent meaning other than being a round number; if you converted that to 160,934 kilometers, then it doesn’t seem like a noteworthy milestone at all.

But despite the inaccuracy, I’m definitely in the ballpark, and 100,000 miles is my best estimate for my total distance as an adult cyclist.

Since that inaccuracy meant I couldn’t pinpoint a precise moment when it happened, I didn’t feel any pressure to commemorate it with some sort of memorable ride. Instead, I just watched my odometer until it ticked over on today’s lumpy but rather typical route into Austin’s Northwest Hills.

But this arbitrary number does capture how long I’ve been committed to cycling as a lifestyle. How many activities have you consistently stuck with for more than 25 years?

Yeah, cycling is a lifelong passion of mine, driven by several different, mostly-healthy obsessions. I will revisit the topic of motivation in full detail in an upcoming blogpo.

With my performance numbers undeniably in decline in recent years, and after my recent health scares, I can’t help but ask myself how much longer will I be able to ride.

The answer is, of course: no one knows. But every mile brings me one mile closer to the end. I try to keep that in mind, remembering that every ride is a treasure. And whatever adversity comes my way, I’ll do my best to “ride it out”…

Ornoth modeling the 2025 Team Kermit jersey.

Just as 2024 was all about my late-season stroke and return to fitness, 2025 was defined by my heart surgery in March, and my post-op recovery.

Happily, the procedure went well, and after a two-month break, I was able to resume training, taking three months to build up to a successful remote Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August, followed in November by the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge.

In the end, 2025 was a very successful year, and there were lots of milestones and noteworthy highlights along the way. Here’s my year-in-review post to distill it all down to a coherent narrative.

My Original 2025 Goals

Last December 31st, my 2025 New Year’s Eve began with a visit to my cardiologist to schedule my PFO closure heart surgery, which I learned would take place on March 7th. After that appointment, I drove home, finalized my list of cycling goals for the coming year, and posted them in my 2024 annual summary blogpost.

At that time – just months after my stroke and facing impending heart surgery – it was hard to commit to any concrete goals, but here’s what I thought made sense at this time last year, and how it played out.

Stroke & Cardiac Recovery

The Amplatzer Talisman Patent Foramen Ovale Occluder they implanted inside my heart!

Ornoth meets the sunrise, already four hours into his Day 1 PMC ride.

Taking a quick break as a freight train passes Austin's 1947 Amtrak station.

Obviously, my primary goal was to get back to full health and fitness following my heart surgery.

I was off the bike for 10 days surrounding the March procedure, and wasn’t allowed to do any meaningful training for another month. Although I hoped to recover as quickly as I could, it would be a long, gradual process, exacerbated by my bike being in the shop for an unexpected two weeks.

However, from today’s vantage point, it went miraculously well. Just 2½ months after resuming training, I was able to complete the Fire Ant Tour: a metric century. That gave me the confidence to register for my big remote PMC ride, which I completed in August. And in November I rode the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge, which I’d missed in 2024 due to my stroke.

It took me four or five months to get back to my normal level of fitness and endurance, but I’m as confident and capable as cyclist today as I was before my stroke, and that’s an immensely satisfying feeling.

My 19th Pan-Mass Challenge

Although I listed riding another PMC as one of my goals for 2025, it was with a humongous questionmark. Would it even be physically possible?

After surgery in March, I would have barely enough time to recover, train up to adequate physical fitness, and do the necessary fundraising work. Thankfully, I suffered no physical setbacks, and on PMC weekend I completed my usual two-day, 300 kilometer remote PMC ride. It was incredibly heartening to show that I’d overcome my health issues, and a poignant reminder of what a blessing it is to be able to spend a long day in the saddle.

Given the Trump administration’s 44% cuts to the NIH budget, this year’s PMC fundraising was more important than ever, and I brought in a post-hiatus and post-pandemic record of $9,450 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I chose to earmark 25% of my fundraising for the pediatric neurological cancer lab favored by Team Kermit, and the rest was unrestricted, so that DFCI can use it wherever it is most needed.

That’s all I’ll say about this year’s PMC. For my full writeup – plus my 5-minute highlight video – be sure to check out my 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge Ride Report.

And look below for my Goals for 2026 and some exciting news about next year’s PMC!

More, Better Videos!

In terms of video, I could have done better. I made limited use of the new selfie drone and its expanded capabilities, but I did capture a number of short video clips here and there.

On the plus side, I pushed out another 30-second PMC ride jersey reveal, produced another PMC ride video, and gathered many of my little clips into a second yearly highlights reel, which appears just below.

I hope to do even better next year, especially since I recently picked up a wireless DJI mic that’ll hopefully allow me to capture decent in-ride audio.

Some Anticipated Purchases

When I wrote last year’s goals, I was grasping for anything I could, so I included a “goal” of pulling the trigger on several planned upgrades. That was kinda lame, since I always devote an entire section of my annual review to stuff I’ve bought, anyways.

But briefly: I made those expected purchases, as well as several others. As expected, 2025 was an interesting year in terms of equipment; however, I’ll enumerate all that in detail in the “Noteworthy Purchases” section below.

But taken as a whole, while 2025 won’t top my list of greatest cycling achievements, I’m absolutely delighted by the success I’ve had in achieving these goals and exceeding the expectations I had, coming into 2025.

Highlight Video

Here we go: a quick 2½ minute look back at some of this year’s highlights (or at least the ones I got on camera).

For my Pan-Mass Challenge buddies, you might see how many different PMC jerseys you can count!

Charts

Let’s start this section with a new chart to understand how my cycling has changed in recent years. Here’s how many kilometers I’ve logged each year since getting back on the bike as an adult cyclist 25 years ago.

There are two things I want to call out. The first is that I’ve ridden considerably more each year after 2018. As you can see, that extra ~4,000 km per year is almost entirely attributable to Zwift and the indoor trainer I purchased at the end of that year. And that trend has surprisingly continued even after our 2023 move to Texas.

The second thing has to do with 2025 in particular. This year I logged 9,500 kilometers in the saddle, split pretty evenly between the indoor trainer (47%) and the open road (53%). It might not look like much on the chart, but despite losing a big chunk of time due to my surgery, I still rode more this year than any year since 2021!

Now let’s look at my cycling Fitness numbers, which only go back to 2011. Still, that’s a full 15 years of Fitness data, as you can see in the following chart.

Looking at this, I’d concentrate on the right half of the chart. 2017 was a normal year, but it ended with my only Dirty Dozen ride, which left me shattered, leading to a very mediocre 2018.

But at the end of 2018, I bought an indoor trainer, which allowed me to begin each spring at a higher level of Fitness, leading to higher summertime peaks. In terms of Fitness, the four years from 2019 through 2022 were my lifetime peak.

My most recent inflection point was at the end of 2022 when we moved to Austin. Two years ago I wrote a blogpost entitled “The Shape of Things to Come”, considering how my riding might change following the move. I expected my Fitness to be much more steady throughout the year, with fewer lows during the winter months and fewer peaks in the summer. And, as you can see above, that’s exactly how the past three years played out.

Now, let’s look more closely at 2025:

Having regained my Fitness following my stroke, and with heart surgery coming in March, I spent January and February doing as much cycling as I could and maintaining a fairly high Fitness level.

March and April show two consecutive dips in my Fitness, as I recovered from heart surgery and then sat around doing nothing while my bike was serviced. My Fitness plummeted to its lowest point since I bought my new bike three years ago.

In May, June, and July, I was committed and focused on steadily rebuilding my Fitness in time for August’s two-day Pan-Mass Challenge. I was overjoyed to complete it, which also marked my maximum Fitness of the year.

For the rest of 2025, I tried to keep my Fitness at a reasonably high level, including a secondary peak leading up to November’s Livestrong Challenge century. Then things fluctuated a bit in December, while I recovered from a pulled hamstring and broken toe.

The Centuries

Crossing the finish line after 100 miles of the Livestrong Challenge.

Last year, I wrote that – due to my age and health issues – I might have ridden my last 100-mile ride. I’m happy to tell you it wasn’t true. This year I trained back up and knocked out two imperial centuries. You already know what they were, but here are my ride reports:

• 8/3: Remote PMC Day 1 Century This year’s Pan-Mass Challenge was my 111th imperial century and a signal accomplishment in my recovery from stroke and heart surgery.
• 11/2: Livestrong Challenge A full year after my stroke, I enjoyed a triumphant return to the Livestrong Challenge, capping an insanely busy week that included a big concert the night before my 112th 100-mile ride.

My Year in Zwift

For the first time since the COVID lockdown, I rode nearly as many kilometers on my indoor trainer using Zwift as I did outdoors. And because Zwift usually gives me several things to talk about, I’m going to put all the Zwift-related business into this new section. And since there’s so much of that this year, I’m just gonna do bullet points.

Modeling the Level 100 jersey in front of Zwift's Austin-inspired 360 Bridge.

Ornoth (in his Didi the Devil cap) leading the PMC group ride on Zwift.

• I started the year at XP Level 81 and successfully made my way to Level 100, which is the highest you can go… for now! This was a huge achievement that was 7 years and 34,000 kilometers in the making (see blogpo).
• When I reached Level 85, Zwift sent me a free pair of Zwift Play controllers, which replaced my old ones that had been malfunctioning. But Zwift also decided to stop making them.
• Zwift started granting experience points for regular outdoor rides, with four outdoor kilometers earning the same XP as one km in Zwift. Yaay!
• Zwift held big events to introduce major expansions and new routes in France and New York City, plus a handful of miscellaneous other routes.
• By completing the “Tour Fever” Climb Portal challenge, I earned a full Didi the Devil cycling kit. While I usually wear the in-game PMC kit, my avatar still wears the skullcap with devil horns from the Didi kit.
• Zwift introduced a handful of new in-game bikes, but also implemented ways for users to earn five levels of upgrades for their bikes, and the ability to unlock (frankly stupid looking) “halo” bikes.
• They also introduced a major new long-term challenge: the Factory Tour, which eventually unlocks “lightning socks”.
• Zwift also finally added TSS points, Fitness, and Form charts and trendlines: the same data I’ve tracked and charted for the past 14 years.
• They also replaced the beloved double-XP Tour of Watopia with a new Zwift Unlocked Tour. It still grants 2x XP, but they moved the time frame from late winter (when you’re building fitness for spring) to mid-autumn (when you should be relaxing), which is disappointing.
• The PMC’s Zwift group rides decreased from weekly to monthly, and moved to 7am on Saturdays. Not a huge fan, but we’ll make it work somehow.

All this (plus the XP bonus for keeping a weekly ride streak alive) actually kept me Zwifting throughout the summer, when I would normally put the indoor trainer away. There’s no denying that Zwift has been a major contributor to both my recovery from medical issues and my overall fitness each year since 2019.

Noteworthy Purchases

It was a good year for shopping, and there’s a lot to cover. To conserve spacetime, let’s divide this year’s purchases into two groups and just list them out.

First the new kit:

• Two pair of Craft bibshorts, which were discounted by 20% after I talked with customer support
• A new pair of Shimano SD501 cycling sandals to replace my old ones
• The 2025 Team Kermit cycling jersey
• Of course, the 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge jersey
• A blue & gold Reggie Miller “BoomBaby” cycling jersey
• Doublewide wrist sweatbands for Zwifting and occasional outdoor use; although I never used to sweat, having it running down my arms has been a problem since moving south!

A lot of my cycling equipment purchases were covered in my October blogpost “Rolling Resistance”, so here’s just a quick enumeration:

• My inexplicably slow and expensive tune-up included new brake pads, chains, bar tape, and cassettes (I erroneously ordered the 30-tooth version rather than the 34), and a long-awaited firmware update for my Di2 shifters.
• New Pirelli P-Zero clincher tires were great, if prone to cuts, but TPU plastic inner tubes proved completely unusable.
• Fanttik battery-powered pocket air compressor/inflator has been a lifesaver.
• I enthusiastically recommend the Rehook Tyre Glider to easily mount & dismount even stubborn tires; I will never ride without one!
• Replaced my outer chainring, after I bent the old one when I dropped the bike.
• Installed a pair of cheap but very useful plastic enlargers for the hidden buttons on my Di2 shifters.
• A new CamelBak Podium Ice water bottle (plus a new dishwasher to clean them!)
• DJI Mic Mini Bluetooth microphone to capture quality audio to go with the video I capture while riding (to debut next year).

Finally… This might be a bit odd, but it’s worth mentioning three products that I was eagerly awaiting, but did not purchase. Coincidentally, all three were announced on the same day: September 9th! Those were:

Wahoo Kickr CORE 2 indoor trainer

My original Kickr CORE – from 2018! – is still working fine after 34,000 simulated kilometers, and the new, revised version doesn’t have any compelling improvements, other than being $250 cheaper. It can wait.

Garmin Rally 210 SPD power meter pedals

Similarly, the second generation of my power meter pedals aren’t significantly better than my old ones, and come with a 10% price increase. Plus they’re a whopping 60% more expensive than Assioma’s equivalent power meter pedals! No thanks.

Garmin Edge 850 GPS bike computer

I’m a huge fan of advanced bike computers, but Garmin’s newest generation is a big step backward compared my two year old Edge 840. Garmin cut the battery life in half; they removed the solar charging feature; its weather maps are awkward and crash the unit; and they raised the price 30-40%! Those are the kind of “improvements” I can live without.

Additional Highlights

Riding past Salado Creek on the Volksride 100k.

Friday Truancy group ride on Austin's Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The Bicycle House ride regrouping at Walnut Creek Park.

Ornoth's 2025 cycling calendar/log.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what else stood out about 2025? Here’s a small handful of significant bits.

Outside of my centuries, I did a few noteworthy event rides. My first long ride after surgery was June’s Fire Ant metric century (my third year). And my late-season included doing the Barrow Volksride metric for the first time. And I made it out to the Circuit of the Americas F1 track once in May, just before they closed it up for the year (they didn’t open for their usual fall dates).

Between surgery, Zwift, and event rides, I didn’t do as many Friday Truancy group rides (about 20), and when I did I was mostly alone off the back, as I’m really not able to hold the pack’s pace anymore. But I tried a half dozen Saturday morning shop rides out of Bicycle House, and those went really well (except for having to get up at 6am on a weekend).

I also reported out on my experience consulting with a nutritionist, which was marginally useful.

In one of the more noteworthy developments, I finally canceled my paid membership on Strava, which is why you won’t see my “Strava Year in Sport” summary image for this year. Although they’re the default social network for cyclists, in recent years Strava has taken numerous corporate actions that are overtly hostile to their users. I complained about them in last year’s annual summary, and somehow it got even worse in 2025! Those actions have included: banning all users from posting any links in activities, comments, or posts; claiming ownership of users’ data; surprise price increases; lack of new feature development and bug fixes, especially on the website; drastically restricting their API and thereby breaking numerous popular third-party tools and services with no warning; and filing a frivolous lawsuit against Garmin – their closest business partner and number one data provider – for requiring the exact same data attributions that Strava themselves force on their third party developers. Strava’s corporate “leadership” is deluded, out of touch, and utterly out of control, and I (along with many other users) are done giving them money to enable their asinine, hostile behavior. Don’t let the door hit you in the face as we leave, Strava!

Blogposts

I only post about once a month, but when I do, my articles are kinda long and jammed with detail. Here’s this year’s inventory, in case you wanna dig deeper into any particular topic:

• 1/7: Rolling into 2025 (a notable update to my blog’s Fitness chart)
• 3/10: Special Operations (leadup to my heart surgery)
• 4/16: I Care About Nutrition (my experience consulting a nutritionist)
• 4/24: Rode to Recovery (my progress seven weeks after surgery)
• 5/1: Why Specialized? (why I ride their bikes)
• 6/2: Event-ful… Or Not (missed some events, made some others)
• 6/18: Adamant (my 3rd Fire Ant 100 km event)
• 8/18: 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge Reimagined (just the usual brief pointer to my full 2025 PMC ride report page)
• 10/5: Rolling Resistance (lots of new equipment, especially tires & tubes)
• 10/23: Volksriden (my first Barrow Volksride 100 km event)
• 11/13: Strong Living (my return to Austin’s Livestrong Challenge)
• 12/4: Zenturion (hitting the max Level 100 after 7 years of Zwifting)
• 12/31: 2025: Ya Gotta Have Heart (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

Goals for 2026

So that was 2025. Let’s talk about next year’s goals, because now that I’m fully back, there’s some big things I’m looking forward to. Let me share ’em with you…

Surpass 100,000 Adult Cycling Miles

In the arbitrary milestone category, I am about to surpass 100,000 miles of riding since I took up cycling as an adult back in 2000.

100,000 miles is a common lifespan of the typical family car. It’s the equivalent of riding around the Earth at the equator… four times. Or perhaps it’ll make sense if I tell you that it’s like traveling the whole Oregon Trail 46 times, without dying of dysentery!

That also means I’ve averaged nearly 4,000 miles a year for the past 25 years. That’s a measure of how devoted I’ve been to this particular pastime.

With good weather and only a couple hundred miles left to go, I ought to tick this one off soon. Look for a commemorative blogpo before the end of January.

Return to Boston to celebrate my 20th PMC and $150,000 in fundraising

Yes, it’ll be my 20th Pan-Mass Challenge. Yes, I’m coming back to Boston to do the in-person ride for the first time since 2014! It’ll be my 15th traditional PMC, having ridden my last five alone and remotely in Pittsburgh or Austin. And in 2026 the PMC will be inaugurating a new starting location in Worcester, rather than the traditional (and now former) start in Sturbridge. Very exciting!

Plus, I have a huge fundraising goal: to surpass a lifetime total of $150,000 raised for cancer research at the Dana-Farber. Raising the necessary $10,000 is a makeable stretch goal, and I’m asking you and all my amazing sponsors past and present to help. Plus if fundraising goes exceptionally well, it could also mark my return for a 10th year as a PMC “Heavy Hitter”.

The PMC has always been the most important highlight of my year, but next year’s PMC is going to be out-of-this-world special, and deeply emotional. I hope you will be part of it too, in one way or another!

Conclusion

So that’s 2025 in the books.

Starting with last year’s stroke, and through my heart surgery nine months ago, I had no idea whether I’d be able to continue riding. After eight long months of uncertainty, I’ve worked my way back to full fitness and proved that – even in my sixties – I’ve still got what it takes.

Despite my age and health challenges, 2025 was a surprisingly successful and memorable year, highlighted by covering more ground than any year since 2021, strong performances in my solo PMC and Livestrong century rides, tripping Level 100 in Zwift, raising another $9,450 for Dana-Farber, as well as all the other bits I’ve mentioned in this writeup.

After nearly a year of uncertainty, today life as a cyclist is pretty much back to normal again, and that’s an incredibly rewarding and reassuring feeling.

And it’s great to be able to look forward to an exciting 2026 season, featuring a very special trip back to Boston to ride and enjoy and celebrate my 20th Pan-Mass Challenge, with renewed confidence and free of worry.

Ready? Let’s do it!

Coming into the 2025 event, my history with the Livestrong Challenge was not pleasant. In 2023 I suffered mightily in extreme heat, puking my guts out just after completing the 100-mile route, then needing to call my partner to drive me home; all later documented in a blogpo entitled “It's Not Easy Being Green in the Face”. And in 2024 I had to cancel my ride, having been hospitalized with a stroke less than two weeks before the event. But in 2025, with all that behind me, would the third time be the charm?

Chilly, Foggy Morning in Austin

Team Kermit

Lined Up at Sunrise

Crossing the Finish Line

Greeted by Team Leader at the Finish

Ride 'Em Cowboy

One thing was certain: it was gonna be a hectic week. Within seven days of the ride, I observed my birthday, took my partner Inna to the airport for a 6-day trip and picked her up on her return, dealt with Halloween, voted in the state election, attended a baroque concert, waited for big news from the Pan-Mass Challenge’s record-setting check presentation ceremony, booked my hotel on Cape Cod for next year’s PMC, balanced riding in Zwift’s “Unlocked” series of rides with tapering my training, replaced my cell phone, and watched local team Austin FC’s brief run in the MLS Cup playoffs. That doesn’t even include the group rides and social events organized by my Team Kermit buddies who came down to Austin from New England, plus the seasonal daylight saving clock change and a big concert by Devo and the B-52s , both of which took place the night before the ride!

Anything else noteworthy in the lead-up? My training featured the Barrows Volksride 100k and the new Zwift Unlocked series of rides on the indoor trainer. But I was still iffy about whether I’d have the legs to do the 100-mile imperial century versus the 100-kilometer metric. It was also my first test of setting intermediate waypoints on my Garmin Edge bike computer, which worked marginally well (the waypoint list being useful, but the associated popup messages disappeared too quickly while riding). I also was shocked to learn that despite fielding over 500 riders, Livestrong hadn’t bothered to set up a “SAG” telephone number for riders who needed assistance on-route.

As usual, my Team Kermit buddies were down from New England, tho we were short a couple people I was looking forward to seeing. Sadly, I missed the team’s ride and meals on Thursday because I’d initially been left off the group emails.

Once that was corrected, I joined them on Friday for a ride out the Walnut Creek Trail, even though the 70 KM I accrued probably hurt my freshness form Sunday’s main event. Then Friday evening the team held an all-you-can-meat extravaganza at the Salt Lick BBQ joint way down in Driftwood.

Saturday I did all my prep and gathered my kit for the ride, then met the Kermits for packet pickup and a publicity photoshoot at Livestrong HQ. Then an early dinner of Thai food before heading down to the Devo & B-52s concert, where I basically spent a long 4½ hours standing around – including through a downpour and thunderstorm – the night before the ride! You can read about that here. That left me four hours to sleep – plus another hour gained thanks to the seasonal clock change! – before my pre-ride wakeup call.

Sunday morning I arose to dense fog and a chilly temperature of 10° C, so I added a base layer, arm warmers, and a windbreaker to my normal cycling kit. Since Inna was out of town, I drove myself down to the event, rather than endure a cold and time-consuming bike ride. Knowing I’d need space to store that extra clothing once the day warmed up, I decided to forego bringing my video selfie drone. But I got to the start, found my Team Kermit buddies, lined up with them in the VIP starting area, and kicked the ride off at 7:30am.

One of my goals was to start out at a relaxed pace, conserving some energy. In 2023, the combination of a fast start and extreme heat had taken an immense toll, as my pace faltered and slowed to a crawl as the ride wore on. By keeping a moderate pace, I hoped to avoid blowing up and beat that previous time.

But as soon as 25 KM in, I questioned that aspiration and the wisdom of doing the full 100-mile route. I was cold, sleep-deprived, dehydrated, poorly fueled, and not fully recovered from Friday’s 70 KM ride. I felt pretty lousy as I pulled into the Driftwood rest stop at 45 KM. However, I downed a banana and grabbed a couple chocolate chip cookies, and seemed to recover my strength. I was also buoyed as the skies cleared and the temperature rose.

Shortly after leaving that Driftwood stop, I picked up a wheelsucker, which would be the salient feature of the day. By riding just behind another cyclist, you can save anywhere from 15 to 35% of your power, so sitting on another rider’s wheel is a tactic for riders who want a brief rest. In pacelines, riders rotate from front to back, spending a little extra effort at the front in exchange for lots of time to rest in the protected draft of everyone else.

That wasn’t what my wheelsucker did, tho. He sat on my wheel for the next four hours, benefiting from my draft for 90 KM, without once taking a pull on the front. Through the next five rest stops, whether I stopped for 10 minutes or didn’t pull in at all, he remained glued to my wheel. To be fair, I didn’t complain – having no real reason to – and he did apologize, but it was kinda disconcerting nonetheless. I shrugged it off and just did my own ride, and when I took a little extra time to recover at the last rest stop, he finally chose to continue on without me.

As I mentioned above, one of my goals was to beat my 2023 time. While I started out slower this year, I figured I’d gain a lot of time in the latter half of the course, because in 2023 I’d slowed significantly as I fatigued, plus I had wasted a lot of time at rest stops, trying to recover. My theory more than proved out. Although I was 20 minutes behind my 2023 time in reaching the Driftwood stop, I’d begun pulling that back by the halfway point. And in the end I crossed the finish line at 2:08pm, beating my previous time by exactly an hour!

After the ride, I was in a much better physical state than I’d been in 2023. I grabbed my finisher’s medal, hung out to cheer the teammates who finished after me, and downed 4 slices of pizza and a couple cans of cola. In my email I found the announcement that this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge (which I’d ridden remotely) had donated a record $78 million to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And in another unexpected surprise, one of our Team Kermit riders won a gorgeous hand-built wooden kayak after entering the Livestrong raffle!

When the team eventually moseyed back to their hotel, I hopped back on the bike to ride an extra 11 KM. See, the Livestrong route is actually a little bit short of 100 miles, and I wanted to make sure I did a full century. Plus, during the ride I’d accidentally paused my bike computer’s activity for about 15 minutes, so my recorded mileage was short by another 7 KM. So I chose to ride a little extra, to avoid any controversy about my second 100 mile ride of the year and 112th in total. Only then did I pack up and head home for my appointment with a massage gun and a bowl of ice cream.

As I said at the top, it was an intensely hectic week, culminating with a difficult endurance event. But I came through it successfully, and felt really accomplished, as well as exhausted. I spent a little more social time with Team Kermit, and enjoyed a couple brief conversations with my grammar school buddy turned Livestrong board member, Scott.

It was an immense improvement over last year, when I had to cheer from the sidelines following my stroke, and over 2023, when I struggled to complete the ride before promptly retching liters of undigested sports drink into a handy trash bin. The 2025 Livestrong Challenge weekend was just as intense as those previous years, but it was memorable for far more positive reasons.

Back in June, on my third Bicycle House shop ride, I had a flat tire. Replacing my inner tube (plus a second tube and CO2 cartridge given to me by the ride leader) required a trip to the bike shop to replenish my parts inventory. In turn, that was an opportunity to finally try some changes to my wheel setup that I’d been considering for more than a year.

One change I made was simply making use of a new-ish tool that had been sitting in a drawer for months. I’ve struggled for years with how difficult it is to mount and dismount my tires, especially in a roadside repair. And recently moving to tighter-fitting “tubeless-ready” tires and wheels made that problem significantly worse.

The Tyre Glider is a little blue plastic device that makes both removing and installing tires considerably easier, replacing traditional tire levers and bulky tire jacks. After finally pulling mine out and putting it to the test, I can say it delivers on its promise. Not only can I get stubborn tires onto the rim, but I also don’t run the risk of puncturing brand-new inner tubes while mounting them. Two greasy thumbs-up!

Another item I’d been contemplating for years was a pocket-sized battery-powered inflator, which could replace both my frame pump and CO2 cartridges. These innovative little devices have become commoditized, and I used Amazon Prime Day to pick one up at 30% off. It’s the Fanttik X10 Ace Mini, from the same brand that makes the larger inflator I use for our car. While I haven’t used the Ace Mini a ton, my early results have been very positive.

Having struggled (as I said above) with mounting my tubeless-ready Continental GP5000 tires onto my rims, I’ve wanted to try a different brand, to see if they might go on easier. I’d heard positive things about Pirelli P-Zeros, and discovered that they still offered an expressly non-tubeless clincher version, which would be an easier fit. I picked up a pair of those and have been running them ever since. They feel great, and my only complaint is that they don’t seem quite as durable as other tires I’ve used.

At the same time, I also picked up some Pirelli TPU (plastic) inner tubes that I was eager to try. They are considerably lighter than traditional butyl rubber tubes, and are more manageable than the third alternative: latex tubes. A lot of riders keep TPU tubes as spares because they’re lighter and more compact, but I’d rather run TPUs all the time and have a reliable old butyl tube as my emergency backup.

Because I swapped tires and tubes at the same time, I can’t say whether the changes in my bike’s ride-feel were due to the P-Zeros or the TPU tubes… probably a combination. On top of that, the differences were pretty subtle, and I’m not the best at discerning minuscule differences in ride feel.

In comparison to my previous tires and tubes, it’s possible the new combination of P-Zeros and TPU tubes felt lighter, rode smoother, was a little quieter, held air a little better, and had a little less rolling resistance. But any difference was slight.

But there were two huge differences that were specific to the TPU tubes.

First was price. At around $30, each TPU tube cost three times as much as a butyl tube. We’re not talking huge dollars here, but for triple the price, I expected a vastly superior product.

And then there’s durability, which is where I’ve struggled to justify running TPU tubes at all, even though I really, really wanted to switch over to them. My first TPU tube lasted just 180 kilometers: 5 rides, or 8½ hours of ride time. The second went flat just 23 km into its first ride. The third didn’t survive 3 rides, or 86 km. That’s your three strikes; yer out.

So while running TPU tubes, I had 3 flats in 290 km; in contrast, my last butyl tube had served for more than 7,800 km! At that rate, I could run butyl tubes for $10 per year, or burn through $2,900 per year on TPU tubes!

The confounding thing is that those TPU flats were all on my rear tire, while the TPU tube I installed on the front has served flawlessly for more than 2,000 km! I guess the real test will be to move that tube to the rear wheel and see how much longer it lasts…

While I might prefer TPU tubes’ ride feel, they’re just not worth the cost, especially because TPU tubes just don’t work in real-life usage. End of experiment.

Before I close, I’ll share three other noteworthy purchases which don’t have anything to do with tires.

One was a set of plastic inserts from Risk that increase the size of the hidden buttons underneath Di2 shifter brake hoods. The stock buttons are really tiny, making them hard to activate. These simple inserts provide a larger active surface area, increasing the usability of those buttons. At $8 for four, they’re cheap, easy to install, and effective: just the kinda thing I like!

I also had to replace my big chainring, which was damaged during one of my many TPU flat repairs (long story). After I ordered the part, it took just 15 minutes for the Trek store to perform a while-you-wait installation. That’s a big improvement over the treatment I got at the Specialized shop earlier this year, which kept my bike for 15 days to do a simple tune-up!

And if you bike in Texas, you need to learn how to manage the copious amount of sweat you generate. So I’m currently testing the efficacy of double-width wrist sweatbands. So far, so good, but I’m afraid of getting even stupider (sic) tan lines, so we’ll see how that goes.

I might not have blogged much lately, but from an “equipment” perspective, it’s been an eventful summer!

Saturday’s Fire Ant Tour was an important ride. Most importantly, it was the longest ride I’ve done since my heart surgery back in March, and since my stroke last October. In fact, it was my first metric century since my solo PMC ride last August, and my first organized event ride since the 2024 Fire Ant Tour, a full year ago! On top of all that, this was my final opportunity to test my readiness before registration closes for this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge.

I’d already missed several other opportunities for long rides this spring, which I talked about in my previous update. But this post is about the ride I completed, so with all my hopes for a post-op recovery pinned on this event, how did it go?

Enjoying the scenery while earning mah kibble!

Looking strong crossing the line after 100 km.

Showing off a hard-earned finisher's medal.

The lead-in to the event was unsettled, in more ways than one. The weather was a little iffy after a week of scattered thunderstorms. In addition to my general health questions, I wasn’t sure I’d trained sufficiently. Then my final equipment check found a gouge in my rear tire that necessitated a swap back to an old tire I’d kept around.

I had concerns about the course, too. The organizers had tweaked the route, making it the event’s third different course in as many years. And at the last minute riders were warned that the local DPW had just resurfaced one of the final roads on the course with universally-hated chipseal.

Nonetheless, riders set out at 7:15am. My plan was to conserve energy by keeping my effort level moderate, around 130 Watts. And I closely monitored the estimate of my remaining stamina that my Garmin bike computer provided. In the end, that all worked out very well.

I also wanted to concentrate on fueling and hydrating more than usual, with mixed success. I managed to down a couple chocolate chip cookies at the rest stops, but completely forgot to take any of the electrolyte supplements I’d brought.

Having learned from previous editions, I’d expected challenging weather, specifically, hot and very windy conditions. The morning began with ideal conditions: 22°, with overcast skies, and no wind to speak of. As the sun climbed, the clouds gradually burned off, temperatures jumped to 30°, and the wind picked up, coming out of the south at 20 km/h and gusting to 31. But that was still kind of benign as compared to previous years.

The route began with a familiar 40 km loop, which went by quickly due to strong legs, light winds, and moderate temperatures. That was followed by a new 40 km out-and-back on FM 215 that illustrated how much impact the wind had. With a tailwind on the northbound leg, I averaged 123W for 47 minutes; but returning against the wind, I had to average 126W for 65 minutes to cover the same distance. Despite sustaining more power for an additional 18 minutes, I went 7.3 km/h slower heading south!

After nursing it home for the final 20 km, I crossed the finish line at 11:50am with 101 km under my belt.

The ride was a little challenging, mostly because I just wasn’t fully trained up for that distance yet. But thanks to the weather I wasn’t quite as thoroughly wiped as I’ve been in previous years. Taking into account my comeback from stroke and heart surgery, as well as my incomplete training, I was extremely happy with my performance.

Most noteworthy, this has cleared the way for me to finally register for my remote Pan-Mass Challenge ride, confident that I can at least put in a creditable performance to “earn” my sponsors’ donations for cancer research at the Dana-Farber. The scary part is that PMC weekend is only six weeks away, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for fundraising and long training rides… Yikes!

I can’t finish this ride report without covering the rest of my day. After happily completing my first cycling event in more than a year, I picked up a very nice finisher’s medal before heading back to Austin. After the drive home, I filled up on fresh strawberries and some Ben & Jerry’s mint Oreo cookie ice cream, followed by two trips to our free and shockingly uncrowded neighborhood swimming pool (after a thunderstorm caused that interruption). It was one of those idyllic, self-indulgent summer days that you dream about.

I hope that sets the tone for the rest of the year!

For whatever reasons, a lot of people dislike the major bicycle manufacturers. I’ve ridden Specialized bikes for two decades now, and one question I haven’t talked about is: “Why Specialized”?

So I wrote this big long essay following my progression as a cyclist over time and describing all my bikes and how much I used them and… never got around to answering the question.

So instead of a multi-volume encyclopedic life history, how about I just answer the goddamned question?

Episode One: The Plastic Bullet

The Plastic Bullet at the 2007 PMC.

I bought my first Specialized bike in 2005. At that point, I’d already ridden five Pan-Mass Challenge charity rides, and was a regular at Bobby Mac’s long group rides out of Quad Cycles. I’d transitioned into a committed endurance cyclist, after having started out as a short-distance bike commuter.

But that transition wasn’t something that suited my straight-bar hybrid commuter bike. I needed something faster, lighter, and more aerodynamic; something as zippy as the typical racing road bike but more comfortable, tailored for epically long days in the saddle. But no one sold such a thing!

Enter Specialized, who had just designed a carbon fiber bike that was fast enough for pro racing, but more reliable and forgiving in the cobblestone-strewn European spring classics races. They gave it a longer wheelbase, more front fork rake, and elastomer inserts to produce a smoother ride. In their new Specialized Roubaix, they had created the first bike in a whole new category: performance endurance bikes.

When I wanted a bike that combined top performance with all-day comfort, Specialized was the only company that could meet my needs. And the Plastic Bullet delivered on its “performance endurance” reputation, accompanying me through 7 PMCs, 30 imperial centuries, and 35,000 kilometers.

Episode Two: R2-Di2

R2-Di2 at Boston’s Charles River Esplanade

Fast-forward seven years, and it was time to replace my trusty steed. Other manufacturers had introduced their endurance bikes, and I had grown into a discriminating roadie, so I took the time to test-ride eight different bikes.

However, nothing held a candle to the fourth-generation Roubaix, which was lighter, stiffer, and came with Shimano’s Di2 electronic shifting. Specialized was still the undisputed king of the performance endurance category.

Besides being my top pick, Specialized offered me a 20% manufacturer’s discount on the new Roubaix. By offering me an amazing bike at an amazing price, they ensured I’d be a loyal Specialized rider for the next chapter in my cycling career.

And R2-Di2 delivered in spades. Together over 10 years, we ticked off 45,000 kilometers, 59 imperial centuries, and another 6 PMC rides… PLUS 22,000 virtual kilometers on the indoor trainer, along with 13 Zwift centuries!

Episode Three: Pæthos

Pæthos at Austin’s Redbud Isle

I was already delighted with Specialized, but when R2 finally came down with a fatal crack in the frame, they blew me away.

First, they have a discounted replacement plan for frames that break after their 2-year warranty expires. That’s pretty cool to begin with.

Unfortunately, that coverage stops after five years, and R2 was a decade old. But after they inspected my bike, they not only included me in the program, but offered me the 35% discount that you’d only get for a bike that was less than three years old! Imagine trading in a 10 year old bike and getting $2,500 toward a brand new model. Wow!

My only hesitation was that over that decade, the Roubaix had forgotten its “performance” heritage and evolved into a gimmicky, cushy family cruiser that no longer suited me. When I asked if I could apply the replacement discount to a different model… No problem! So they let me order an Æthos, their lightweight climbing race bike. Yay!

But there was a problem. This was toward the end of the Covid pandemic, when bike inventory had all been bought up, and the whole industry’s supply chain was in ruins. There was only one Æthos in my size left in the entire country, and it was in a bike shop in Denver, Colorado. But my incredibly responsive rep persuaded them to surrender it and ship it down to Austin for me.

So although I lost a very dear friend in my 2013 Roubaix, Specialized gave me an upgrade to an amazing, brand-new Æthos at an unbelievable price. I hope to put my new Pæthos through the wringer, too!

The Bottom Line

So to finally answer the question…

I ride Specialized because their products have been excellent: well-designed, durable, and suited to my needs as a devoted endurance cyclist.

While I’ve come to expect petty greed from big corporations, Specialized has been shockingly generous with me, offering huge discounts well in excess of their corporate policies.

And beyond all that, they’ve been stunningly friendly and flexible, letting me apply my frame replacement discount to a different model, and then helping me track down and acquire the solitary bike in the country that fulfilled my needs.

Buying my first Specialized Roubaix road bike filled me with excitement and delight. That joy has stayed with me through three bike purchase cycles, over 100 imperial centuries, and more than 100,000 kilometers of riding. And Specialized’s bicycles and their treatment of me as a customer have been a significant part of the delight and enjoyment I’ve gotten throughout 20 years of cycling. Thank you, and well done!

The only area where they’ve disappointed me is in not offering more paint schemes or a custom paint program. You’d think that after 50 years in business, they would have figured that out. How about it, Spesh?

For reasons I’ll explain in a second, improving my diet became a critical consideration following my stroke. But I had lots of questions about the areas where healthy eating directly conflicts with sports nutrition’s best practices for endurance athletes. I decided to get answers from a professional, and this blogpost summarizes what I got out of consulting a nutritionist for the first time in my life.

This is one of those posts where it’s not clear whether it belongs on my general blog or here on my cycling-specific blog. Since I came at this from a cyclist’s perspective, I decided to post it to the latter, so that other cyclists would more readily find it. But most of this is equally relevant to my non-cycling readers.

Where I Started

The statistics say that 25 percent of stroke survivors will have a second stroke. And, according to the hospitalist who was in charge of me during my hospitalization, the greatest determinant of whether you have another stroke is diet. Survivors who didn’t change to a heart-healthy diet had the most readmissions, in contrast to those who took dietary advice to heart.

What did she specifically advocate? This:

• Reduce inflammation and chances of developing diabetes by cutting intake of simple sugars
• Reduce cardiac risks by limiting dietary fat intake, especially saturated and trans fats
• Avoid hypertension by reducing intake of table salt and highly processed foods
• Maintain healthy blood volume by staying fully hydrated

That was the first advice I got following my stroke, and – as a Type A personality and someone with an intense fear of stroke – I took her opinions extremely seriously. Even though I’m significantly younger, healthier, and more active than most stroke survivors, improving my diet seemed, at that time, to be a matter of life and death.

However, as an endurance cyclist, two of those strictures are problematic for me. Simple carbs are the preferred and primary fuel for athletes; would I be risking my health by continuing to emphasize them in my diet? And it’s pretty hard to avoid chronic dehydration if you’re riding hard in the Texas sun for a multiple hours every day.

Although I’ve stayed on top of changing dietary recommendations for decades, these contradictory needs convinced me that it would make sense to consult a nutritionist for the first time in my life.

Another factor is that I was very concerned about weight loss. From 2011 through 2022, my body weight stayed in a narrow range, mostly between 76 and 79 kg, averaging out at 77.3. But in the last five months of 2022 I suddenly and inexplicably dropped 6½ kilos (15 lbs). I gained about half of that back, but then lost another 3½ kg in the weeks following my stroke, bringing me down to an adult-era low weight of 71.2 kg (157 lbs). A nutritionist could help me figure out how to stem my ongoing weight loss while simultaneously cutting both carbohydrates and fat out of my diet.

More Medical Advice I Got

I’ve already outlined the alarmist attitude that my hospitalist instilled in me right after my stroke, and where that advice led me.

But I immediately started getting contradictory advice from every other healthcare provider I talked to.

A week after my stroke, I had a followup with my family physician, who told me that nutrition was a long-term concern and not to overdo any drastic changes to my diet. But as a PCP he’s a generalist, so I remained skeptical, while making sure I got a referral to a nutritionist out of him.

A week after that, I had a followup with my neurologist, whose attitude was that nutrition is just about general health and preventing blood clots, which is more of a cardiologist’s domain.

It took another month before a long-awaited meeting with my cardiologist. His attitude was another surprising counterpoint to the hospitalist. He also claimed that diet is purely a long-term concern, saying both “Go eat a pizza if you want,” and “Eating heart-healthy is not the most pleasant thing.”

After all that, I really didn’t know what to think. The obvious consensus was that diet wasn’t the smoking gun that the hospitalist had portrayed. But it was still hard for me to cast aside her staunchly-held opinion, since it was the only obvious thing that I could control.

But maybe my nutritionist would provide a decisive opinion…

My Nutritionist Experience

I’ve never really thought of nutritionists as a highly skilled profession. As I see it, there are two main aspects to the job.

One part is staying up-to-date on the ever-changing “science” – separating genuine dietary knowledge from the deluge of biased pseudo-science – and distilling that down into a form that’s digestible for their uninformed clients.

This would be of some benefit to me. Having paid attention to sports nutrition for 25 years, I’m pretty well-informed. But I’m less up-to-date on heart- and health-related topics, and never had to deal with problematic weight loss. And it’d be nice to get the current scoop on perpetual debates like “Are eggs good or bad?” and “Which is healthier: butter or margarine?”

The other – and possibly larger – aspect to the job is similar to that of a therapist: talking with clients and trying to manage them into growing the self-discipline required to make lasting dietary changes.

As I mentioned above, I’m a Type A; I don’t need external support once I’ve decided to change my behavior. So the coaching aspect of the nutritionist’s job is really of no value to me.

The most valuable and immediate advice she game me was when she confirmed what my other healthcare providers had said: that I didn’t need to approach dietary changes with a crisis response and rigidity, and that no one individual choice is gonna kill you. I didn’t need to eliminate all fats and simple carbs from my diet, after all. I was already living a pretty healthy lifestyle, and the emphasis should be on fitting increasingly beneficial habits into a healthy diet whose results compound over time.

But beyond that high-level advice, after four meetings in five months, I’m still not convinced that a nutritionist brings a ton of expertise and value to the table. My nutritionist mostly just repeated standard advice that variety is most important and that even “bad” foods are okay when taken in moderation.

At the same time, I don’t want to sell her short. I did get some novel, useful information from her that manifested in some dietary changes I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. So let’s take a look at those…

Specific Dietary Recommendations

It’s pointless talking about the changes I’ve made without first reviewing my diet prior to my stroke. After all, I made a number of significant improvements over the years, and those remain a noteworthy part of the overall equation. Here are some positive features of my baseline diet that I’ve observed for some time:

• Daily multivitamin and psyllium husk fiber supplements
• Replace full- and low-fat milk with fat-free/skim
• Virtually eliminate beef intake
• Never, ever add salt to anything (except corn on the cob)
• Cook at home; eating out is a rarity
• Emphasize broccoli as my primary leafy vegetable
• Replace ice cream with sorbet/sherbet or fruit pops
• Replace high-fat sauces like alfredo with low-fat tomato sauces like marinara
• Keep an eye on the ever-changing recommendations regarding eggs, butter vs. oil-based spreads, etc.
• Reduce or eliminate soft drink intake, replace with fruit juices like OJ, apple cider, lime- and lemonade, and fruit punch
• No significant intake of caffeine outside of major events and medicinally
• No alcohol in any form, ever, period

Even after accepting that the hospitalist’s alarmist warning was misguided, I still wanted to make incremental improvements to my diet. Specifically, I wanted to reduce fats, sodium, and simple carbs (beyond my athletic needs). Between my own research and input from my nutritionist and cardiologist, I’ve landed on the following new guidelines:

• Daily statin prescription to keep cholesterol down, even tho my numbers were never high
• Daily Omega-3 fatty acid supplements (algae-based rather than fish oil)
• Whey protein isolate powder supplement
• Eliminate or curtail high-fat foods, particularly commercially-prepared baked goods, cocoa, frozen pizza, etc.
• Read labels to select lower-fat chocolate candies, and healthier salty snacks that are baked or use healthier oils like avocado
• Reduce overall cheese intake, and use 2% milkfat cheese over full-fat
• Sauté and stir-fry in avocado oil rather than corn or peanut oils (it has a higher smoke point than olive oil)
• Substitute ground turkey and pork for ground beef
• Supplement wheat-based pastas with lentil-based
• Favor lower-sodium soups like corn chowder; at some point start making my own soups
• Expand meal repertoire by reintroducing or increasing things like:
  • Boiled chicken
  • Oatmeal (with raisins, sunflower seeds, and dried fruits)
  • Baked beans
  • Mashed potato
  • Sweet potato
  • Nuts, especially hazelnuts
  • Apples

Conclusion

Despite having a longstanding interest in sports nutrition, I never bothered consulting a nutritionist until now. I always doubted whether a nutritionist could add any useful information beyond what any self-educated layman could glean from readily-available public sources.

After a 5-month engagement, I mostly stand by that opinion, although it does need to be refined. My nutritionist helped refute the bad advice I got, and provided some suggestions that were truly useful. But those were largely tactical adjustments, rather than significant course changes. So she definitely did add value… just perhaps not as much as I had hoped for from a licensed medical professional.

I’d be temped to conclude that it wasn’t worth the money, but my health insurance covered the entire tab! All it cost me was time, so in that respect I got way more valuable insights than I paid for.

But I’m still skeptical about whether consulting a nutritionist is worth it for most cyclists or your average non-cyclist. If you have a very particular situation, like I did, then perhaps it would be. But if you’re interested enough to have questions about nutrition, you’re probably also motivated enough to find the answers for yourself, rather than pay someone else to do it for you. A nutritionist really isn’t privy to any information that can’t be found elsewhere.

It absolutely does make all kinds of sense for a cyclist to learn the basics of sports nutrition, and there’s no shortage of available material. For myself, my bookshelf includes the fairly lightweight “Bicycling Magazine’s Nutrition for Peak Performance” by Ed Pavelka, and the more comprehensive “Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes” by Monique Ryan. But these days there’s ample other sources, too.

That’s it! Now let’s go eat to ride, and ride to eat!

This one’s just a minor but significant (to me) blog update. It’s not really even worth bringing others’ attention to it, except that I’m pleased with how I was able to make it work. So what is it?

Yawl know that there’s a sticky/pinned post pinned to the top of my blog with charts that track my Fitness as of my most recent ride.

And one of those charts has always shown my Fitness for the current calendar year.

The problem was: when the year is new (like it is now), that chart would be mostly empty, and it would take weeks or months for it to show any kind of meaningful data.

The obvious solution was to stop segmenting the chart by calendar year, and instead have it show my Fitness over a rolling 12-month period, kinda (exactly) like what you see below. That way it always shows a full year’s worth of data, with new data being added every day, and old data points rolling off.

Setting this up to happen automatically – without any user intervention – required a little tech wizardry to implement, but it’s now done and live on that pinned Up-To-Date Fitness Charts posting. I think it’s a nice little enhancement, and just wanted to call it out so that folks can take note of it.

Here’s what it looks like: