Stand Down Margaret

[ornoth_cycling]

Summer is behind us, and the 2020 cycling season (such as it was) is ending.

It’s still too early to close the books on 2020, but I can get you caught up on where things stand a couple weeks into Q4.

My last post was my ride report from a September 2th indoor century: my eleventh Zwift “Zentury” of the year. At that point, I planned to simulate two more real-world centuries on the indoor trainer: the traditional autumn Pedal the Lakes ride up in Mercer County; and the Epic Tour, which was originally going to be an international gathering of Herd team members up in Toronto.

However, a week later, my eight year old MacBook Pro started acting up, necessitating its replacement, and postponing those two big indoor rides.

On the upside, my brand-new laptop bumped Zwift’s graphics quality up from “high” to “ultra”, and also increased its frame rate from 10-20 to 50-70 fps.

But the downside was that — due to Apple’s terrible hardware, software, and service — it took three weeks to get my new laptop up and running. That pause blew a hole in my Zwift-based event plan, while my training and fitness levels dropped.

Meanwhile, I reconsidered whether I wanted to do those rides this late in the season. After eleven century-plus rides in seven months, I’m happy taking a break and doing a few shorter rides outdoors, before dwindling sunlight and autumn temps take hold.

Stopping also makes sense for next year’s plan. You see, as far as I can tell from my records, I’ve completed 97 century-plus bike rides. By ending the season now, I can save two indoor Zenturies for next season's preparation, then do a celebratory outdoor 100th century in the spring. That sounds great to me!

So with no more big rides, I’ve been toodling around on short outdoor rides, enjoying the warm weather and my remaining cycling fitness. Like last year, October and November will comprise my “off-season”, before I go back to indoor trainer workouts in December and January.

Having completed only one outdoor ride longer than 40 miles, 2020 has been a very strange year, but not uneventful. Although many of my achievements have been virtual or simulated, I kept at it, and retained good fitness for my age, despite the ongoing Coronavirus lockdown.

Now it’s time to relax and reflect: putting words and images together for my end-of-year wrapup blogpo, and adding next year’s big rides onto my cycling calendar.