Orny's Cycling Journal

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?

… the season for a rambling update, because I haven’t shared anything since early September other than turning sixty, which you can read about here. So what has been going on? Let’s see…

As alluded to in my Livestrong Challenge blogpo, Specialized warranty replaced my rear wheel’s carbon rim after a nasty rock strike in the aforementioned ride. Summarizing my feelings about that:

Feeling ballsy

Friday Truancy ride

Tour of Watopia celebration

Zwift PMC group rides resume!

Zwift fondo series returns

• Boy, am I glad I wasn’t running a tubeless setup, because my day would have irrecoverably ended right there. Thanks to my butyl inner tube, I continued riding without getting a flat. I didn’t even notice the break until I got home!
• My first carbon wheel lasted just six months, or about 4,000 KM. That’s disappointing, unacceptable, and bullshit.
• It took Spesh four weeks to replace the rim, which meant I was off the bike for a whole month during peak riding season. I need to remember that I have recourse to my indoor trainer and my folding clown bike.

In other news, I’ve purchased a couple new goodies. First is a cycling jersey from the Buddhist Bicycle Pilgrimage: a two-day northern California ride that I rode back in 2012. Read about that whole trip here.

Of greater impact (pun intended) is my one noteworthy birthday present: an Ekrin Bantam cordless vibrating mini massage gun, nicknamed my “Fun Gun”. I’ve long had lingering calf pain during training season, and addressed it by doing tapotement, a Swedish massage technique that involves rhythmically rapping on the muscle with one’s knuckles. Now I’ve got a portable device that can do that work for me, and so far I adore it.

If nothing else, this has been an excellent year for cycling purchases, as I’ll detail in my usual year-in-review at the end of the month.

On a less satisfactory note, the name decals I crowed about in this post failed miserably by de-laminating. I suspect the Texas heat got ‘em, but the manufacturer asserted that my carbon frame’s coating was still “off-gassing”. We’ll see, as I have reapplied a second set of decals.

And speaking of the heat, it got cold fast! We were in full-on summer mode until October 29th, when a strong cold front blew in and dropped temps from about 22°C to 13°C in about an hour, ushering in certifiably cold nights and cool days. Not ideal for riding the stationary trainer in an unheated garage! But other than that cold snap, the weather’s been pleasantly seasonable.

But that brings us reluctantly back to Zwift and the indoor trainer. Anticipating a warmish Texas autumn, I wanted to avoid the trainer and ride outside as much as possible. But then temperatures dropped, Zwift released some nice new roads, the Pan-Mass Challenge’s online group rides started up again, and Zwift moved the always-tempting “double XP” Tour of Watopia from March to October. So even though the weather was often fine for riding outdoors, I put the bike up on the trainer and started riding indoors again.

This year I rode 19 Tour of Watopia stages (plus two half-stages) totaling 950 KM. In the process I hit XP Levels 57 and 58, with new route badges giving me a head start on the road toward Level 59, which I will achieve this month. This year Zwift only awarded double XP the first time you completed a Tour of Watopia stage, but no one stopped you from almost completing one multiple times! In addition to the usual, regularly-scheduled group rides, this year you could also complete stages on your own schedule as free rides.

Then today – December 3th – I celebrated five years and 25,000 KM on Zwift by repeating one of my very first Zwift rides: their December fondo.

Thanks to my recent riding, I’m feeling strong and have regained all the fitness I lost during that month-long break due to my broken rim.

For the remainder of the year, I’ll be focused on reaching my 8,000 KM distance goal, trying to decide what I’ll do for the 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge, and putting the final touches on my inescapable annual year-in-review blogpo.

Sunday was my third century of the year – the PMTCC 3-State Century – and for the first time in five tries, it wasn’t boiling hot. My previous editions were in 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2021.

I left the house at 5:45 to get to Neville Island for check-in and a planned 7am depart. It was a pleasant 17° and overcast, and I chatted with riding buddies Phil and Gary and Oscar as we waited for the group to roll out.

Ornoth & Phil at Tomlinson Run SP

Phil, Ornoth, & Gary at the start

Phil on Longs Run Rd

Ornoth & Phil receive their finishers' medals!

Immediately after crossing the Ohio River backchannel into Coraopolis, the shorter metric century riders split off from the few of us who were doing the full imperial century. Although the organizers said there were fourteen registered, our initial group numbered just seven – including Phil and I – and that was reduced by one when the sole woman in our group fell off the pace on the first climb.

The first leg was identical to last year’s route, featuring a stupidly hilly 22 KM loop up the ridge into Moon and back down a screaming descent back to Coraopolis before going downriver a bit and climbing right back up and over the ridge to the first rest stop.

We pulled in with 40 KM complete in 2¼ hours. I shed my arm warmers, hit the porta-potty, downed some chips, and the only sport drink they had on hand: Gatorade Zero. Why the hell would you offer a zero-calorie sport drink on a hundred mile bike ride?

After the rest stop came the first of two route changes for this year. Instead of staying on Route 151 / Bocktown Road, the route took Longs Run Road, a back road that paralleled it for about 6 KM. It was heavily wooded and scenic, with huge imposing cliffs looming over the road at one point, but much of it had degraded into loose gravel, so it was slow going on a road bike.

We returned to Bocktown Road briefly before turning onto busy Route 30 and passing the highest point on the route, which was followed by the second, larger change from last year. Last year we left Route 30 and cut across West Virginia to New Cumberland and then up the Ohio River; this year we didn’t quite go that far, instead riding down Gas Valley Road to Tomlinson Run State Park, then riding back up to Route 30.

The transition from Pennsylvania’s terrible roads into West Virginia was just as noticeable as last year, although the roads inside the state park were still pretty bad. We circumnavigated the pond that was the park’s central feature and I got a selfie with Phil (top), whom I’d been riding with all morning. We made our way back up to Route 30 and had just started down to screaming descent into Chester WV when I took a big, black bug right on the bridge of the nose.

We pulled into the “World’s Largest Teapot” rest stop at 10:47am with 82 KM complete. We were making good time and it was still only 22° and windless, making for ideal riding, even if the lack of sun made it less than spectacular visually. Like last year, all the climbing came in the first half of the ride, so it would all be flat and easy on the back half as we made our way upstream along the Ohio River. We had leapfrogged the other four century riders from time to time, and since the metric riders had passed through earlier, there weren’t many other riders behind us. Unfortunately, the rest stop was out of everything but water, which is just about the only thing that could be worse than Gatorade Zero!

The third segment featured the same terrifying crossing high over the Ohio River on the decrepit Newell Toll Bridge as last year. The less said about that the better; if you’re curious, go back and read last year’s ride report. I want to block it out of my memory as quickly as humanly possible. Then 8 KM of lousy Ohio roads were followed by 7 KM of terrible Pennsylvania roads before we pulled into the Subway lunch stop in Midland PA. It was 11:50am and I felt it could begin sprinkling at any minute. I dumped the water out of my bidon and replaced it with cola, downed a small meatball sub, and wistfully deferred getting a Dilly Bar from the Dairy Queen that shared the building.

From there it was up along River Ave in Beaver and back across the river into Monaca. After a two-minute rest we headed down the high-speed Route 51 highway, where Phil did a good portion of the pulling. I was just starting to feel the effort in my knees and neck, but was only just starting to tire. Then back across the river into Ambridge and our final rest stop at Sweetwater Bikes. We’d covered 133 KM in 6½ hours, and it was still a pleasant 25°, although we’d felt the first sprinkles as we were crossing the bridge. A mini cinnamon bite and more pointless Gatorade Zero, and we were back on the road.

The drizzle kept coming off and on as we made our way through Sewickley, across the Ohio once more into Coraopolis, then back across the backchannel to Neville Island and our starting point. But we were far from done. In order to add mileage, the official route did a big extra 9 KM loop around the heavily-industrialized island. But even then, we’d still be short of the official 100-mile mark, so Phil and I planned to keep going until we could claim an official century, even if the rain had picked up and we were both wet and dirty.

And so, with just 8 KM left to go, I found myself rolling along at speed, crossing the fourth or fifth set of train tracks on the island. But this one crossing featured big, wide, deep rail beds. I tried to jump the gaping holes, but you can’t jump three sets of rails, and I came down and hit the edge of one of the cement rail beds hard, causing a slowly-leaking pinch flat.

Fifteen minutes of wet, grimy work later, Phil and I had replaced and re-inflated my rear inner tube, after discovering that my spare tube was defective. Between the rain and my flat, it was a frustrating end to what had otherwise been a good day. We finished the “official” route by going back to the start, where I pulled my floor pump out of the car and topped up my tire while Phil got our finishers’ medals from the organizers.

Then we set off for a second loop around the island to complete our century. The sprinkles had stopped and the roads were drying out. We ticked over 100 miles almost exactly at the place I’d flatted on our previous circuit, then rolled back to the cars to pack up and head home. 164 KM at a 24.4 KM moving average and 1,524 meters of climbing. Although we’d completed the ride in 6:43 moving time, it was 3:15pm, so we’d been gone nearly 8¼ hours of clock time thanks to my flat, the long stops, the climbing, and the rain.

Thanks to the moderate temperatures, I finished feeling very comfortable and strong, which bodes well for next weekend’s remote Pan-Mass Challenge rides. My only physical complaint is a blister I gained on top of my left foot, which was probably due to irritation from my cycling sandals combined with rain and road grit. I’ll have to care for that over the coming week.

I will say that I’m noticeably slower this year, especially while ascending, which is understandably frustrating, but not the end of the world, considering how scarily the year started. There was always going to come a time when I stopped being able to keep up with the pack, and it’s probably good to accept that as I approach 60 years of age.

And with that, the stage is set for next weekend’s “remote” Pan-Mass Challenge. Even at this late date – the ride is in four days – I’m still trying to work out what my ride will look like. This is a very busy week, and I’m nervous about both the weather and the course. Hopefully I’ll be able to relax and be flexible enough to let the ride be a positive experience.

And, of course, if you have not yet supported my ride by making a donation to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I’d be delighted if you could contribute something. While the actual ride looms large in my mind right now, the most important thing is advancing cancer research and treatment: a cause I’ve been riding for since 2001. Please give here.

Measuring power is the gold standard of performance management on the bike. I’ve waited years for the industry to provide a pedal-based power meter that is accurate, uses mountain bike-style SPD cleats, is reasonably easy to use, and “affordable”.

In 2018 I bought a Wahoo Kickr Core indoor trainer, which allowed me to finally measure my power output over the winter. But when I took the bike off the trainer for the summer, I had to give up measuring power, and go back to estimating power (and thus fitness and fatigue) indirectly based on heart rate data.

However, after over a decade of waiting, last month I opened my wallet and acquired a set of Garmin Rally XC200 power meter pedals. Here’s some background and insight into how it’s been for me so far…

Why pedal-based? These days, you can throw a power meter on a bike in several places: pedals, crankarms, chainring spider, rear hub… A pedal-based system made sense for me because it’s the easiest to install, and the easiest to move from one bike to another. And unlike a hub or indoor trainer, it measures your power output earlier in the process, because some power is lost to friction and inefficiency in the drive train (as we’ll see in detail below).

Why the Garmin ones? One other option, the SRM X-Power, was about the same price, but they have a bad rep with pedals, and just didn’t seem able to manufacture them very quickly.

The only other option would be to buy a pair of non-SPD Favero Assioma pedals, rip out the internals, and plug that into a pair of Favero SPD pedal bodies. That would have been a couple hundred bucks cheaper, but would have voided their warranty, which is meaningful on a nearly $1,000 purchase.

Another argument in favor of the Garmins is that they have 2 to 4 times better battery life than the others.

A lot of this gets covered in exhaustive detail by the incomparable DC Rainmaker in his exhaustive Garmin Rally review from last year, as well as this year’s power meter pedal buyer’s guide.

Some miscellaneous notes: All these pedal-based units are double-sided (a necessary convenience), and also transmit your cadence to your bike computer, eliminating the need for a separate cadence monitor.

Like the Assiomas, the Garmin power meter is housed in the pedal spindle, and can be moved between pedal bodies of different styles. So if I ever decided to switch from SPD pedals to SPD-SL or Look Keo style cleats, I could just buy some empty pedal bodies and plug the power meter spindle right in.

Also, although the Garmins were very expensive, I got a tasty $240 discount thanks to REI’s spring members’ sale. Plus forthcoming reward bucks that could be applied to a new Garmin bike computer, if they were to ever release a new model…

Some usage notes: You need to keep a couple things in mind in addition to your battery life. One is that you need to let the unit acclimate to the outdoor temperature in order to get accurate readings, and that can take about ten minutes if you store and ride your bike in very different temperatures. And then you also need to do a zero-offset calibration about 10 or 15 minutes into every ride. It’s a bit of a bother, but it’s much better than we used to do with older power meters.

One big difference is the weight of the pedals. These pedals weigh 443g; they are replacing my current pedals, which weigh in at 306g. Although I’ll also be removing my dedicated cadence sensor from the bike, which is an additional 10g.

So what data do I get? I’ve already mentioned power (in Watts) and cadence, but there’s a shitton more. You get the power balance between your left and right legs. You get how much time you rode seated versus standing. You get measurements of how much power you produce at all points throughout the pedaling circle (even if that’s not of any practical value to anyone). You get measurements of whether your power is being delivered at the center of the pedal, or off to one side, which might indicate a bit of a fitting problem. And all of these are logged second-by-second for later analysis.

Can this get any geekier? I’m glad you asked!

So one of the biggest questions to ask of any power meter is its accuracy. The first units claimed to be accurate to ±5%, and up til now I’ve been assuming my Kickr is performing up to its ±2% claim. Most power meters these days (including my pedals) advertise ±1% accuracy, but how do I know? Well, let’s compare them against one another!

I’m going to look at two indoor trainer rides. The first is a March 31th 50-minute ride of Zwift’s Tour of Watopia Stage 3 on the hilly Downtown Titans route. The second, longer ride is ToW Stage 2’s flatter Watopia’s Waistband route on April 2th.

For each ride, I simultaneously recorded the power data coming from my Wahoo Kickr Core, and also that coming from my Garmin Rally XC200 pedals. So if things are working correctly, the measurements coming from each ride should be almost identical.

First, the numbers: As expected, cadence was virtually identical between the pedals and the crank-mounted dedicated cadence sensor (I did not take cadence from the Kickr, as trainers aren’t reliable for cadence data).

In contrast, the pedals registered an average power that was 2.7 to 4.1% higher than the trainer. Similarly, average weighted power came in 3.0 to 4.5% higher. Does that mean one power meter is slightly off, and how do we know which one?

No, everything’s fine. That small difference is eminently explainable by that thing I mentioned way back in paragraph four: power numbers coming from a trainer will be lower due to drive train losses that occur due to friction and flexion somewhere between the pedals, crankarms, chainrings, chain, cogset, and trainer. So they’ll naturally report a little lower numbers than pedals, which measure power transfer much earlier in the process. That would easily explain the 2.7 to 4.5% variation I saw.

But interestingly, when you look at maximum power (e.g. sprinting), the difference between the pedals and trainer falls to 0.6 to 1.0%. I haven’t got a good explanation for that yet.

But that’s all just summary data, and averages aren’t a great way to validate data over time. Much more revealing (and interesting) is the second-by-second detailed data. For that, we need some charts!

Next, the charts: So let’s compare the power data for each ride in the DC Rainmaker Analyzer Tool, overlaying the numbers for each ride from our two data sources to see how closely they match up. In all these charts, the red line is my Kickr Core trainer’s data, and the Garmin pedals are in green, and hopefully those lines will be almost identical.

First, let’s look at the power charts for the whole duration of both rides.

It’s a little easier to see on the first chart, since it’s less busy, but in general the numbers reported by my pedals and my trainer line up really well, with the pedals giving slightly higher numbers, as expected.

Remember tho that the first chart is 50 minutes long, and the second is 90 minutes. So although things look pretty good (yay!), this is at an extremely coarse level. For a better comparison, we really need to zoom in a little closer. Let’s find a couple representative chunks in the 7- to 10-minute range.

And there you go. Aside from the pedals’ slightly higher readings, the ups and downs of the charts are almost identical, close enough that the difference could easily be put down by the devices’ different sampling rates. No dropouts, no crazy spikes, or big differences between the curves.

In addition to a simple time-series comparison, there’s another way athletes look at power that might confirm our conclusion. For a sprinter, your overall power doesn’t matter so much as the maximum power you can put out and sustain over five, ten, maybe thirty seconds. So the critical power curve shows the maximum power you sustained over a particular duration. Obviously, the human body can generate a lot of power in short bursts, but can only sustain a more moderate power over durations measured in minutes and hours.

Unfortunately, as I’ve noted before, I’m keeping an eye on some cardiac issues and my chainrings are so worn that I can’t really sprint without dropping my chain, so my numbers are very pedestrian. Still, we can still draw some conclusions from my critical power curves for those two rides.

And this perfectly confirms everything we’ve seen so far. At just about every duration, the pedals consistently read 3 to 5% higher than the trainer, as expected. The only variance is at durations shorter than 15 seconds, where the devices’ sampling rates might impact the numbers.

So my overall conclusion is that I can definitely rely on these pedals to produce accurate power data that is very consistent with my indoor trainer, keeping drive train losses in mind.

Unless you’re a cyclist, it’s hard to convey how exciting and interesting it is to finally have a power meter on the bike year-round. At the big-picture level, this means my power data will finally be consistent between indoor and outdoor seasons, thus giving me more reliable fitness and fatigue numbers.

This means I can not only monitor my fitness and fatigue month-by-month and year-over-year, but also precisely quantify and properly pace my level of effort and reserves on a minute-by-minute basis during an individual ride of whatever duration.

It’s been two years since I last participated in an organized century event. But with the 2021 season starting to wind down, last Sunday I completed my fourth PMTCC 3-State Century.

The headline leading into the event had to be the weather. Hurricane Ida swept away the last humid heat of summer, and left Pittsburgh enjoying a delightful string of sunny days with lows in the upper 50s and highs in the 70s. You couldn’t ask for better conditions!

Phil & Ornoth at the Crestview Park overlook in New Cumberland WV

At the teapot rest stop in Chester WV

Leaving WV on the Newell Toll Bridge

1/3 mile of very sketchy boardwalk

On the other hand, one could ask for a more reasonable starting time! Riders choosing the 100-mile route had to hit the road at 6:30am to avoid road closures for a 5k run.

With the event beginning on Neville Island – eight miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh – that meant an early wake-up call. I staggered awake at 4:15am, downed half a bagel, and drove to the start.

In the pre-dawn darkness, I found I’d parked next to Phil, a longtime riding buddy I hadn’t seen in years. I checked in for the ride, put my bike together, and decided to keep my arm warmers on for a while. We rolled out at 6:40am at 63° with just enough light to see.

This year’s updated route split into two completely different halves. 71% of the climbing (3,850 feet) came in the first 50 miles, while the second half only climbed 1,550 feet, less than 30% of the total. The first half averaged 80 feet per mile of climbing, while the second half averaged a mere 30 (that’s considered pan-flat in Pittsburgh). If you exhausted yourself on the lumpy first half, it would be a long and painful slog home.

The new route began with a pointless 14-mile loop up two major climbs into the Montour Heights, followed by a screaming descent right back down again. I took it casually, mostly riding with Phil and a couple other guys. Then a minor climb along busy Route 51 before I stopped at a construction site’s porta-john while the others rode on. Then another major climb on PA 151 back up the escarpment where Phil was waiting for me for the run into the first rest stop, 25 miles and about two hours in.

The rest stop spit us out directly onto the fourth and final major climb of the day before turning onto a slightly busier US Route 30 for a smaller climb up to the West Virginia border. Just a couple miles later, the route took a new left turn onto WV Route 8 toward New Cumberland. Another change from prior rides, this would give us more time along the Ohio River and increase our riding in West Virginia from 4 miles to 24. We noticed how much the road quality improved over that in Pennsylvania, while the buildings looked shabbier. We crawled along, slowly overcoming a gusty 25 MPH headwind and two more short but steep hills.

When we descended into New Cumberland and met the Ohio River, we took a quick turn onto WV Route 2, then climbed the final hill of the day. I pulled Phil aside for selfies in a small park with a platform overlooking the river, the Stratton flood control dam and locks, and the Sammis coal-fired power plant on the opposite shore. Having ridden 50 miles in three and a half hours with only one break, I had heavy legs and a stiff back, and Phil was hungry. Importantly, this marked the halfway point of the ride, the end of the climbing, and now we had the wind at our backs; we would make much better speed on the homeward leg of the ride.

We quickly covered the 10 miles to the next rest stop, arriving at the World’s Largest Teapot in Chester WV at 11am. This is beneath the Jennings Randolph Bridge where US Route 30 crosses the Ohio, which the normal ride route would take, but is closed this year for construction. So after a short rest and a photo with the “teapot” we backtracked a couple miles to our alternative: the Newell Toll Bridge.

The Newell Toll Bridge is about as small and rickety as you might imagine a bridge built in 1905 would be, although it was rehabbed just 67 years ago! It’s just wide enough for two cars to pass on its metal grate open deck, and pedestrian access is provided by a single run of aging wooden planking hung off the side, with a rusting token railing. Did I mention it’s a suspension bridge? That means the entire bridge deforms, dips, and sways under the weight of passing traffic. In between taking photos at either end, we gingerly rode a third of a mile across the creaking wooden walkway fifty feet above the Ohio River, where I discovered my long-dormant faith in God. The friendly attendants waved us on rather than collect the five-cent pedestrian toll.

Thus began our 5 miles of riding in Ohio (this year’s new route having added two extra miles!) which quickly saw us back across the border into Pennsylvania. We were delighted not to turn left for more inland climbing this year. This whole segment was only 12 miles, so it soon ended at a Subway sandwich shop in Midland PA. It was exactly noon, and we’d covered 70 miles. I was intrigued to see they’d expanded the Subway shop, adding a Dairy Queen counter, but I was heartbroken that it wasn’t open.

After ingesting a meatball sub (after defending it from some insanely persistent hornets) and filling my bottle with ice and cola, we continued up the riverside to Beaver PA, then across the bridge over the Ohio into Monaca (pronounced m’NACK-a, not MON-a-ka). We pulled aside for a quick rest to freshen our legs for a 7-mile all-out sprint down Route 51 to the Ambridge Bridge. Route 51 would be considered a four-lane superhighway if it met state or federal safety requirements, and it’s one of the most dangerous roads in Western PA. However, we survived our passage, crossed the Ohio (again!), and pulled into the final rest stop of the day: Sweetwater Bikes in Ambridge, where I filled up with ice and water. It was 1:50pm and we’d covered 91 miles, with just 7 miles to go!

Having stayed on my tail all day long, Phil was starting to flag, so we continued on at a much more casual pace, proceeding down Beaver Street into the more familiar roads in Sewickley PA. We crossed the Ohio (again!) on the Sewickley Bridge, ambled through Coraopolis, and crossed the backchannel onto Neville Island, where we’d started out eight hours before. We did a quick couple miles up and down Grand Ave to round our ride up to an even 100 miles, with 5,400 feet of climbing.

After putting my bike back in the car, I joined other finishers, where I enjoyed a cola and some pizza after claiming my finisher’s medal, tipping the group’s bartender the $5 bill I had found in the street on a June ride that coincidentally had also gone through Neville Island to Sewickley.

So that’s the ride. Now for some final observations.

As mentioned earlier, this was my first organized century since my Michigan trip back in October 2019, my fourth century of the year, and my 101th century overall. It definitely felt good to be back doing a big, supported group event, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

And it felt good to really thrash my legs on another serious day’s effort. I seem to have escaped without any of the severe night calf cramps that hit me after last month’s PMC.

Phil’s presence made it better, too. He was strong and stayed with me the whole day, even if I did the lion’s share of the pulling. He and I seem to have a similar pace and riding style, dating back even beyond our mutual support leading up to the challenging 2017 Dirty Dozen ride.

The changes to the route were mostly successful. The bonus climbing loop at the start was begrudgingly tolerable, even though I’d rather do something with more value than a pointless loop. The cut across West Virginia Route 8 to New Cumberland and along the river up Route 2 were excellent additions. But I’d rather cross the Ohio on Route 30 and avoid risking my life and emotional well-being on the 116 year old Newell Toll Bridge!

For the bike, this might well be the last big ride for its stock saddle. One of this year’s major themes has been chafing around the sit bones, and I think I’ve finally figured out that it’s because of how worn my saddle is; understandable, since it’s seen 24,000 road miles plus another 11,000 on the indoor trainer. I thought about swapping it out before this ride, but was stopped by the age-old cardinal rule: never change your equipment just before a big ride! Fortunately, my butt (mostly) survived this saddle’s last hurrah. But there’ll be a whole followup post about my saddle woes shortly.

Sadly, with September halfway gone and the season winding down, there won’t be many other organized events this year. There’s the Western PA Wheelmen’s fall picnic, which includes some short rides, and Tour the Montour. And the Dirty Dozen, which I’m in no shape to tackle, so I’ll probably play photographer again. And I suppose I ought to do another FTP test while I’m still in good form, since I haven’t done one in 10 months…

It was a wonderful day in the saddle, and one more big step to celebrate in the post-Covid return to normalcy.

When I moved to Pittsburgh in 2015, I didn’t bother bringing my old wheel-on indoor trainer. It was outdated technology, falling apart, and I planned to replace it after the move anyways.

But I was able to do some outdoor riding through the Pittsburgh winter, and I couldn’t bring myself to drop a boatload of cash on a replacement trainer, especially since I’d be moving to still warmer climes sometime soon.

And just like that, three years passed.

What finally spurred me to pull the trigger on a new trainer? And what conditions changed?

First, why invest in a trainer if I still don’t have any income? Well, I’ve had the intention to do so for five years, and I have the money… I just don’t like parting with it. But I know this is something I’ll use a lot.

But will I? Why invest in a trainer if I plan to move south? Fair point. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned living in Pittsburgh, it’s that—even when the weather’s great—sometimes you just don’t want to expend the effort of getting out of the city to get a workout in. I might not ride the trainer as much if I lived in Florida or Texas, but it would still get used, especially for fitness tests. And if not, I could always sell it to someone else!

One last question: why bother with a trainer if I’m getting old and will never be as strong or competitive as I used to be? Well, just because I’m not setting any new PRs doesn’t mean I’m giving up completely! I still want to perform at my best, and having a trainer makes it much easier to get a workout in, so that I can better retain the fitness I’ve got left.

Another thing that made the purchase easier was a big $180 discount. Each fall, awesome sports tech reviewer Ray Maker (DC Rainmaker) teams up with a sports tech dealer to offer the best sale of the year. In my case, I got a solid 20 percent discount on the Wahoo KICKR CORE: a state of the art trainer that was only announced four months ago.

The downside: the three-week wait for it to arrive. Even though his dealer stocks up for the big sale, hot new products inevitably get backordered. But eventually it arrived.

In the meantime, I dealt with other logistical issues. Downloading and reading the setup and user manual. Downloading and learning how to use the Wahoo Fitness app, the Wahoo Utility app, the Zwift app, the Zwift Companion app, and the Discord app. Buying a new cassette (gears), along with a chain whip, crescent wrench, and lockring tool to install it on the trainer (as well as for future use). Buying a floor mat, gym fan, and riser block for my front wheel. Buying a handlebar phone mount, a USB ANT+ dongle, and a USB extension cable to go with it. Setting up a television, laptop, speakers, and wireless keyboard and mouse in the new “pain cave”. Buying a membership to the Zwift MMO virtual world. So many new things to buy, set up, and learn!

Now that it’s here, what’s so great about this thing?

First, it’s a direct-drive trainer. That means you take your rear wheel off and connect the bike’s drive train directly to a set of gears on the trainer, rather than pressing a steel roller up against the rear tire, as cheaper and older trainers used to do. That takes a lot of wear and strain off the tire and wheel.

It also allows the entire contraption to be a lot quieter. A vast improvement upon older devices, now the only noise you’ll hear are the bike’s chain, gear shifts, the exercise fan I use. Even while I’m riding in the next room over, Inna is able to sleep through it.

A huge benefit to me is that most trainers now come with built-in power meters. While inexpensive heart rate monitors have been used to guide training in the past, power meters have supplanted them as the gold standard. However, power meters are pricey, so I’ve never been able to justify the expense. But now I can train with power, at least indoor.

There’s a lot to know about training with power, but my primary interest boils down to watching two numbers. Functional threshold power (FTP) is an absolute measure of how much power you can sustain on the bike for one hour (measured in watts), and is a great predictor of performance on the flat. Divide FTP by your weight to get watts per kilogram, which is an equally reliable predictor of performance when the road tilts up. These are today’s gold standard measures of cycling fitness.

To ascertain your FTP, you do a 20-minute FTP Test. But doing FTP tests sucks. The testing protocol is simple: hold the maximum power you can for 20 solid minutes. It hurts, and a lot of people puke before they finish.

It’s also error-prone, because it’s hard to guess how long you can maintain max power. Most people overestimate their ability, going out hard and running out of gas before the 20 minutes is up. Once burned, they do the opposite, keeping way too much in reserve. So how do you figure out what power you should try to hold so you can pace yourself properly?

That calls for another test: the Step Test. It’s not fun either, but it entails slightly less pain. Once you begin pedaling, the trainer gradually increases the resistance every two minutes. Continue cranking on the pedals until eventually the increased resistance causes absolute muscle failure.

I stopped my first Step Test a little after hitting 275 watts. After applying maths, my FTP—what I could hold for an hour—was around 212W, and my climbing ability was 2.72 W/kg. The Step Test only provides a rough estimate of FTP, but most importantly, it also told me I should aim to hold 223W for my 20-minute FTP Test.

Armed with that information, two days later I set out and tried to hold my average wattage above 223 for 20 excruciating minutes. I managed it for about half the test, but I found myself riding the entire test pegged at my max heart rate—not fun!—while watching my average power slowly decline. By the end of the test, I’d faded to an average of 208W, which translates to an FTP of 198W, and 2.53 W/kg: noticeably lower than the numbers I got from my earlier Step Test, but just enough to qualify for the low end of Zwift’s Category C performance level.

I’ll probably test myself every three or four months, to see how much I improve (or deteriorate) over time.

Beyond measuring power, we move into features associated with “smart trainers”. So what makes them think they’re so smart?

Basically, the industry has defined communication protocols so all your devices can work together: trainers, power meters, heart rate straps, cadence and speed sensors, bike computers, electronic shifting, and phone and computer applications. One of the things they’ve done is allow other devices to control trainer resistance: allowing applications to control how hard it is to pedal on the trainer.

That permits trainers to simulate the ups and downs of riding on real roads. In “sim mode”, you can load up any real-world route, and the trainer will precisely mimic the terrain, making it harder to pedal when you reach a “hill”, and easier when you reach a descent. You can simulate any route you can map: from Tour de France stages to last August’s century to your daily commute.

This was the first thing I tested when my trainer arrived. I paired it with my bike computer and told it to re-create a short local route I rode a year ago. As I pedaled along, the trainer automatically changed resistance to reflect the descent down Greenfield to the river, up the Junction Hollow bike path, the little spiker up South Neville, thru CMU, then up and over Schenley Park on Overlook Drive.

The grade simulation worked well, and it made for an engaging workout. However, there were clear shortcomings. The bike computer didn’t display the elevation change, current incline, or total elevation gain; the closest one could get was the graphical display of the past and upcoming elevation profile, which wasn’t detailed. More annoying, the unit didn’t display my current “location” on a map, which would give a little more context to the ride and changes in resistance. While sim mode is an awesome idea, there are obvious improvements that need to be made.

If you combine a smart trainer’s sim mode with internet access, virtual reality, object modeling, and social networking, you get today’s pinnacle of indoor training technology: Zwift. Join Zwift and you’re given an on-screen cyclist avatar who moves along a virtual road in proportion to you pedaling your trainer. Ride around online versions of London, New York, Innsbruck, or Richmond VA, or even the infamous Tour de France climb up Alpe d’Huez. When your avatar reaches a hill, the smart trainer’s resistance kicks in (or off) to simulate the gradient.

Now add other riders: thousands of other riders, all pedaling their own avatars in this massively multiplayer online sufferfest. Add structured workouts, the ability to ride with friends, organized group rides, official races, milestone rewards, instant messaging and shared audio channels, and also a parallel setup for runners. It’s an immense phenomenon.

My first Zwift experiences have been positive, but not always pleasant. Although the app hasn’t crashed on me yet, my laptop has died multiple times due to (1) falling off the pedestal I’d placed it on; (2) running out of battery without warning; and (3) a touchy touchpad that causes spontaneous reboots. I was already thinking about a new laptop, but the slow frame rate on my five-year old graphics card have increased the likelihood of that expense.

So far, in addition to the Step and FTP Tests, I’ve done a 10-mile free ride; a 25-mile, 450-person Team ZBR group ride; and the extremely hilly 30-mile December Bambino Fondo, with several thousand others.

Overall I’m happy. I finally have a new indoor trainer. I can even begin training with power! And with Zwift, I’m more likely to spend time on the trainer than I would have on my own.

That leaves me with one issue I’ve struggled with since I got my first trainer a decade ago: whether to count miles ridden and time spent on the trainer as “real” riding time for statistical purposes. Back in 2009, I decided I would only count outdoor road miles, but as my indoor riding increased, I started informally keeping track of that separately. Now I’m likely to put even more miles in on the turbo, so I’ll record my indoor riding separately, but in the same level of detail as outdoors. That way I can combine the two when it’s appropriate, and keep them separate when needed.

As you would expect, my first year riding in Pittsburgh was eventful and full of new experiences. Judging by the size of this 2016 year-in-review post, I consider it a pretty successful year overall.

Here I’ll review my original goals for the year, plow through a list of other noteworthy developments, show you a few informative charts, and then close by looking forward to 2017. All accompanied by a handful of related photos.

Original 2016 Goals

When I moved to Pittsburgh at the end of last year, I set four explicit goals for myself, plus two implicit ones. How did we do?

First goal was to buy a new indoor trainer. It didn’t happen because nice weather allowed me to ride outdoors throughout last winter, and I wanted to conserve cash. Although I never got that new trainer, I can’t call saving hundreds of dollars a failure! And there’s always next year…

Second goal was to do more century rides than the feeble four I had done in 2015. I bagged seven, one of which was a 200k. Great success! To enumerate them: Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ McConnell’s Mill 200k (a new all-time record for most climbing in one ride), Escape to the Lake MS ride, a solo century to Brush Creek, the Pittsburgh Tour de Cure Gran Fondo, the Western PA Wheelmen’s 3-State Century, the Mon Valley Century, and the Pedal the Lakes Century.

Third goal was to check out Pittsburgh’s outdoor cycling track. Definitely did that, and set my first personal hour record there (20.77 miles). But I didn’t participate or even spectate at any of the races held there… Yet!

Final goal was to ride the Dirty Dozen. Sadly, family obligations brought my season to a screeching halt just after I started training for the Thanksgiving-weekend ride. This one has to wait for next year.

My two implicit goals were to ride more than I did in 2015, and to learn and become familiar with the roads and routes used by Pittsburgh cyclists. I covered both of those without question.

Overall, I did a reasonable—but not perfect—job of meeting my original goals for the year.

Innumerable Highlights

But the story of a season isn’t made up solely of chasing predicted goals. It’s also a collection of serendipitous moments and unexpected developments. And 2016 was a very eventful year.

How come? Here’s a quick run-down:

• I opted to take the summer off from work, giving me lots of free time to ride.
• I rode more miles in 2016 than I did in any my past six years except for 2014.
• Overall, my average distance per ride is down, but my climbing per ride is way up, and I rode much more frequently this year.
• I rode my first brevet in ten years, my first-ever gran fondo, and my first personal hour record on the track.
• I rode to a town called McMurray in memory of my mentor Bobby Mac, did the PedalPGH and Every Neighborhood rides, rode from home into West Virginia and Ohio, around Saratoga New York on vacation, through a cheeseball spill, and to a town called Bagdad over two closed roads that were broken up and collapsing down the hillside!
• I rode in regular group rides with Team Decaf and the East Liberty Performance Bicycle shop guys.
• But I lost out on the Dirty Dozen, its training rides, and the 321 cancer charity ride I’d planned on doing.
• I met a lot of cool riders, including Stef Burch, Monica VanDieren, Jim Logan, Eric Collazo, Kai, Colleen Spiegler, Ryan Popple, and many, many others.
• I had one nontrivial crash due to debris in the road, resulting in some road rash and a quick trip to the walk-in clinic.
• Rode in two processional rides in memory of local riders who had been killed by motorists.
• Michelin replaced my standard Pro4 line of tires with a new model called Power Endurance. When I was accidentally sent 25mm tires rather than my preferred 23s, I opted to stick with them. They’re more comfortable, and wider tires are a new trend with many riders.
• Also bought a Continental 4-Season rear tire for wintertime traction.
• I destroyed another rear wheel, but replaced it with a new Ksyrium with an all-black Exalith brake track that whines evilly whenever I’m slowing down. My bike shop forced me to impersonate a shop employee in order to get my warrantee registered.
• I bought a couple Ass Savers, a hub-level video camera mount, several new jerseys, caps, and a really nice new insulated winter cycling jacket.
• I started playing in the BikePGH forums’ Tag-o-Rama photo-finding game, finding and setting four sets of tags. Also bought a cycling card game called Attack the Pack.
• Bought a new set of Oakley Half Jacket sunglasses, with ear socks and lenses to match my bike’s red and white color scheme. Also attached plastic stick-on reading lenses to those sunglasses, making it much easier to read my GPS bike computer, especially when navigating unfamiliar areas (like all of Pittsburgh!) by map.
• Although I haven’t bought the new Garmin Edge 820 GPS cyclo-computer, I did buy some electronic widgets that will allow my future head unit to talk to my Di2 electronic gear shifters. More on that in the future!
• Lost my only Strava KOM up in northern Vermont, but gained a new one located behind Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
• Was shocked to hear that Dirty Dozen founder and Pittsburgh cycling legend Danny Chew had been paralyzed in a crash.
• Surpassed 10,000 miles on the “new” bike (R2-Di2), and broke 50,000 miles overall since 2000.
• Ordered a fistful of Camelbak Jetvalve water bottle tops, because those things grow mold like crazy and are difficult to clean. They’re rarely sold separate from the bottles.
• Added searchable tags to my cycling blog, so that you can now navigate my posts by topic.
• Finally paid for a Strava Pro membership. Between Strava and the Stravistics add-on, I got all kinds of new features, including:
• Started automatically posting ride photos to my Strava page via my Instagram feed.
• Access to my Strava “trophy case”. On top of old challenges from years past, this year I earned eight monthly gran fondo badges, four monthly climbing challenge badges, and one special challenge badge.
• I used the Flyby feature (example) to identify similar riders in my new neighborhood and learn the routes they favored. And I used Strava’s Global Heatmap to see overall popular routes in Pittsburgh.
• One of the coolest things I did this year came about because I wanted something no other website provides: a way to directly compare the slopes and lengths of hills against one another. Being a techie and data vis geek, I started hitting the Strava API and created my very own Slope Comparison Tool. It’s really awesome and I’m really proud of it.
• And then there were some new data plots that I discovered: my personal riding heatmap, my yearly elevation gain chart, and my training/fitness chart.

Let’s go into those charts in a little more detail, since they are extremely pertinent to any discussion of my 2016 season.

Teh Plotz

I told you that one of my implicit goals was to learn Pittsburgh’s roads. My 2016 mileage total was 3,260, which is greater than four of the previous five years, so I definitely covered a lot of territory.

But it’s easier to show you that on a heatmap than it is to talk about it. Here’s a static image of my 2016 riding, which shows a lot of riding around the city core and numerous expeditions further afield.

However, you can get a much better understanding by clicking through to the actual interactive map to pan and zoom around.

Custom personal heatmaps are one of the awesome features that came with my paid Strava membership. I have another map depicting all my riding (since 2010), both before and after my move from Boston to Pittsburgh.

Next comes a truly amazing chart, which shows something my blogposts have belabored: how hilly Pittsburgh is in comparison to Boston.

The chart depicts how much elevation gain (i.e. climbing) I did each year. From 2010 through 2015, while living in Boston I climbed anywhere from 87,000 to 120,000 feet (16 to 23 vertical miles) per year.

Now look at the pink line for 2016. At the end of September, I had 190,000 feet of climbing: nearly twice my previous record for that point in the year! If I had ridden at the same pace for the last three months of 2016 I would have broken a quarter million feet (48 vertical miles) this year. But I didn’t, so I had to settle for a mere 36 vertical miles…

That chart is from the Stravistix add-on for Strava, which adds all kinds of useful information above and beyond what you get from Strava itself.

Finally, I’ve got two versions of this year’s TRIMP chart, which I described in detail in this blogpost. The first one tracks this year’s fitness, and the second lets you compare 2016 to previous years.

Here’s what you’ll see below:

This past season began with a great build-up from mid February through the end of March. The next month and a half were plagued by mechanical troubles, travel, and bad weather, except for that mid-April brevet I rode: my longest ride of the year. There followed three and a half months of enjoying long summertime rides and steadily-increasing fitness, culminating with the Pedal the Lakes Century on September 4.

After that, I kicked off my Dirty Dozen training rides. Although I was building up leg strength, my fitness chart started trending downward because I wasn’t riding as often or as far; I was just banging out the steepest hills, then taking time off the bike to fully recover.

Dirty Dozen training went well enough until my mother got sick and I left for Maine, which abruptly terminated my season. The chart clearly shows the resulting precipitous decline in fitness from its late-August peak. See?

As with almost all images I post, you can click through for the full-sized version.

That’s a tactical view of 2016, but how does this season compare with other years? That’s what we see when we zoom out to a TRIMP / fitness chart for the past six years.

What you immediately notice is that the winter dip from 2015 to 2016 isn’t as deep as any previous year. That—and the irregular jagginess of the curve—reflects the fact that I managed to ride outside a lot last winter; whereas indoor trainer work would appear more regular, like what you see through the winter of 2014-15. Riding outside allowed me to start 2016 at a measurably higher fitness level than usual.

You also see some of the things I mentioned above: the early spring build-up, followed by a brief dip, then a very productive summer season, and a complete drop-off for the last four months of the year.

In terms of the absolute peak fitness I achieved, my max has been pretty consistent over the past three years. See?

These two charts are also available as a part of a paid Strava membership. I found them—and especially the underlying form and fatigue data that I haven’t shown here—insightful and very useful in preparing myself for major events this summer without over- or under-training.

2017 Goals

That’s all I want to say about 2016, which leads into the next logical question: what will 2017 look like?

There are a handful of things that I definitely want to accomplish next year, and a couple open questionmarks. Let’s start with the easy ones first.

I plan to purchase and learn how to use a new Garmin Edge 820 GPS cyclo-computer, replacing my reliable six year-old Edge 800. I’m really excited about the many new features it offers, some of which I describe in this post.

I would like to ride both days of next year’s Escape to the Lake MS Ride. This year, I only rode the first day because it was a century and Day 2 was not, and because I could avoid worrying about hotels and overnighting and return transportation. However, Day 2 ends on the shore of Lake Erie, which I have yet to visit, and I think I might enjoy completing the entire event.

I plan to ride next October’s Woiner Cancer Foundation 321 Ride. This year I registered, fundraised, and got the ride jersey, but couldn’t participate due to my mother’s hospitalization.

And it goes without saying that I want to attempt my first Dirty Dozen next year. After several years of anticipation, in 2016 I was all set to take on that challenge, until life intervened. Now having ridden almost all of those hills, I really want to add that ride—and the steepest public street in the world—to my palmares.

Those are my main goals. What about the ones I said were questionable?

One is a 2016 goal that I deferred on: the purchase of a fancy new indoor trainer. That wasn’t necessary last year because Pittsburgh had a very mild winter, and I was trying to save money. The need is still there, but only time will tell whether I need to pull the trigger on it or if it can wait. But I won’t get any indoor or outdoor riding done during this extended stay in Maine.

And then there’s the employment question. Having a job is nice, and it does introduce the possibility of commuting by bike, but it also restricts how much time I can spend in the saddle. Although employment is a non-cycling goal, I’m definitely hoping that I can mesh those two aspects of life together successfully. But that’s also contingent on getting back home again.

That wraps up the end-of-season retrospective. I enjoyed my first year in Pittsburgh, and it was very eventful from a cycling perspective. I learned a lot, got some cool new gear, set benchmarks as well as some new records, met a lot of people, and experienced a whole lot of territory.

Here’s hoping for an equally enjoyable season in 2017!

This post covers a very busy month of July, which included a solo century, the Tour de Cure, the 3-State Century, and more.

As usual, July began with Fourth of July weekend, which is always a perfect time to lay down some hefty miles, whether three or four rides in a row or a single century.

Looking for my first long ride since June’s endo, I chose to do my first Pittsburgh solo century, and my third hundred-plus mile ride of the year. For a course, I cobbled together a flattish out-and-back route to Brush Creek Park. Just shy of Ellwood City, it covered some of the same ground as the final third of the 200k brevet that I did back in March.

Thanks to my early start (6:20am), the day began with a lot of mist and fog, and a surprising amount of wildlife: 6 rabbits, 4 deer, 2 groundhogs, and a horse being ridden down the road.

At the park that was my halfway turnaround point, I took a photo of my bike in front of a covered bridge before pushing on. I hadn’t ridden too hard, and continued to feel good until the last 15-20 miles. I struggled through the last 5-10 miles, stopping at a neighborhood convenience store to down a cola and a candy bar before finishing the job. I really need to do better with eating and drinking on long rides.

In the end, it was a nice ride, but pretty challenging toward the end.

Two weeks later came my first Tour de Cure charity ride for the American Diabetes Association, for which I again footed my own fundraising. That was my fourth century of the year. More importantly, it was also my first ever gran fondo, an endurance ride where riders are timed on certain segments of the course.

The weather was awesome, and I wore my Kraftwerk Tour de France jersey, a tricolor that looks a lot like the French champion’s jersey, in honor of both the ongoing tour as well as those affected by a terrorist attack in Nice. Around 80 riders took off with me at 7am for the century route.

There were three timed fondo segments, and I estimated my times using nearby Strava segments, to give myself a number to shoot for. Although I am reasonably pleased with my performance, it was nothing as compared to riders 30 years younger, who also had the support of an entire semi-pro team.

The first segment was 1.4 miles, featuring a half-mile climb. My estimate had been 6 minutes, and I actually traversed the Strava segment in 6:02. The second segment was a long, 6.7-mile time trial with some descending but minimal climbing. After estimating 22 minutes, I brought it home in 19:31. The final segment was a 1.7-mile brutal rolling climb. After a 10-minute prediction, I finished in 9:11. Out of a total of 36 gran fondo riders, I placed 25th, 20th, and 26th on those segments, placing 23rd overall, or 36th percentile. What do you expect from an old man?

I rode a fair amount of the day with a young guy named Eric, whom I’ve talked to at the Tuesday night Team Decaf rides, who was doing his first-ever century. I should also note that I beat him on two of the three timed segments, pipping him by a combined 19 seconds overall. Later in the day, at mile 66, he somehow managed to get his chain jammed underneath his bike’s chain catcher, which took us about 10 minutes to un-wedge.

I had mechanical issues of my own, too. Around mile 60, my right-side pedal, which I’d just had serviced by my local bike shop, started making sounds like it was about to fall apart. Fortunately, it hung together till the end, albeit making crunchy-poppy noises with every turn of the crank.

As for the ride planners, one obstacle they provided was a lack of ice at any of the rest stops, on a day which grew increasingly scalding. On the other hand, there was an impromptu rest stop with (warm) drinks left at the side of the road at mile 98; the last ten miles were all mostly downhill; and I was pleased to receive another finisher’s medallion.

The summary for this ride was pretty positive, but again the last 20 miles were quite a slog.

My next century—my fifth of the year and third of the month!—came a week later, at the Pittsburgh Major Taylor Cycling Club’s annual 3-State Century. I’ve only ever done one other three-state ride (MA/RI/CT), and that was years ago. After leaving home in Pittsburgh, we’d go straight west, spend all of three miles in West Virginia before crossing the Ohio River, travel in the state of Ohio for another three miles to the Pennsylvania line, then mostly follow the river upstream back to Pittsburgh.

Although much of the route was flattish, there were three major climbs, all them coming in the first half of the ride; the ascents were actually much easier for me than the long, high-speed descents that followed each climb!

Although the route was only 93 miles (not even close to a century), my ride to the start and back home rounded me up to 112 miles, which allowed me to surpass 10,000 total miles on the “new” bike. It also fulfilled my goal of doing more centuries in 2016 than the mere four I did last year, which had been a record low.

By far the most salient feature of this ride was the heat. The day began at 70 degrees and climbed well into the upper 90s, and the NWS issued a region-wide heat advisory. New high temperature records were set in five out of six area weather stations, and in Pittsburgh it was the hottest day in four years. Normally I like it warm, but that was a little much. I coped by drinking lots of fluid, then finished the day pouring bottle after bottle of water over myself and stuffing ice into my jersey pockets.

On the other hand, I finished stronger than any of my other long rides this year. I even pulled two guys home over the final 17 miles of the route. For the first time this year, the heat was a bigger challenge than fatigue.

While I’d planned to take a personal rest stop on the way home at the foot of the 300-foot climb up to Squirrel Hill, I opted to press on due to gathering clouds, which developed into a very strong thunderstorm that hit about 40 minutes after I finished.

Although the heat made it difficult, I enjoyed the 3-State Century a lot, and probably finished stronger than any other century this year. It was a good, interesting day in the saddle, and I saw a lot of area roads that I hadn’t tried thus far.

Those constitute my major rides over the past month, but there were also a couple Team Decaf and Performance Bike group rides, plus several recovery rides. And a couple short trips to the LBS to fix the problems I was having with my pedals.

In equipment news, I picked up a cool new jersey and cap that are vaguely ska-oriented, which I’m sure you’ll see later, plus a couple Mondrian-themed cycling caps (dark and light replicas of the old La Vie Claire team kit).

But the thing that has me really excited is the announcement of the new Garmin Edge 820 cycling GPS unit. My first Edge 800 has served me very well since 2011, but it recently started suffering spontaneous power-offs, and several generations of GPS bike computers have come out since then. Among the features I’d gain with the 820 are: live weather, live cyclist tracking, live group tracking, WiFi downloads, ANT+ FE-C control of indoor trainers, Strava live segments, email and text notifications from my phone, Di2 electronic shifting integration, and third party data fields & apps written for ConnectIQ. The only reason I haven’t bought one already is because I want to wait for other users’ experiences and Ray Maker’s in-depth review to come ou. But you can rest assured that it’s item number one on my wish list.

It was a great month, and I’m looking forward to more new adventures in the waning days of summer.

Normally I wouldn’t consider doing a long-distance ride like the Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ McConnell’s Mill 200k brevet this early in the season. April is way too cold for long rides, and there’s no way I could have completed the training required to be prepared for 130 miles.

On the other hand, this winter has been so mild that I’ve ridden more than usual this year. Although none of that riding was anything near century-length rides, I figured I had enough miles under my belt to consider undertaking the hilly 130-mile challenge.

That desire was reinforced when Pittsburgh suddenly found itself in the middle of an unprecedented week of cloudless sun and temperatures in the 70s. With sunny days at a premium here, there was no doubt I’d spend the weekend in the saddle, and the 200k seemed perfectly timed.

On the other hand, there was reason for trepidation. This wasn’t just any hilly ride. Out of all the rides I’ve done since getting a GPS, the Mt. Washington Century, which traverses three mountain passes and claims to be the most challenging century in New England, contains the most climbing: around 5,900 feet by my records. The brevet route climbs 8,800 feet, the equivalent of one and a half Mt. Washingtons! Not a ride for someone who hasn’t trained for it.

But wait; there’s more. I couldn’t do the ride on my current bike (R2-Di2) because a week earlier I’d discovered cracks in the wheel rim and was waiting for a brand new rear wheel to arrive at the bike shop.

In the meantime I’d been riding my old bike (the Plastic Bullet), but two days before the brevet, its rear wheel also started acting up, making a horrible screeching noise anytime I coasted at speed, which I eventually traced to the freehub. In theory it was rideable, so long as you constantly pedaled and didn’t ever coast…

So that was the decision I had to make the day before the event. 130 miles, ten hours in the saddle, far more climbing than I’ve ever done, on very limited training, without coasting, on a broken bike? Yeah, sign me up for that!

So Saturday morning I found myself riding 8 miles to the start in Shaler, pedaling all the way. It was a pretty cold 52 degrees at 6am, but the forecast expected it to warm up a lot.

There were a mere eight starters, and I knew several of them from a ride down to Monongahela back in February. After photos and a briefing, we left the organizer’s house at 7am and immediately dove down a very steep 125-foot hill to the banks of the Allegheny. After having to brake and spin the pedals all the way down, I found myself off the back, but I caught up again easily.

The first segment was a flat 16 miles along the river on Freeport Street to Tarentum. The group mostly stayed together. My hands and feet (in my cycling sandals) went numb, but with the sun rising, warmer temps were coming. Thankfully, it was going to be a rare windless day.

From there, the route turned away from the river and up Bull Creek Road, one of many routes that follow stream beds up to the high plateau that surround the three rivers. But we soon left the stream valley and began the first serious climb of the day up Sun Mine Road.

That splintered our happy little group into shards, with myself and two experienced cyclists—Monica & Stef—leaving the rest of the group strewn along the climb in our wake. 23 miles into the ride, we now faced 100 miles of interval training: constantly rolling steep hills with zero flat to provide any respite.

Just after 10:30am we reached the West Sunbury country store that was the 53-mile checkpoint. The three of us refueled, and I jumped into the bathroom to quickly strip off my arm warmers, base layer, and cycling cap since the day had warmed substantially. The last one out of the store, I had to run to catch up to the girls as they left. It was then that I realized that after taking off my base layer, I hadn’t pulled the shoulder straps of my bib shorts up before putting my jersey back on! I stopped and quickly executed the reverse of the women’s “remove my bra straps without taking off my shirt” maneuver and set off to catch back up.

After passing through more hilly farmland, at noon we traversed Cooper’s Lake Campground. This is the site of the Society For Creative Anachronism medieval recreationist group’s huge Pennsic War, which my ex-wife and I attended three times, our first time being our honeymoon trip. Passing through the area brought back lots of memories, but it was hard to correlate 30-year old memories of a crowded campground with the open fields I saw as I rode past.

An hour later the temperatures were climbing toward 80 degrees, and with no shade in sight I was starting to fall behind Stef and Monica. I caught up with them at the 83-mile checkpoint at a 7-Eleven in Ellwood City. Stef left soon after I arrived, and that was the last we saw of her that day. Monica and I rode off after a rest, staying within shouting distance for the remaining 40 miles.

By half past two we hit the century mark while passing through the town of Cranberry. 7.5 hours, which is no record, but it’s pretty good, given the endless climbing we’d endured.

Half an hour later we stopped at another convenience store to refuel and rest. We’d take a couple more short stops for breathers over the remaining route, because I was flagging and Monica was having difficulty with her exercise-induced asthma. Another half hour had us passing through North Park and over the last major climbs of the ride.

Eventually we came out on Wible Run Road, a sustained stream-bed descent that led us finally back down into the valley of the Allegheny near the start.

A mile from the finish my GPS finally conked out. Losing the last mile of data isn’t a big deal, except that it included the vicious 12-percent grade climb back up to the organizer’s house, which reminded me a lot of the brutal finishing climb to the Mt. Washington Century, except shorter. Only later did the organizer reveal that he had chosen not to have us take an easier route to his home!

Monica and I pulled in at 4:56pm, just shy of 10 hours in the saddle. Stef, the only rider who finished ahead of us, had already checked in and gone home. The others drifted in and out over time while I waited for Inna to pick me up and munched on some well-earned pizza and soda.

Normally at this point I’d be all hyped up about getting my randonneur’s 200k finishing medal, but the organizing body and I had a parting of ways back in 2007, so I won’t be giving them the membership fee necessary to get the medal I earned.

So let’s do some context-setting here, because this was a milestone ride in many ways. My longest ride in Pittsburgh, longest ride and first century or double metric this year, first brevet in ten years, earliest in the year that I’ve ever done a century or 200k, exceeded my previous max climbing on any ride by 50 percent, probably only my sixth ride with more than a mile of climbing, and it also put me well over 50,000 feet of climbing (nearly 11 miles of vertical) so far this year.

Between the distance, the heat, the hills, and the broken bike, I’m pretty proud to have completed what will be one of the longest rides of the year, and notched my first century amongst the hills of western Pennsylvania.

Before I close, a quick review of how March went.

March was without question an excellent month: 400 miles of riding, with a stoopid 26,000 feet of climbing.

The month included exploration rides around McKeesport, Days Run up near Tarentum, Lowries Run into Emsworth, the GAP trail up to Boston (PA) and back, Dorseyville and Indianola, Munhall and the South Hills.

There were several particular highlights. One was finding and setting my first Tag-o-Rama locations, as described in an earlier post. I conquered four more of Pittsburgh’s brutal Dirty Dozen hills on the way to my first-ever Strava Climbing Challenge victory, although the worst of the hills— Barry/Holt/Eleanor—required a dab near the top after I pulled my shoe out of the pedal cleat. That same ride took me down the Montour Trail to the town of McMurray in memory of my mentor and hero Bobby Mac, where I stopped and had a memorial ice cream at a roadside stand that offered—appropriately enough—a “Dino Sundae”. My longest (now superseded, of course) was a 72-mile expedition out to Bakertown and over to Ambridge, where I came across a massive cheez ball spill in the middle of the woods in Sewickley.

So things seem to be going really well so far this year, aside from both bikes currently having broken rear wheels, of course.

I destroy wheels, particularly rear wheels.

I’m not sure why, because I’m not heavy and I don’t put out that much torque. But the expected life span of a drive-side spoke on my bike is only marginally greater than 37 minutes.

When I bought my first road bike, I went through two or three (Shimano) Ultegra wheels before I switched to (Mavic) Ksyriums. I certainly got more service out of the Ksyriums, but I still went through three more rear wheels on my old bike.

Fortunately, I had purchased Mavic’s optional two-year, no-questions-asked replacement policy, which has the unfortunate moniker of the “MP3” program.

Whatever it’s called, the first time I destroyed a Mavic wheel, I got a free replacement. Unfortunately, the second time I trashed a Ksyrium, the warranty had just expired. Still, with good wheels and a great warranty, they earned my business.

So when I bought my new bike last year, I immediately traded in its el cheapo wheels for Mavic Ksyriums. Then a few months later I was taken out by a car in South Boston and was forced to replace the rear wheel with a new one.

The only negative of the MP3 program is that each time I swapped wheels meant six to eight weeks off the bike, while it was mailed to France and a replacement was shipped back. So after my accident the new bike sat idle at the bike shop from August to October, when the new wheel was installed.

Fast forward to this year… In mid-January I was out in Weston, enjoying a (comparatively) warm day and pedaling lightly along a slight descent when there was a sudden WHANG!WHANG!WHANG! from my rear wheel. Upon stopping, it was obvious that one of the spokes had snapped in two right at the spoke nipple.

Now that’s ridiculous. I wasn’t doing anything crazy, and this was the brand new wheel they’d supplied, with less than 500 miles on it! And now here I was: stranded in Weston, fifteen miles from home in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

Fortunately, the nearest Commuter Rail station (Kendal Green) was only a mile away. Despite a rear wheel that was wobbly and out of true, I managed to ride gingerly to the station, only to discover that there’s no inbound platform.

I was only four more miles from Waltham, and I knew about a bike shop there: Frank’s. I was able to hobble in and talk to the mechanic. But because it’s really not much of a shop, there was absolutely nothing he could for me.

At that point, my choices were to wait for a commuter train in Waltham or take my chances trying to ride ten more miles back home to Boston. With no idea when the train would come, and having already ridden five miles, I decided to push my luck.

That luck held for another five miles, when the stress on the already-warped wheel caused a second spoke to snap, throwing the wheel completely out of true. Already committed, I could only keep riding, but the juddering bike caused me to expect the wheel to fail completely at any second.

About a mile from home, I turned off at Boston University and headed straight to the bike shop. I left the beast with them, hoping that Mavic would honor another claim against their warranty.

After the usual long wait, today I got my bike back from the shop. I guess I should consider myself fortunate that this lengthy hiatus happened during the off-season, while we endured some of the worst weather of the year, rather than at a training peak.

Despite the delay, I am delighted with Mavic’s replacement program—it’s saved me several thousand dollars—and I’ve been running Ksyriums for years. But having a wheel with only 500 miles on it fail mid-ride makes me really uncomfortable and concerned, and I’m very unhappy that my new bike has spent 25 percent of the past year languishing in drydock.

And now spring is only a month away, so I’ll be very anxious to see how long this new wheel lasts…