It was the most of times; it was the least of times. My 2023 cycling year was very noteworthy, but in ways that were mostly peripherally related to riding my bike.

Welcome to the new hometown!

Welcome to the new hometown!

On the downside, I began the year off the bike for two months due to our move from Pittsburgh to Austin and subsequent discovery of a fatal crack in my beloved primary bike of the past ten years. Then I lost another month in September for a warranty replacement of the rear wheel on my new, successor bike. I only completed one century – my fewest since 2007 – and vomited right after finishing it. Throw in a couple frustrating flat tires, the challenge of navigating a new town, and the harsh reality of turning sixty years old. 2023 provided a litany of disappointments, and my Fitness and distance numbers reflected it.

But there were a lot of major high points, too. I got a brand new bike that I love, at a steal of a discount! I replaced my old, frail bike GPS with Garmin’s newest model, which has tons of cool new features and reliable battery life! I enjoyed meeting local cyclists and exploring my new hometown of Austin, and even got to bike on a Formula One race track! At my first Livestrong century, my old grammar school friend Scott came down from New Hampshire; it was also my first event as an official member of Team Kermit, and I got to ride with several old and new Pan-Mass Challenge friends who had flown in from Boston!

From an athletic standpoint, 2023 wasn’t a superlative year, but a decent one. And I’m pleased by all the memorable stuff that did happen.

My Original 2023 Goals

At this time last year, my bike and all my cycling gear was locked away in a moving van in an unknown location somewhere between Pittsburgh and Austin, while Inna and I spent our last couple days in Pennsylvania at her mother’s apartment.

Therefore I had no idea what cycling in Austin would be like, or even what our lives would look like when we got there. So it made no sense setting any specific goals for 2023. The new year was going to be imperfect, but that meant that whatever I did achieve would be gravy.

However, I did list four general themes that I thought would be foremost. They were:

Moving and Orienting in Austin

I knew this year’s biggest change would be finding my niche in a new city, and I did okay, as outlined in my Austin On-Ramp blogpost. However, I still need to put more energy into this, in every category of knowledge. I explored a few group rides, but there are several more that I haven’t. I’m familiar with a few bike shops, but still haven’t found “the one”. I’ve done a couple big event rides, but nowhere near as many as usual. Similar to my move to Pittsburgh in 2015, I’ve leveraged Strava’s Flyby feature and other riders to find some good routes for solo riding, but my options are still extremely limited. So orienting myself and finding my crew is still a work-in-progress.

All smiles on a scorching Friday Truancy group ride

All smiles on a scorching Friday Truancy group ride

Showing off the new 2023 Æthos

Showing off the new 2023 Æthos

Celebrating another XP-filled Tour of Watopia on Zwift

Celebrating another XP-filled Tour of Watopia on Zwift

Another looming concern with the move was coping with the Texas heat, and the summer of 2023 delivered, with no less than 78 days above 37°C (100°F). I continued to ride through it, but limited myself to short rides first thing in the morning… Except for the Friday Truancy group ride, which – despite being the most congenial group ride I found – was often a challenging mid-afternoon scorcher!

I knew I couldn’t commit to riding 10,000 kilometers this year, but thought I might be good for 8,000 KM – the same as last year – which I surpassed. In actuality, I rode at an 11,000 KM per year pace for nine months of the year, but couldn’t ride at all for the other three.

Amusingly, in last year’s writeup I mused that “I might go and buy myself a new steed”. That happened unexpectedly at the start of the year, right after the move, when a local shop discovered a crack in my old bike’s frame. More about that below, where I talk about the year’s purchases.

18th Pan-Mass Challenge and $125,000

I kinda knew that I wouldn’t be able to do a remote PMC ride this year. I had no idea what I could use for a route, what the August heat would be like, whether I’d have the time to do the required fundraising, or if I’d be in physical shape for 300 KM over two days. So I bagged it, and rode a lesser substitute: joining the PMC’s visiting Team Kermit to ride Austin’s Livestrong Challenge in September. Goal deferred; I’ll reconsider this in 2024.

Zwift Level 60

I also didn’t know how much I’d use the smart trainer in Austin, but I did rack up 3,400 indoor KM, which was was more than 2022. Although it can be prohibitively hot or cold to ride in our uninsulated and unheated garage, Zwift incentivized me by creating new roads and moving the Tour of Watopia from March to October. And in December I completed my fifth year on their platform.

I advanced from Level 53 to Level 58 on my slow and painful trudge toward Zwift’s pinnacle: Level 60. Then, with a month left to the year and 85% of the way through Level 58, Zwift moved the goalposts. On one hand, they made it easier to reach Level 60 by reducing the amount of XP needed to level up by about 75 percent. But at the same time, they made it harder to reach the top XP level by tacking on forty new levels, from 61 to 100!

The easier leveling let me zip through Level 59 and reach Level 60 in a matter of days, even finishing the year on Level 62. Although I achieved my goal of reaching Level 60, it’s just not as satisfying because Zwift made the last couple steps much easier to achieve.

Health and Turning 60

On the other hand, no one made the “Turning 60 years old” achievement any easier. I definitely checked that one off, and my flagging on-bike performance showed it, as I discussed in this blogpo.

Fortunately, my time in the saddle wasn’t limited by my health. A heart monitor investigating my cardiac palpitations produced a mostly clear result, with the interesting side-note of registering a sleeping low heart rate as low as 37 BPM! Otherwise there were the usual inconveniences: threw my back out, saddle sores, saddle abrasion, and the joys of colonoscopy prep.

The biggest health question I faced was how to manage heat and hydration in order to avoid problems like I experienced on September’s Livestrong century ride. Before moving to Texas, I could easily do a century without paying much attention to that equation, but now it’s something I really need to solve.

Charts

This year I made my Fitness charts a little wider, and added red vertical lines denoting significant dates. These make it a little easier to see major changes and some context for why they happened.

Let’s begin by comparing 2023 to previous years.

Cycling Fitness: 2011-2023

There’s really three things to note here. First, due to the move, I started 2023 at my lowest level of Fitness (as measured by CTL) since January 2017. Second, 2023 continued a clear trend of decreasing Fitness highs from my recent peak in 2021. As any stock analyst will tell you, a sequence of lower highs and lower lows makes for an unhappy trendline.

And finally, my level of Fitness in 2023 was quite similar to 2018, which was my last year without an indoor trainer; a year that was hampered by tons of travel, record-setting rain, plus malaise and fatigue following the intensely challenging Dirty Dozen ride the preceding fall.

That comparison to 2018 is extremely apt. If you count by Fitness or long rides or number of hours on the bike, 2023 was my worst year since 2018.

So let’s take a closer look at how 2023 unfolded in detail:

Cycling Fitness: 2023 Calendar Year (vs. average)

The year breaks down into five distinct periods: down, up, flat, down, and up; all of it swerving above and below the grey line that represents my average Fitness level throughout the year.

I didn’t ride at all in January, while we were still unpacking from our move. In February, I brought my beloved, ten year old bike to the shop for a major overhaul, only to learn that there was a crack in the frame. I put a few miles on my old folding bike while I waited for Specialized to decide whether I was eligible for their Assisted Replacement Policy, and then procure and assemble my new steed. After more than two months off the bike, my Fitness was at a six-year low, way behind where I’d normally be.

Then the “up” phase. When I finally received my new Specialized Æthos, I rode every day for two months straight, as shown by my steadily increasing Fitness in March and April. When my consecutive rides streak ended on May 1th, I was well ahead of my usual training, and at my peak Fitness for the whole year.

I rode regularly during the summer months from May into September, but coped with the Texas summer by only doing short rides, early in the morning, and focusing on the cheeky goal of being the rider who did the most ascents (within 90 days) of the notorious Ladera Norte climb. With no major events and low riding volume, my Fitness plateaued just below my seasonal average. Summer ended with a secondary Fitness peak in September following the Livestrong Challenge, my only imperial century of the year.

But my planned autumnal riding came to a screeching halt when I discovered that during the Livestrong ride, a rock strike had broken my carbon fiber rear wheel rim. I spent the next month off the bike completely, my Fitness plummeting again while I waited for Specialized to get me a warranty replacement.

Once that was fixed, I was back where I’d been in March: spending most of the fourth quarter recovering the Fitness I’d lost during my hiatus. But similar June’s recovery, I ended the year at a tertiary Fitness peak, well ahead of my wintertime average, and that will carry over into the nascent 2024 season.

In the end, it was a year dominated by stops and starts, but I still accrued a respectable 8,250 KM of riding.

The Centuries

I rode with Team Kermit at the Livestrong Challenge

I rode with Team Kermit at the Livestrong Challenge

Ornoth limping across the finish line

Ornoth limping across the finish line

Pæthos at autumnal Lake Austin

Pæthos at autumnal Lake Austin

But it was a terrible year in terms of long rides. Between bike repair woes, lack of fitness, unfamiliarity with the area, and prohibitive Texas heat, I only attempted one imperial century in 2023. That’s the fewest I’ve done in sixteen years, since 2007.

In fact, I only did seven rides over 100 KM (62 miles): four Zwift fondos on the indoor trainer, a ride down to the Veloway and back, the Fire Ant metric, and my one century, which was:

9/10: Livestrong Challenge

While I only did one – and suffered tremendously, vomiting shortly after finishing – at least it was noteworthy. It was:

  • My first and only century of 2023
  • My first imperial century in 11 months
  • My first century in Texas
  • My first century on my new bike: Pæthos
  • My first century with my new Garmin Edge 840 Solar bike GPS
  • My first event as an official member of Team Kermit
  • My first Livestrong ride

Noteworthy Purchases

In contrast, 2023 was an incredibly productive year for the “procurement department”. With so many new toys, I’ll try to keep it brief…

Topping the list is my new bike: Pæthos, a Specialized Æthos that Specialized gave me an unexpectedly generous discount on. It’s been a very worthy addition, carrying on the performance endurance lineage that my previously-favored Roubaix model abandoned when it went all comfort/gravel/gimmicky. I’m slowly transitioning my kit to match its understated “Chameleon Oil Tint / Flake Silver” (aka black & white) design. My only complaint was the short-lived carbon wheels, which Spesh replaced after the rear wheel broke on its first century ride. Otherwise it’s been a complete delight. In-depth review here.

With a new bike came a handful of new accessories. Hearing rumors of fragility, I picked up a spare seatpost clamp and derailleur hanger in case of breakage. Frustration with flat tires led me to pick up a bunch of spare inner tubes, a CO2 dispenser, and a new Lezyne mini-pump. The latter frees up the bottle cage mount that my old frame pump occupied, so I have finally added a second bottle cage, which will be handy for long rides in the Texas heat. Also a handful of plastic disc brake spacers.

There’s been lots of regular gear replacement as well, including a new Garmin HRM-Dual heart rate monitor, and two new pairs of Craft bibshorts. The new bike needed to be supplied with 28mm Conti GP5000 tires, and a new set of name tag stickers (this time in white, to match Specialized’s own logo decals).

After the bike, another huge development was upgrading my bike GPS head unit from my decrepit old Garmin Edge 820 to the long-awaited new Edge 840 Solar. It too has been an absolute delight, so it also warranted its own separate in-depth review. Since that writeup, Garmin has added the ability for the head unit to display images and photos in incoming text messages.

In addition to new daily-wear bibshorts, I gained a couple other bits of new kit. A jersey from the Buddhist Bike Pilgrimage: a ride I completed back in 2012. And a 2023 Livestrong Challenge jersey, which I earned for surpassing $500 in fundraising. And my very own 2023 Team Kermit jersey and bibshorts. The team uniform even included my very own Kermit the Frog stuffed doll for mounting on my helmet: a traditional (but decidedly non-aerodynamic) part of the team kit.

My most recent purchase was an Ekrin Bantam cordless massage gun, which has been delightful to use, but its effectiveness and safety are still under evaluation.

And finally, the most notable addition to my indoor pain cave was Zwift’s Play controllers. These mount to your handlebars and offer lots of shortcut buttons for in-game actions. But the most useful function they provide is the ability to steer, allowing you to position your avatar in or out of the draft or take an optimal line through corners.

Big sky fulla giant Ornoths at the Fire Ant Tour

Big sky fulla giant Ornoths at the Fire Ant Tour

Bike night at the Circuit of the Americas

Bike night at the Circuit of the Americas

Red Bud Isle (more green than red, akshually)

Red Bud Isle (more green than red, akshually)

Additional Highlights

Naturally, moving to a new city produced a lot of new experiences. I rode a challenging Fire Ant 100k up in Gatesville. I got to ride on Austin’s dedicated cycling circuit, the Veloway. I spent two evenings “zooming” around the Circuit of the Americas: Austin’s Formula One grand prix track. I joined more than a dozen Friday Truancy group rides. And it was great hosting old and new New England friends on Team Kermit rides in the lead-up to the Livestrong Challenge.

Flats – and a non-functioning frame pump – were a problem this year. I had to call a Lyft rideshare to get home after a quadruple snakebite on Blue Bluff, and also walked to The Peddler for repairs after taking a screw on 51st in Mueller. Hence all the new flat-repair equipment mentioned above.

I’m tempted to list out the two dozen Strava “Local Legend” achievements I earned by being the person who rode a segment more than anyone else in a 90-day period, but that’d be a waste. I’ll just mention the two biggies: becoming LCL on Austin’s infamous Ladera Norte climb, and the Friday Truancy ride’s spiker up the Arpdale to Cedarview Kicker.

In terms of Zwift highlights, the indoor training simulator released several enhancements. You can now capture short videos of your ride and share them directly to Strava. They added their new Climbing Portal, the Scotland world, the southern coastal road in Watopia, and introduced the Zwift Play controllers and the Repack Rush steering challenge. As mentioned above, they moved the popular double-XP Tour of Watopia to the fall, and introduced some major (and frankly asinine) changes to the XP system when they unveiled new levels 61 to 100. And there are rumors of more changes in the works.

Blogposts

Goals for 2024

Ornoth's 2023 cycling calendar/log

Ornoth’s 2023 cycling calendar/log

My 2023 Strava Year in Sport summary

My 2023 Strava Year in Sport summary

I knew that 2023 was going to be a chaotic year. Looking forward to 2024, I don’t know if I can plan on it being much better. I’m still learning about Austin and what is gonna work for me here, so most of my goals remain pretty vague.

More 100k and Century Rides

For various reasons, I haven’t done as many event rides as I hoped, so next year I’d like to do more. There’ll probably be another Livestrong ride, and I’m hoping to do the two-day Texas MS Ride in April, and possibly a repeat of the Fire Ant metric. Instead of limiting myself primarily to 100-mile events, as I’ve done previously, I’m thinking of signing up for more 100-kilometer rides, which seem more prevalent and feasible for a sixty year old riding in Texas heat.

Find My Group Ride Niche

I just don’t fit anywhere in Austin’s group ride scene, which is mostly divided between flat-out hammerfests for active racers, and short, plodding social rides for non-athletes. I’m hoping someday I’ll find a ride that splits the difference, much like Pittsburgh’s Team Decaf ride or Boston’s old Quad Cycles rides. There’s got to be more mid-tier endurance and charity riders like me in this area; but where are they?

A Big Pan-Mass Challenge

2024 is kind of a big year for both me and the PMC. It will be the organization’s 45th ride, and they will celebrate surpassing the immense and impressive $1 billion fundraising threshold. For myself, it would be my 18th ride, and bring my own fundraising to over $125,000. And it’d be my first PMC as a sixty year old.

I’m committed to ride, but still stumped by what it will look like. A 300 KM solo ride in August heat doesn’t sound very feasible. I’d consider returning to Boston for the in-person ride, but that’s impossibly expensive, between airfare, hotels, car rental, and transporting my bike. Plus the $6,000+ fundraising minimum is far beyond my current ability, and I’ll have to personally cover any shortfall. I could extend my Livestrong Challenge weekend riding while fundraising for the PMC instead of the Livestrong Foundation… But that’d be in October, rather than on the traditional PMC weekend in August.

There’s just no good option, but the decision needs to be made now, as the traditional PMC route will sell out before the end of January. I wish there was a better choice.

Conclusion

So 2023 was a mixed bag. I turned sixty, said goodbye to my beloved primary bike, was off the bike for three months, skipped the PMC, and only attempted one imperial century. But I also had fun exploring my new town, rode with Team Kermit, got a snazzy new bike, new GPS, a cordless massager, and lots more.

After less than a year, my settling into the Austin scene is far from complete, so that process will be ongoing. I’m looking forward to finding more people, places, and events to enjoy in 2024. Stay tuned to hear how it goes!

Back on September 10th, I completed the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge Austin ride and raised $875 for the Livestrong Foundation.

Rather than give you the usual chronological ride report, I’m gonna organize this mostly by themes, in hopes that it will be both more effective and readable. Are you with me here? Let’s start with the elephant in the peloton

The Decision

My decision to participate will surprise those of you who know my feelings about Lance Armstrong, the Livestrong Foundation’s disgraced founder. I don’t ever want to contribute in any way to the fame or fortune he has amassed from lying to the public and terrorizing the people around him.

So what convinced me to do the Livestrong ride? Here are the factors that went into my choice:

  • Lance has left the organization and is no longer involved in any official way. After suffering due to their association, Livestrong have wisely distanced themselves from him, although he remains their largest financial backer.
  • There are surprisingly few century rides here in Austin, and it’s been a long eleven months since my last one (back in Pittsburgh).
  • I hate cancer even more than I hate Lance, and Livestrong does admirable work for cancer survivors.
  • I have two friends who are Livestrong bigwigs, and their vocal support of the foundation earns it a degree of approval. My childhood friend Scott is on their Board of Directors and is a survivor of testicular cancer; and Steven, the leader of the Pan-Mass Challenge’s popular Team Kermit, is a Livestrong Ambassador (i.e. a distinguished volunteer).
  • Along with Steven, several other PMC friends from Boston come down to Austin for the Livestrong ride.

So while I hate the idea of being associated with Lance Armstrong, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for me to take part in this ride. But I took perverse pride in wearing my 2011 PMC jersey during the event.

Poor Training and Lead-Up

Ornoth with Scott & MJ

Ornoth with Scott & MJ

Scott, Ornoth, & Steven before the start

Scott, Ornoth, & Steven before the start

Ornoth lined up in the VIP starting area

Ornoth lined up in the VIP starting area

MJ & Scott, Steven & Ornoth ready for the start

MJ & Scott, Steven & Ornoth ready for the start

Ornoth rolling out with Team Kermit

Ornoth rolling out with Team Kermit

Rolling through the ranchland in Driftwood

Rolling through the ranchland in Driftwood

Scenic level crossing on the Blanco River

Scenic level crossing on the Blanco River

ClimbPro showing Fulton Ranch hill

ClimbPro showing Fulton Ranch hill

Team Kermit's Ornoth, Christophe, and Steve after conquering Fulton Ranch hill

Team Kermit's Ornoth, Christophe, and Steve after conquering Fulton Ranch hill

Real-Time Stamina, estimating 21% or 17km remaining before bonking

Real-Time Stamina, estimating 21% or 17km remaining before bonking

Ornoth dragging himself toward the finish

Ornoth dragging himself toward the finish

Ornoth crossing the finish line

Ornoth crossing the finish line

And having finished, collapsing

And having finished, collapsing

Not looking good post vomiting after the finish

Not looking good post vomiting after the finish

Solar power gain, showing 71 minutes gained over a 9-hour ride

Solar power gain, showing 71 minutes gained over a 9-hour ride

May, June, and July were filled with short rides focused on becoming Local Legend on the Ladera Norte hill. So I didn’t begin training for distance until August. And August’s training was cut short after badly throwing my back out. Right when my training should have been peaking, I was off the bike for ten days, while the small training effect I’d gained atrophied away.

Four days before the event, I was just getting back onto the bike when Team Kermit members started assembling in Austin. They were looking to meet up and ride every day, right when I would normally be tapering my training in order to be well-rested for the event.

Instead, on Thursday before the (Sunday) event, local Austin Kermit member Scott led a group of five of us up the Walnut Creek Trail, then back to 51th Street for lunch at Jewboy Burgers. Then on Friday I led a sightseeing ride up the Shoal Creek bikeway and back down Scenic Drive. We finished at event packet pickup, where I received a Livestrong Challenge cycling jersey and VIP rider bib tag #28.

I took Saturday off while the Kermiteers spent the day doing another long ride down to the Veloway park. I’d ridden 150 km in two days and was suffering for it. My back was still iffy, my ass was abraded, and my legs were too tired to tackle a hundred-mile ride without rest. At the same time, I hadn’t eaten or slept well, was already dehydrated, and down 1.8 kilos of body weight in a week. For the first time, my final ride prep included zip-tying a stuffed Kermit doll to my helmet, complete with white cowboy hat and rodeo bull-riding pose.

Quick Ride Summary

My Strava activity’s description summed my Livestrong Challenge up best: it was very good until it wasn’t.

After about five hours of sleep, I got up at 4:30am and set out in darkness at 5:45 on the 15 km ride downtown. I rode with Team Kermit from their hotel to the start, where we lined up in the VIP section before being set loose on the streets of Austin at 7:30am.

At the tail end of a brutally hot summer, the ride began under pleasant temperatures that warmed considerably, but not to the extremes that we’ve lived under for the past three months. South from Austin to Buda, then west and south through Driftwood.

Enjoying the freedom of having two water bottles rather than one, I skipped the first three rest stops out of a desire to stay ahead of the pack and beat the time limits for the 100-mile route, which the organizers had shortened by 30 minutes. So my first break came two hours in, after 57 km, (or 72 km if you include my 15 km commute to the start). As you might guess by such a long stretch without a break, I had been feeling good thus far.

I refilled my bottles and marshaled some strength for the long, steep hill at the end of the next segment. I enjoyed the pleasant tree-lined streets near Wimberley, and a stunning level crossing of the Blanco River. Then came the 15% grade climb up Fulton Ranch hill, which is essentially the halfway point of the course. It was quite manageable for a cyclist used to the much lumpier terrain back in Pittsburgh. At the top, a water stop beckoned; I pulled in at 10:30am, having taken three hours to knock out 77 km (or 92 km).

While resting here, Team Kermit members Christophe and Steve rolled in, and we would leapfrog each other for the rest of the 110 km trek back to Austin. But this would be the point when things slowly started going to hell. The temps climbed through the 30s, and I was feeling the effort in my feet, legs, lower back, traps, and hands.

As my reserves dwindled, my speed and power dropped, and my horizon shrank to simply reaching the next rest stop. I hadn’t eaten any solid food during the whole ride, and was pounding fluid in an attempt to address both heat and thirst. Extended 15-minute rest stops and hand towels soaked in ice water were just enough to keep me from blowing up.

I stopped twice to battle fatigue and nausea during the last segment to the finish, but completed the final loop around Auditorium Shores. The event photographers captured my grim visage as I crossed the finish line at 3:07pm. I’d completed the official 158 km official course in 7h 37m, but had fulfilled my 108th imperial century by riding 15 extra km to the start.

I collapsed in exhaustion underneath the Team Kermit tent and waved off others’ attempts at congratulations, accepting only a folding chair and an ice-water towel. And then came that feeling we’re all familiar with: a particular certainty that it’s time to find a convenient but discreet place to deposit some biological material. So I staggered nonchalantly over to a nearby trash can and retched about three gallons of undigested fluid that I’d carried with me over the preceding few dozen kilometers.

So my Livestrong Challenge ended successfully but ignobly. I managed to recuperate enough to stand for a team picture before I said goodbye, then met up with my partner Inna, who mercifully drove me those extra 15 km back home.

My First Century in Eleven Months

This was my first 100-mile ride since October 2022. Eleven months is a long layoff; I haven’t gone that long between centuries in fifteen years (since 2007-2008)! You ask me how it went? Go back and read the summary: it was very good until it wasn’t.

Mistakes were made. Looking back on it, nearly all of them were about my personal physical fitness and decisionmaking, not my equipment or the location or the event. So I guess that would be the logical place to start…

My Fitness and Decisionmaking

A century always demands a lot of stamina and will power from me, but this was an exceptional case. Despite being one of the first dozen riders out of the gate, then skipping three rest stops, I only marginally beat the last finishers on the course.

I could blame the Texas heat, but even at 37°C (98°C) it was mercifully moderate in comparison to the seventy days above 38°C (100°F) that Austin experienced over the summer.

Or I could blame my age. After all, I’m only weeks away from my sixtieth birthday, and that’s the kind of thing that can slow a guy down.

While those are valid considerations, there was a whole panoply of other factors that impaired my performance, leaving me with weak legs and zero stamina toward the end of the ride.

Despite not doing any long rides in nearly a year, I barely did any lengthy training rides prior to the event. I went into it fatigued and dehydrated from too little sleep and too much riding just before the event. I was insufficiently fueled due to an irregular eating schedule and not eating any solid food during the ride. And I still had lingering injuries to my lower back and my backside (the latter attributable to insufficient time in the saddle).

But the biggest wildcard was hydration. Consuming two bottles over the first five segments of my ride – especially since the first segment was a casual commute – doesn’t seem like an especially egregious error. But it set me up poorly for the second half of the ride, where my perceptions of thirst and heat were clearly malfunctioning, causing me to take in more fluid than I could digest. This is the biggest thing I’ll have to monitor on future long rides.

There were lots of physical niggles along the road, of course. Early on, I had to make a quick roadside stop to flush some stinging sunblock out of my eyes. In my cycling sandals, some pain developed in my big toes, but I got away without a repeat of the abrasions I’d gotten on top of my feet a couple weeks earlier.

And I’d expected pain in my hands due to a slight change in my position on the new bike. I did have some discomfort, but not the severe palsy that I’d feared. It would be prudent to address this soon by buying new cycling gloves and plush handlebar tape.

The New Bike

Like its owner’s ride, my new Specialized Æthos was very good until it wasn’t.

It looked like Pæthos came through its first century in flying colors, to the extent that I had very little to say about it, other than that it suited me well and earned my full confidence.

Two weeks before the event, I’d gotten a flat on a pair of brand new tires. That got me so worried about the rough chipseal of Texas back roads that I’d carried two spare inner tubes, in addition to a pump, a CO2 dispenser, and a Shrader-to-Presta adapter in case I needed an automotive air compressor. That was all overkill; Pæthos appeared to handle everything that was thrown at it.

Just before the ride, I’d also converted from one water bottle cage to two, which was a big win. That gives me the flexibility to ride farther unsupported or without stopping (e.g. skipping three water stops). But it also gave me the option of carrying both sport drink for hydration and clear water to pour over my head and body when the heat was at its worst. And I did lots of that on the Livestrong ride!

But those Texas roads did get me in the end. After I got home, I noticed a break in the carbon rim of my rear wheel, which most likely happened due to a rock strike somewhere along the Livestrong route. I took it in to Specialized to see if it was rideable or a case for a warranty replacement, and they chose to replace the rim. Pretty ridiculous that my first set of carbon wheels lasted a mere 4,000 km.

The New GPS Bike Computer

This was also the first century-length test for the Garmin Edge 840 Solar that I picked up last month, which delighted me in nearly every way. On top of flawlessly handling mapping and turn-by-turn navigation, it now sports graphical data fields (e.g. power and heart rate charts), and the new ClimbPro feature, which tracks your location on an elevation profile of the current climb.

While cool, I had already tested that stuff; I was more eager to try out some other features that could only be done on a century-length ride. After all, I couldn’t finish my full review until I’ve put it through all my typical use cases.

Top of the list was battery life. The battery on my old Edge 820 had deteriorated to the point where I had to plug it into a portable USB battery for any rides longer than 90 minutes. The new unit claimed 26 to 32 hours, and I finished my 10-hour day with a whopping 72% charge remaining. I think I can finally leave my USB charger at home for good!

Of course, that includes the benefit I derived from the unit’s solar charging feature, which in Texas is a painless way to give the battery slight boost. Over 9h 15m the unit gained about 72 minutes worth of solar power, or about 8 minutes per hour. Not revolutionary, but not trivial either!

The other major feature I wanted to test was Garmin’s new “real-time stamina” estimate, which supposedly learns your physiology and provides a real-time guess about how long you can go until exhaustion. At my first rest stop, it estimated that I had 55% stamina remaining, and – ominously – that my reserves would run out 40 km before the end. I monitored that number all afternoon as it fluctuated, but it consistently told me that I’d have nothing left in the tank for the last 25-35 km of the ride, which is exactly how things played out. It was surprisingly accurate, given the variables that it didn’t know about, like fueling and hydration.

One feature came as a complete surprise to me. When Kermit team leader Steven texted us to ask where we were on the course, I deliriously scrolled down through the usual canned, stock responses for something appropriate as I continued pedaling. At the bottom of the list was something my old unit had lacked: the ability to actually type a freehand text response right there on the head unit! So I was able to pound out a response that truly captured my feelings in the moment. In response to his “How far out are you??”, I answered “Lifetimes”.

The only glitch I had was a minor one. I’ve always had an alert set to pop up when I reached the 100 mile threshold, but it never showed up on the new computer. I’ll have to re-test that, the next time I get the opportunity to pound out a hundred-mile ride.

My Friend Scott

As I mentioned above, my childhood friend Scott is on the Livestrong Board of Directors and is a survivor of testicular cancer.

Our friendship goes back fifty years to 1972: 3rd grade back in Maine, Cub Scouts, then French and several other classes through middle and high school. After going separate ways for college, 25 years later we rediscovered each other and our common commitment to cycling to combat cancer. In 2008 he rode the Pan-Mass Challenge, so it seemed appropriate for me to take part in his preferred event, especially since I’m now based in Austin.

I ran into him and his partner MJ outside the hotel as we were both heading to the start, and got to chat with them a little more just before we lined up for the depart. It was the first time I’d seen him in ten years, and it was wonderful to touch base, although it was much briefer than it deserved… Hopefully another time.

Steven and Team Kermit

My friend Steven is both a Livestrong Ambassador and the captain of the Pan-Mass Challenge’s very popular Team Kermit, founded in honor of – and continuing in memory of – his son Jared. I have several connections in the group and have ridden alongside numerous Team Kermit riders in the PMC all the way back to their founding in 2005. Most recently, I’ve nurtured friendships with several Kermiteers by riding with them virtually on the weekly PMC Zwift indoor trainer rides.

While I’ve never ridden the PMC as part of a team, I thought it would be fun to bolster Team Kermit’s numbers on the Livestrong ride, so I registered as an official team member. The days preceding the ride were spent tagging along – and even leading – some fun local sightseeing rides for our traveling visitors. Taking charge was local Austinite and Team Kermit member Scott.

Riders Christophe and Steve I only knew from the Zwift group rides, so it was nice to put names with their faces. They rode with me for the second half of the century route, and their companionship was absolutely invaluable.

I’m very much a lone wolf, so there were several times when I felt awkward as a member of a team, especially a team who decorates our helmets with large, stuffed Kermit toy dolls, which gets a ton of attention and comments! But they’re truly good people, and I was happy to be allowed to represent them.

Riding in Texas

This was my first century-length ride in the Lone Star State, which I view as a milestone, since it’s such a vastly different environment from my familiar riding in the Northeast.

My top concern was the Texas heat, especially after months of temperatures hovering at or above 40°C. Riding in that kind of heat is seriously dangerous, and I wanted to be sure my first long ride offered the kind of generous support you get on large charity rides. Wisely, most centuries down here take place in the spring and fall, and we were lucky that event day hovered just below 40°C. But temperature concerns will always be present for every ride I do down here.

My second concern was the roads, not knowing quite what to expect in terms of traffic, surface quality, and space to ride. In the end, those things all vary. There were trafficky bits and quiet bits; there was smooth tarmac and ample rough chipseal; broad roads with dedicated bike lanes and narrow, single-lane roads without even a shoulder. Finding quiet, comfortable roads for long, solo rides is just going to require some investigation.

Once outside of the city and its immediate suburbs, the terrain was mostly what I’ll call scrubland. Plots of large ranches with low, hardy, weatherbeaten vegetation like juniper (which Texans call “cedar”) and live oak. There aren’t a ton of rivers and creeks – and those are nearly all dry after the summer’s heatwave – where you often see dramatic exposed limestone. It has a lot of character, without being entirely desert or prairie. The Blanco River crossing was really interesting, and I even shared the road with a roadrunner while climbing out of it.

At a macro level, riding in Texas is going to take some adjustment, but it should be amply doable, with careful scouting and route selection, and more experience managing my hydration.

Livestrong: the Event

This was also my first Livestrong ride. How was that?

The route was mostly fine. My only complaint was is that because the start/finish is downtown, a large percentage of the ride was urban and suburban strip mall hell, leaving less than a third of the route for scenic rural country roads. The entire second half of the ride paralleled ugly Interstate 35 on the run back to Austin. But the scenic bits we did get were thoroughly pleasant.

Ride support was generally great, with no less than nine water stops spaced about 16 km apart, well-stocked with ample ice and wet towels, although no cola was available until the end.

As a rider, the cutoff times for the century route were not especially generous, particularly after they were shortened an extra 30 minutes. Fortunately they weren’t an issue for me, though.

The fundraising minimum (ZERO!) was surprisingly welcoming, with premiums offered at varying – and entirely voluntary – fundraising thresholds. By raising $875, I earned an on-course tribute sign, a tote bag, a tee shirt, a cheap mini Bluetooth speaker, the ubiquitous water bottle, an event cycling jersey, and a finisher’s medal, plus the right to line up in the VIP section at the head of the ride. That’s a much friendlier model when compared to the PMC’s $2,000 to $6,000 fundraising requirement just to participate!

Unlike the PMC, where thousands of spectators — often former patients and their families – line the entire route and thank you for riding, community support was mostly non-existent on the Livestrong ride. Other than the crowd at the start/finish, a few bystanders waving from nearby bus stops, and water stop volunteers, during the entire ride I only encountered one couple sitting at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, cheering their hearts out. The two events couldn’t be more different in that respect.

It all adds up to a mixed picture: a well-run and rider-friendly event for an organization that has wisely distanced itself from its shameful founder, and which Scott and Steven have convinced me does admirable work helping cancer patients and their families. And even if it’s no Pan-Mass Challenge or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I’m very likely to participate again in the future, for the same reasons I outlined above.

Epilogue

So there you have it; it was a landmark ride. To encapsulate, it was:

  • My first Livestrong ride
  • My first imperial century in 11 months
  • My first century of 2023
  • My first century in Texas
  • My first century on Pæthos, my new bike
  • My first century with my new Garmin bike GPS
  • My first event as an official member of Team Kermit (or any team, for that matter)

While this century included a grim struggle and an ignoble footnote, I hold to my words that it was very good until it wasn’t. Troubles aside, I completed the course safely and enjoyed the overwhelming majority of it, and gained lots of lessons to bring forward for future rides. I enjoyed it immensely and am glad to have done it.

In addition to the HUI-VUI, I’ve discovered another thing that happens every six years: I purchase a new GPS bike computer. In this case, we’re talking the Garmin Edge 840 Solar, which I picked up last month after it came out back in April. A new GPS head unit is a really big deal for someone who spends as much time in the saddle as I do.

The Garmin Edge 840 Solar

Before diving into the new unit, let’s look at how far we’ve come. I first used a GPS to log bike rides waay back in 2000, using Garmin’s original yellow eTrex handheld, but the tech back then was so primitive that it didn’t have maps or routes or points of interest; just a blank monochrome 64 x 128 pixel LCD with a breadcrumb trail of where you had gone, and even that initially suffered from “Selective Availability”: an intentional inaccuracy imposed by the government on civilian GPS signals. Six years later I grabbed an eTrex Vista (my review), which had finally added color and some very rudimentary maps. In 2011 Garmin released the cycling-specific Edge 800, then 2017’s Edge 820 (my review), and this year’s Edge 840.

Along the way, I’ve watched these units evolve into incredibly useful and sophisticated navigational and analytical tools. Garmin updates their cycling products about every three years, so I’ve usually skipped a generation (e.g., the Edge 810 and Edge 830). So when I buy a new unit, there are some substantial improvements and compelling new features to check out.

And by that point, my old unit is usually pretty worn out. That was certainly true of my loyal old Edge 820. To begin with, its touch screen – a novelty at the time – was very sluggish, and the processor took forever to calculate routes or pan and zoom the map display. And the Micro USB connector was outdated technology from the start. After a few years the screen faded significantly, leaving a prominent grid of its LCD guts showing through its faint display. And its battery life – originally billed as lasting 15 hours – had shrunk to about 90 minutes. These were the shortcomings that I expected the new Edge 840 to fix.

With that, let’s look at the new beast. As always, I’ll divide this review into four sections: things I’m neutral about; features I don’t know much about because I didn’t test them; features I’m excited about; and the things that already disappoint me. With an executive summary at the end.

The Neutrals

My main display: speed, distance, with power and heart rate charts

My main display: speed, distance, with power and heart rate charts

One of the most noticeable changes is a revamped UI. It works fine. Its organization of functions isn’t 100% intuitive. And it’s still based on “activity profiles” rather than gear, which has always seemed a bit clunky to me.

The unit also supports phone-based configuration. I really don’t see a ton of value in that over configuring the unit on a computer or the device itself.

Potentially useful features include alerts for upcoming sharp turns and high-speed roads. But the high-speed road alerts arrive way too late to be actionable (e.g. navigating to avoid them). And the last thing you want when speeding around a sharp turn is having to read and dismiss an alert popping up on your head unit. They’re nice ideas, but not practical (at least not with the current implementation).

An unexpected surprise was that when following a route, the GPS can now have your phone verbally announce navigational cues as you approach them. “In fifty meters turn right on Mesa Drive.” Another cool idea, but they’re just not intelligible when your phone is stuffed into a jersey pocket on your back.

The unit can also walk you through a heart rate variability stress test. This isn’t for general health purposes, but for telling you how well or poorly you have recovered from your previous rides. That’s not something I need to wait around for three minutes for a device to tell me.

The Cycling Ability feature can tell you what your general cycling strengths and weaknesses are, as a very gross training aid. Garmin doesn’t add much value by telling me that I’m an endurance specialist.

Same with their measurement of heat acclimation. A simple percentage is way too simplistic to be of any actionable value.

Another hamstrung feature is showing the battery status for all your sensors (e.g. heart rate monitor, electronic shifters, power meter), where you really need more discrete battery levels than “okay” and “dead”.

There’s also a ton of features that I don’t really care much about, but you might. But to be honest I really don’t have any opinion about things like incident detection, structured training plans, mountain biking metrics, hydration alerts, an integrated bike alarm, lost device finder, etc.

The Unknowns

It might surprise you that I didn’t bother testing the unit’s integration with my indoor trainer. But the only useful function that provides would be the ability to simulate the gradients of riding a known real-world course, which isn’t as engaging as riding in the richer worlds on Zwift.

The Power Guide feature gives you a plan for specific power numbers to match when following a particular route. Just not something I’m likely to want.

Same story with the Event Training Plan feature. I hate structured training and already know how to build and taper for a major event. Not something I need, and not something I’d look to a head unit to provide.

There’s also the new and very promising Group Ride feature, which lets groups of riders share their route, in-ride messages, and live map with everyone’s location. This sounds like a really awesome feature if a critical number of rides and riders adopt it, although it’s limited to Garmin’s most recent units. It’s only in my “Unknowns” section because I haven’t had any opportunity to test it out.

The Positives

My customized boot screen

My customized boot screen

Solar power gain, showing 71 minutes gained over a 9-hour ride

Solar power gain, showing 71 minutes gained over a 9-hour ride

ClimbPro displaying map, elevation profile, current grade and power

ClimbPro displaying map, elevation profile, current grade and power

Real-Time Stamina, estimating 21% or 17km remaining before bonking

Real-Time Stamina, estimating 21% or 17km remaining before bonking

Let’s start with the basics: critical things my Edge 820 did that the 840 still does. I can still download my activity FIT data files to my laptop, as mentioned above. It still communicates with my Di2 electronic shifting and displays what gear combination I’m in. I can still capture screen shots, as you can see at right. I can still set the text that appears on the startup screen. And you can still charge it from a portable USB battery while using it. Good!

Then there’s things that aren’t new, but are features the Edge 840 has improved upon. Starting with the most important improvement: battery duration is now listed at 32 to 60 hours! The touch screen is so much more responsive that it’s actually usable now! Panning and zooming maps is reasonably quick! Calculating and re-calculating routes takes a second or two instead of five to ten minutes! Adding the GNSS GPS system improves GPS accuracy in cities and other challenging areas! And while my old unit would show alerts when calls or text messages came in, the 840 also shows email and all other phone notifications! Very nice!

The passive solar receiver adds around 8 to 10 minutes of extra power per hour in Texas sun, which might not be a huge deal for folks in cloudier locales, and there’s a data page showing the unit’s solar efficiency. Even I debated buying the non-solar model when I learned that the special glass makes the solar screen a little less bright, but it seems fine, and way better than my old, faded Edge 820.

On the topic of charging, we’ve finally made the transition from a MicroUSB to a USB-C charging & data port!

One of the highlights of the new interface is a home screen with “Glances”, little UI widgets that summarize important information and link to the most frequently-used functions. For example, there’s a Weather Glance that shows current conditions and clicks through to a dedicated weather page. And the Navigation Glance will show and give you one-touch access to the route you most recently downloaded onto the unit.

But by far the most massive UI enhancement is the widespread addition of graphical data fields! Heart rate and power are no longer a single number, but also time-series charts that are color-coded for intensity. Solar power, route elevation and gradient, and several other data fields can be shown as color graphs that encapsulate a ton of information in a small screen factor. Very cool!

One special application of charts is the new Climb Pro page. When you begin a climb, a new page pops up to show your current power, how much longer the hill is, its current slope, and a chart that shows where you are on the climb, and color-coded undulations of how steep it gets over its entire duration. It’s a very handy little tool for managing your effort, especially on long or steep ascents.

And if you need to manage your effort over an entire long ride, the Real-Time Stamina page is a great new feature. It uses your history to estimate what percentage of your total endurance you’ve used up – and therefore how much you still have left in the tank – and what that translates to in terms of time or distance until you hit the wall and your performance plummets. This sounds like a gimmicky pseudo-feature, but on my recent 100-mile Livestrong ride, it accurately foretold that I’d run out of juice about 30 km before the finish.

I could have included this in my “enhanced features” above, but it deserves its own paragraph: enhanced text message functionality. On my old Edge 820, when replying to someone’s text message, I could only pick from a pre-set list of 8-10 basic canned responses. Now there’s about three times as many canned responses. And you can customize them in their mobile app. And you can add emoji. And the Holy Grail: you can even compose your own responses on the fly, using the on-device keyboard! Finally Garmin no longer artificially limits me to replying with “Yes”, “No”, or “Almost there”!

The Negatives

The most obvious and glaring negative is that the meager screen resolution (246 x 322 pixels) hasn’t increased. It’s not a huge issue, but a higher resolution display would improve my perception of the unit a great deal.

Garmin advertises a cool feature that will tell you your “fitness age” based on your measured physiology. Why is that a negative? Because you don’t get that piece of data unless you buy both a connected scale and wear a 24-hour fitness watch that’s paired to their central database. Garmin advertising this feature as available on their bike computer is completely misleading.

While I haven’t sussed out exactly which features require it, the bike computer will nag the user to not only install but keep Garmin’s smartphone app open and running in order to take advantage of certain online features (IIRC things like current weather, voice navigation, text messages, and phone notifications).

The only true malfunction I’ve experienced is that a distance alert I set failed to trigger on my recent 100-mile Livestrong ride. Unfortunately, I’ve only done one century ride, so this isn’t something I can test very often!

Finally, the unit often hangs whenever I disconnect it from a cable connection to my laptop. It’s recoverable, and most people probably don’t do this very often, but I download my activity data file after every ride, so it’s a big annoyance for me. Aside from the fact that the unit shouldn’t hang under normal operating conditions to begin with!

The Bottom Line

Six years ago, I was disappointed after buying Garmin’s Edge 820. After defining and owning the GPS bike computer market, they released an underwhelming product that was unimaginative, behind the times, and deeply flawed. As a result, more agile competitors like Wahoo and Hammerhead eagerly and justifiably took major chunks out of Garmin’s once-dominant market share.

Garmin seems to have learned their lesson. The Edge 840 has improved on several old features and introduced a raft of new functions. I’m genuinely excited by the improved UI and graphical data fields, the passive solar charging, ClimbPro, Real-Time Stamina, the enhanced SMS capabilities, and the potential of the Group Ride features. Assuming they figure out the missing distance alert, my only knock on it is the meager screen resolution; but that’s still markedly brighter and more responsive than my old, fading 820’s terrible display.

Am I happy with it? I’m delighted! While it’s not perfect, the Edge 840 is a tremendous improvement over my old 820, with far fewer built-in flaws.

I’m an old man. I’m not gonna set any speed records (aka Strava KoMs) on the melty-sweltery streets of south-central Texas. Especially in a city full of amateur and pro racers like multiple and current Tour de France participant Lawson Craddock.

However, what I can do is ride frequently, and if you’re the person who has ridden a road segment more often than anyone else in the previous 90 days, Strava recognizes you with their “Local Legend” award (aka LCL).

Looking back from the top of Ladera Norte

Looking back from the top of Ladera Norte

So with few century-length rides happening in the unrelenting convection oven heat of summer in Texas, and needing some kind of cycling goal to motivate me, I decided to try to win the LCL on one of Austin’s most notorious hills: the kilometer-long, 100-meter, 16%-max climb up Ladera Norte, where the aforementioned Lawson Craddock holds the fastest ascent.

My first introduction to Ladera Norte (Spanish for ‘North Slope’) was during our apartment-hunting trip last Thanksgiving. We had just completed our second viewing of the house we would eventually lease, and took some time to drive around and explore the neighborhood. Just three kilometers from the house, we randomly turned at a sign for “North Cat Mountain” and up a slope that immediately reminded us of the ludicrous hills back in Pittsburgh, like maybe Hazelwood Ave. It was a huge eye-opener.

Becoming the Local Legend on it wasn’t gonna be an easy task. Not only is it a challenging climb, but the guy who held the title had ridden it over 30 times. I’d have to climb that beast more than once every three days, for three months straight! During… wait for it… June, July, and August.

So I added the climb to the start of my short one-hour recovery ride loop and started doing it as often as I could tolerate. By riding first thing in the morning, I could avoid Austin’s daily 40° C heat, although it gets unpleasantly humid overnight. Doing this route so often really limited my other riding, but I wasn’t planning on many long rides in that heat anyways. Riding straight out to the climb, over the top, then cooling down with my recovery loop became my not-quite-daily ritual.

Because I was riding the same route so often, I became the LCL on a number of other segments along my route: No Hills Drive, Mesa, Greystone, Bull Creek, Hancock. And, eventually… Ladera Norte!

After much repetitive climbing, I finally stole the LCL on July 30th. Having done 30 climbs over 65 days, I’d completed nearly one ascent every other day for 9½ weeks. Mission accomplished, at least temporarily.

See, when you take the LCL from someone, Strava sends them an email letting them know. So the next question was whether the former LCL was in the mood to go out and immediately take it back from me.

It’s been a week since I took the title, and he hasn’t made any attempt to catch up. Meanwhile, I’ve done a few more reps, and our current tallies are 33 to 27. So it looks my status as the Local Legend on Ladera Norte is somewhat secure.

Which means it’s time for me to switch goals, and that’s something I need to do anyways.

Five weeks from today I will be doing my first Livestrong Challenge, which is also my first attempt at a 100-mile ride in Texas, and my first century on the new bike: Pæthos. If I keep doing these dinky 26km morning rides, there’s no way I’ll be prepared to tackle 100 miles, so now I’m changing my focus to: getting lots more kilometers under my belt, and getting better acclimated to the extreme heat of high noon in Texas. Wish me luck!

And of course if you can, it would be wonderful if you expressed your support via a donation to the Livestrong Foundation, which supports cancer survivors. You can do that on my LC rider page: https://give.livestrong.org/ornoth

Thanks for being with me!

I wouldn’t normally post a ride report for a mere 100k (62-mile) ride, but there are reasons why I’d like to share my experience of my first Fire Ant Tour.

Big sky fulla giant Ornoths!

Big sky fulla giant Ornoths!

Riding straight past the first rest stop

Riding straight past the first rest stop

Rolling into the second rest stop

Rolling into the second rest stop

... and limping over the finish line

... and limping over the finish line

To begin with, I haven’t found many (imperial) century-length rides around Austin, which means very little to talk about. I’m hoping to get one or two under my belt soon, but this is summer in Texas: not the smartest time to undertake my first century in a while. So I might not have any century-length ride reports to post until fall.

On top of that, my last outdoor ride of more than 80 KM (half a century) was back in October, so it’s already been eight months since I posted my last ride report. So the Fire Ant Tour was a test of my physical readiness for a long ride after such a long hiatus.

In the same spirit of testing things, this was a ride full of important firsts. It was a chance to try my first major event on the new bike: Pæthos. It was my first major event in Texas after our move down here in January. It was also my first ride out in the rural Texas countryside, well outside of the proverbial “Austin city limits”. And it was my first long ride facing the extreme heat of summer in Texas, coming just eleven days before the summer solstice.

I didn’t maximize my physical preparation. I was pretty casual about my fitness level in the weeks leading up to the event, and I didn’t bother tapering my riding just beforehand. I wasn’t feeling particularly strong, but I figured I was ready enough for a little 100k.

In short: this ride was going to be a big test of several factors, and I was very interested in learning from how it went.

So with Inna away visiting family back in Pittsburgh, I hopped in the car at 5:30am – after waking up at 2:30am due to a thunderstorm – and drove 90 minutes north toward Waco and rural Gatesville TX. Although there was still lightning when I left Austin, the sky had cleared by the time I checked in and got the bike ready for the 8am start. Over 325 riders set off in very pleasant 24° morning sunshine.

We rolled along, mostly north and east, often topping 40-50 km/h and averaging over 30 km/h, knocking off the first two of the route’s four small 50-meter hills. There were almost no cars on the roads, and the landscape surprisingly reminded me of the very open, flat-to-rolling farmland in Ohio. At this point, it was really delightful.

It was when we turned back west to complete our first, clockwise 20 KM loop that we learned how much of a tailwind we’d enjoyed on the outbound leg: about 18 km/h gusting to 26. Despite putting much more effort into overcoming the headwind, I was going slower, and that variation in power and speed would continue all day, depending on which direction we were going.

After a tedious westward slog, the route continued with a larger 55 KM loop, counter-clockwise, with the wind cutting my average speed to a painful 18 km/h on the westward portion. That loop ended with a 3 KM section of rough gravel that stung my hands, followed by the last of the climbs on the route.

After that challenging segment, I took some extra time at the last rest stop to douse myself with water and rest my legs. It was now the heat of the day, and the former cooling wind had become hot. I wish I could quantify that, but after a forecast high of 36°, on the ground readings ranged from 31° on one feed, to 35° from the National Weather Service’s intermittent rural monitor, to 40° recorded by my GPS. After having increased my sport drink intake, my stomach was bloated and queasy, my feet were hurting, and my power numbers were flagging.

The last segment was short and partially downhill, and I rolled across the finish shortly after 1pm, having taken 5 hours to cover 107 KM, with just 750 meters of climbing. I certainly didn’t finish strong, but picked up my finisher’s medal, doused myself with water, and packed up. I gratefully jumped in the air conditioned car and drove straight home, my stomach wanting no part of post-ride hot dogs, drinks, or ice cream.

Despite the discouraging finish, I really enjoyed the ride. The roads were quiet and reasonably well surfaced – except for that gravel section – and car traffic was minimal. The Texas landscape wasn’t dramatically different from what I’m used to, and less sere than I expected. The tailwind was awesome, the headwind was annoying, and overall the breeze did clear some of the heat off the road surfaces.

That heat wasn’t extreme by Texas standards, but I did gain a healthy respect for it. I’ll have to be more assertive about hydrating early, and accept the limits of my endurance when it gets really hot. Whether I want to push myself for summer century+ rides is still a bit of an open question, knowing that it’ll entail an extra, dangerous level of suffering.

The organizers did a good job, with frequent rest stops amply stocked with ice, and I’m always delighted to receive a finisher’s medal.

As for Pæthos, it did marvelously. I had no issues with mechanicals or fit or unwelcome squeaks and creaks. My only complaint was some pain in my hands, which was aggravated by the short gravel section. I’ll be keeping an eye on that in the future.

So for a first event, the Fire Ant Tour was fun and provided the desired learning experience. With a hot five-hour ride under my belt, I have a better idea what to expect if I choose to undertake my first century in this summer’s extreme Texas heat.

The Akron Bicycle Club’s Absolutely Beautiful Country ride is the first major ride of 2020 that was neither cancelled, postponed, or virtualized. They asked people to register (for free) and supplied cue sheets, but provided no formal ride time, no route markings, no support vehicles, and no water stops. Basically, it was a completely unsupported ride along a published route, kind of like a brevet.

Moonlight on the Volcano

Although I’ve enjoyed riding it for the past three years, there was no way I was going to drive two hours to Akron and two hours back just to do an unsupported century, when 40 miles is the longest unsupported outdoor ride I’ve done at home (mostly due to concerns about stopping at convenience stores to refuel). In the middle of a global pandemic, it’s just not worth the added risk.

So despite there being a nominal ride, I was still going to mimic the route indoors on Zwift. As has become routine, I consulted my Zenturizer to find a course that matched last year’s ABC ride in distance and climbing.

Thankfully Pittsburgh’s longest heat wave in 25 years—eight days above 90°—broke on Saturday, when I warmed up with the 29-mile second stage of Zwift’s Etape du Tour, which was also my first look at the brand new France environment they just released.

Then Sunday morning I set out on 4.3 laps of Zwift’s Watopia Out & Back course. Each lap begins with a nice flat section in the desert, then up the reasonably challenging Volcano Climb, and back to the start via the Hill KoM Reverse.

Right from the start, I set myself an easy pace, about 150W normalized power. I spent the first three hours chatting on Discord with some fellow Herd members who were already halfway through their own century attempt.

Once they finished and signed off, the second half of my ride became more challenging. Ascending the Volcano four times was more climbing than I remember doing in the Akron ride, and my self-indulgent pace meant the ride dragged on long than necessary (though still much faster than the IRL ride due to traffic and rest stops).

Toward the end, I started incurring the usual fatigue, aches, and pains. Knowing I needed a little more climbing to reach my target, I made a short excursion into the rollers in Titans Grove, then finished off my eighth Zentury of 2020, with a spot-on 106 miles, and 33 feet more than the necessary 4,593 feet of climbing.

Right Turn, Not Left!

One of the strangest things is coming home from a century with no sensations of sun exposure. Stranger still is having eight centuries under my belt, but pretty much no tan whatsoever. As the subject line says: centuries 8, tan: 0! I need to continue—and perhaps increase—the few short outdoor rides I started doing in June, when 25% of my miles were done outside.

Beyond the pseudo ABC ride, there have been a few noteworthy developments in the past couple weeks.

I’ve already mentioned Zwift’s Etape event and new France map, which includes the iconic Mont Ventoux climb as well as nine new route badges to secure.

And our eight-day heat wave that really sapped my strength, and which will resume again on Wednesday.

Also my two year old Wahoo HRM strap broke, so I replaced it with a second-generation TICKR. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been working very well, and I’m considering swapping it out yet again.

Shimano released a 25th anniversary edition of their cycling sandals, my preferred footwear. I’ve put 60,000 miles on them, including 150-mile days, and couldn’t be happier with them, even despite the stupid tan lines they give you! I’ll try to add another pair to my collection.

And no report would be complete without mentioning my Pan-Mass Challenge fundraising. I’m currently at $1,725 for the year, which qualifies me for the official ride jersey, so you’ll see me sporting that very soon. I’m just $53 short of reaching $113,000 lifetime fundraising for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund, a cause I believe in wholeheartedly. If you’d like to help out, please make a donation on my PMC profile page.

In my previous post, I outlined my plan of using Zwift to mimic real-world rides I had planned but couldn’t ride due to the Coronavirus lockdown. My goal has been to ride the same distance and elevation gain as the actual route.

When my first event came in late April, I somehow had to identify a route on Zwift that would provide me with the same 7,687 feet of climbing over 123.19 miles as the IRL ride. I cobbled together a mash-up of three different routes, but it was a bit off: 8,402 feet of climbing over 125.56 miles! My mileage was good, but I’d done 10 percent more climbing than I needed to!

I knew there was a better way. Someone should write a program that would take stats for all Zwift’s routes and compare that to my target route, then tell me the Zwift route that would allow me to finish with just the right combination of distance and climbing.

Obv, that someone had to be me.

So I went to work and produced the Zenturizer. You give it the distance and climbing in the ride you want to simulate (metric or imperial), and it will list which routes on Zwift are the best match, and how many laps you need to do. Just like this:

Zenturizer main screen

Last weekend, I wanted to test the Zenturizer and get another “Zentury” under my belt. While I didn’t have any real-world events in May, I decided to replicate a ride I used to do over Memorial Day weekend back when I lived in Boston: the Tour d’Essex County, a 102-mile century in Boston’s north shore and Merrimack valley that included 3,000 feet of climbing.

Feeding that data into the Zenturizer produced the following options, in order of how closely they match my criteria:

  1. Ride about 15.9 laps of Flat Route (Watopia) 94% match
  2. Ride about 44.7 laps of Volcano Circuit (Watopia) 88% match
  3. Ride about 44.2 laps of Volcano Circuit CCW (Watopia) 88% match
  4. Ride about 34.8 laps of Classique (London) 83% match
  5. Ride about 16.4 laps of Greater London Flat (London) 83% match
  6. Ride about 6.6 laps of Greatest London Flat (London) 75% match

Although I wasn’t very excited at doing the bog-standard Watopia Flat route, it was the best match, and I wasn't about to ride any course 35-45 times, so Watopia Flat it was!

According to the Zenturizer’s calculations, it should have taken exactly 15 laps of Watopia Flat to accumulate 3,000 feet of climbing, and 15.9 laps to go 102 miles; on my Zwift ride, both those estimates were right on the money!

In an ideal world, I would complete both distance and climbing goals at the same time. But because the closest Zwift course wasn’t a perfect match, I finished my climbing goal a full lap before my mileage goal. In riding that extra lap to complete my mileage goal, I wound up doing an extra 213 feet (or 7 percent) of climbing. However, that actually matches the Zenturizer’s estimate that the Zwift route would only be a 94 percent match for the IRL route.

All told, I think the Zenturizer did a fantastic job finding the right Zwift route to simulate the real-world ride I chose. Feel free to try it out yourself!

Okay, that’s enough about the Zenturizer; how did the ride go?

It was hot. I was hoping to ride Friday or Saturday or Sunday, but I spent those days suffering with a migraine. So Monday it was, and temps inside my pain cave sat at 90º throughout. Being my first hot indoor century, I suffered a lot, but also earned a number of lessons:

  • Have tons of ice on hand. Two trays of cubes isn’t enough!
  • Start early in the day. I got a late start, and it was already hot when I saddled up.
  • In addition to a towel over the handlebars, have a second towel nearby to sop up excess sweat. I normally don’t sweat, but given the conditions...
  • Nothing feels better than a cold, wet facecloth. Lifesaver!
  • Watch out for cardiac drift. As the event wore on, I had to back off markedly because of elevated heart stress. Take it easy; there’s no point in trying to hammer for five hours straight in the heat.

But I knocked it out, thanks to the Zenturizer. And that’s the story of my 5th Zentury of the year!

As I mentioned in my winter training summary post, my plan this year is to ride my normal outdoor events on the indoor trainer, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic situation causing event cancellations and making long outdoor solo rides inadvisable.

2020-04-19_13185022_clean-C

The first big event on my calendar was the Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ Meanville-Greenville 200k brevet, scheduled for Sunday April 19th (but subsequently cancelled). This was the same route out of Zelienople that I rode last July: my seventh century of 2019 and the first in an impressive streak of six centuries in six weeks.

My intent was to ride the same distance and climbing on Zwift as I would have done in the IRL event. The easiest way to do that was to find existing Zwift routes that added up to the required 123 miles and 7,700 feet of ascent. In the end, I settled on doing the difficult Mega Pretzel, followed by Big Foot Hills, and finishing with Sand & Sequoias.

For the Zwifters out there, that meant doing the Volcano climb twice, the Epic Climb in both directions, the Hilly KoM four times (twice in each direction), Titans Grove three times, and the jungle in both directions, plus a bunch of connecting bits.

The first four hours were tolerable. I had covered a metric century—half my total distance—and two-thirds the climbing, got a ton of supportive “Ride Ons”, and achieved Level 38. I took a three-minute break to refill my bidons.

But it got increasingly difficult thereafter. Ride Ons came less frequently, there was no one on Discord to chat with, and my right calf started bothering me. I needed another 5-minute break at 150k, and again at 175k. As I reached five, six, seven hours, my power dropped, but I’d wisely front-loaded all the climbing, so my final sections were sort-of flat.

In the end, I finished in exactly 7h30m, tallying 202km (125 miles), and an unexpected 8,400 feet of climbing. It was my first 200k on the trainer, and my longest indoor ride by 18 miles. And I received 176 Ride Ons!

After five centuries, I’ve gotten a good grasp on the plusses and minuses of doing endurance rides on the indoor trainer. Here are some of those lessons.

Starting with the downsides:

  • Boredom. If you don’t have both a meaningful goal and something to keep your mind occupied, six or eight hours on the trainer will seem like a complete waste of a day.
  • Frustration. Zwift’s pretty good, but it still can crash, and the stakes are raised when you’re six hours into a ride when Zwift chokes, leaving your log file corrupt.
  • Fatigue. In the real world, you get little micro-rests when you stop for traffic lights, turns, filling bottles, ice cream, and so forth. In Zwift, there’s no reason to stop… ever!
  • Fatigue II. In the real world, you get even more little micro-rests when you’re descending. In Zwift—believe it or not—they have intentionally reduced how much gravity helps you when descending, so that you can’t coast downhill much. Hey, Zwift is a training platform, not a simulation, and if you aren’t pedaling, you’re not training!
  • Temperature regulation. You generate a ton of heat riding indoors, raising your core temperature. You offset that by having a fan blowing cold air on you. So when you finish a workout, your core is overheating, your skin’s surface is freezing, and your body’s ability to regulate its temperature is completely broken. For me, this is probably the most difficult problem I have training indoors. After a ride, I’ll spend 45 minutes in a steaming hot shower, only to be shivering again five minutes later.

Now for the upsides of doing endurance rides on the trainer:

  • Safety! A complete absence of distracted, intoxicated, negligent, violent monkeys piloting multi-ton murder machines at ludicrous speed... Need I say anything more?
  • No mechanicals! For the most part, you don’t get flats or other mechanical difficulties on the trainer. And when you do, your entire home workshop is immediately available. You never need to worry about being stranded at the side of the road in the middle of the woods or some hick town.
  • Comfort! You have immediate access to anything your stomach wants, from pizza to sausage subs to cold ice cream. If you need your favorite cheering section, call them in from the other room. And where else can you find a water stop complete with your own queen-sized bed?
  • Easy, Breezy, Beautiful! Zwift's lack of micro-rest stops has one positive side: riding the same distance takes less time on Zwift than in the real world. Plus there are lots of other riders to draft, and Zwift assumes you’re riding great equipment on an ideal surface. Although my Zwift 200k had 10 percent more climbing than my IRL Greenville ride, I finished it 35 minutes faster.
  • Company! It’s difficult being social on a long IRL ride. Not everyone wants to do a 125-mile ride, and those that do often ride at different paces. With cars around, it’s hard to hear what people are saying, and riding two-abreast would be inconsiderate to those murderous monkeys I mentioned earlier. But indoors, using Discord allows you to easily converse with anyone who wants to stop by, even if they’re not riding! It’s the one thing in Zwift that I wish we could port to the real world.

So that’s Zentury #4 of the year—and IRL substitute ride #1—in the books. I don’t have another (cancelled) real-world event until June, which begins with my only two-day event: an imperial century followed by a metric.

Until then, you can look for me on Zwift...

I wasn’t planning on repeating last year’s Akron Bike ClubAbsolutely Beautiful Country” century. It was a really nice ride, but it’s a two-hour drive from Pittsburgh, which makes for a lot of driving on top of a 100-mile bike ride.

Selfies on the River Styx

Selfies on the River Styx

Level Crossing

Level crossing delay

It Burns

Sunburned hands

However, having spent much of the first half of this year away from home, I was really under-trained and in desperate need of fitness before all the big summer rides. And with Inna still out of town, there was no one to inconvenience.

But the biggest reason to go was the weather. A week-long heat wave broke on Friday, leaving us with a delightfully temperate weekend. Sunny and less humid, with little wind, it was perfect weather for a long ride, so…

I got up at 3:45am Sunday “morning” and was on the road by 4:30, headed back to the city that gave us the Kent State massacre, Devo, and Chrissie Hynde.

During the drive, I noticed that almost all of Ohio’s roads are straight north-south or straight east-west, with very little variance. It made me wonder why they didn’t just name their cities by map coordinates. So if Cincinnati was called “A12” and Columbus was called “F5”, then you’d know that to get from one to the other you’d have to drive 5 units east and 7 units north. Seems like it would be a lot more efficient in a place like Ohio, since—with no diagonals—that’s just the way the roads work anyways.

Kitting up in the Copley High School parking lot, I discovered a packing mistake: the pair of cycling glove’s I’d brought were both right hands. The guy parked next to me offered to loan me a pair, but I demurred. Going bare-handed wouldn’t be any major discomfort, I thought. No big deal… If anything, it might hide or even out some of my characteristic cyclist’s tan lines.

At ten-to-seven I was in the saddle, dropping lots of riders in a desire to work up some body heat to ward off the morning coolth. Eighteen miles later, I stopped to get a selfie in front of the sign for the village of River Styx. It’s probably not an auspicious thing, crossing the River Styx with 82 miles still to ride…

Speaking of stopping, about 35 miles in I caught up with a couple riders who were stopped at a level crossing while a big freight train rolled by. Fortunately, the end (of the train) was near, and I was only delayed about three minutes.

About one-third done, I was already experiencing some physical difficulties. I was obviously undertrained and not ready for the distance, even on a flattish course like this, and by the end of the day my legs were cramping up. My knees were complaining loudly, thanks to inflammation picked up while on my recent meditation retreat. I was also having difficulty swallowing due to an undiagnosed throat irritation. The day eventually heated up, and on the last, 15-mile segment, I was so blown that I had to stop for a brief roadside rest before finishing.

This was countered by the excellent work done by the organizers at the rest stops. Twelve miles in, riders were offered donuts. At the halfway point, small sandwiches piled high with cold cuts and cheese. At Mile 70, the Dalton Dari-ette offered free ice cream! And all the stops had ice, which for me is always key.

I finally rolled back into the high school at 2:15pm. I had enjoyed the Ohio countryside and the beautiful day, but I was glad the suffering was finally over, and happily looking forward to getting into an air conditioned car for the drive back to Pittsburgh.

Pulling the bike out of the car trunk at home, I noticed that the plastic mounting tab for my Di2 electronic shifting junction box had broken. That’s an annoyance, since I’d just purchased and installed a new mounting bracket for it.

But more troublesome—though less costly—were the implications of spending seven hours in the July sun without gloves. The rest of my body has long-since adapted to sun exposure, such that I didn’t suffer any ill effects of going completely without sunblock; however, my hands have always been shielded by gloves, and the sensitive skin on the back of them isn’t seasoned to strong sunlight and got thoroughly sunburned. Lesson learned!

Nonetheless, I’m glad I went, and (mostly) had a good time. There aren’t many century rides to choose from here in Pittsburgh, and I’m happy to participate in and support those few that remain.

But whether I’m ready and willing to undertake another century happening weekend… We’ll see how well I recover!

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.

Bursh Creek covered bridge

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.

Ornoth climbing segment one

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.

Ornoth entering West Virginia

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).

Garmin Edge 820

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.

Last weekend was my second century of the year and first Pittsburgh charity ride: the Bike MS Escape to the Lake, which goes from Moraine State Park an hour north of Pittsburgh to the shore of Lake Erie. Rather than do the whole route and deal with an overnight stay, I preferred to do the first day century route and quit there.

The forecast was unfavorable during the week leading up to the event, so I waited to register. But the calls for extreme humidity and thunderstorms abated at the last minute, convincing me to sign up at the starting line and personally fulfill my fundraising requirement.

Years as a PMC rider served me well in quickly registering, getting my bike ready, dropping my bag at the luggage truck, and lining up near the front of the staging area, directly behind the VIP riders. I chatted briefly with my randonneuse friend Stef before we were punctually sent off. I wore the green and black dazzle jersey that I’d worn with the Buildium team for last year’s Cape Cod Getaway.

MS Ride start
MS Ride
MS Ride finish
MS Ride medal

The first third of the ride was pleasant and gentle, with temperatures in the 60s and only a couple notable hills. I skipped the first two rest stops (miles 12 & 21), and finally refreshed my bidon at mile 33, then proceeded to the lunch stop at mile 48. Halfway done by 10am, I had averaged 17 mph and over 165 watts for three hours.

After lunch, the ride became more challenging. The temp had cracked 80°, and three big hills came in the 16 miles preceding the rest stop at mile 64. My speed dropped to 14 mph and my power to 140 watts, though I still had enough in the tank to pass a couple Amish buggies… one towing a canoe!

The final third of the century was a horribly brutal slogfest. Seven major hills were packed into the final 32 miles, with a very long 22 miles between the final water stop and the finish. The course turned west, straight into a painful sustained 16 mph headwind gusting to 26. Temps peaked well above 95°, with the rolling Pennsylvania farmland offering zero respite from the relentless sun. Although I was only the second rider to arrive at the last rest stop, I was completely tapped out; my speed subsequently dropped to 10 mph and my power below 100 watts.

It was incredibly difficult to finish that long final segment, and I had to pull off by the roadside four times to recuperate enough to press on. At one stop I watched Stef ride past, too overheated to chase her or even call out. I was just about ready for medical assistance, but I only had seven miles left, and once I got over the final hill, the last couple miles were a long, welcome downhill to the finish.

I finally coasted into Allegheny College in Meadville at 2:30pm. 102 miles in 7 hours 25 minutes. More noteworthy than my time was the climbing; at 5,958 feet, this ride had more ascending than New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington Century, and was only exceeded by the 200k I did two months ago. Strava would confirm this as probably the most difficult ride I’ve done in five years. The next morning my scale would report that I’d lost over three pounds, even after plenty of rehydrating.

At the finish I found lots of ice and cola, bag pickup in a blissfully air conditioned auditorium, and very welcome showers. After those things, there wasn’t a lot of time before the 4pm shuttle bus back to my car at the starting line. Volunteers loaded my bike onto a cargo truck and handed me my finisher’s medal, a detail I always wished the PMC had done.

I slowly recovered on the hour long bus ride. Although the rented school bus lacked air conditioning, we opened all the windows and I let my hair fly loose in the wind. After arriving back at Moraine State Park, I gathered my bike, dumped my bag in the car, and went for a refreshing wade in Lake Arthur.

After all the concern about thunderstorms leading up to the ride, we finally got some on-and-off showers during the hour drive home. The A/C felt absolutely wonderful!

It was a good ride, and I’m glad I did it, notching up my second century of the year, but I was also very glad not to have to saddle up and fight that headwind for the second day’s leg up to Lake Erie!

This year’s blazing hot Tour d’Essex County (TdEC) century was tremendously difficult, and Noah and I were the only two people out of 75 starters who completed the ride.

Last year, I had to rely on the Commuter Rail to get to the start in Manchester, and since the first train didn’t arrive until an hour after the ride departed, I had to ride the entire route solo. This year I convinced my car-owning buddy Noah to come, which ensured that I’d at least be able to start with the rest of the group.

However, as Memorial Day weekend approached, we both had second thoughts. The weather was going to feature a cold, wind-driven rain and temperatures that barely reached 50 degrees. Thankfully, the organizers chose to postpone the ride by a week.

Aside: we hoped to ride a make-up solo century on Memorial Day itself, but I had to cancel that when I discovered my water heater had started leaking that morning.

While the original date had been cold and rainy, the make-up date (the following Saturday) had the opposite problem: blazing sun and temperatures well into the 90s. Nontheless, Noah drove up at 6am and we loaded my bike into his car. In the process, we got black chain grease all over my new bike’s (almost) pristine white bar tape (sigh). Then we headed up to Manchester for the start.

After arriving early, we set off with the rest of the riders, but the group thinned out very quickly. In fact, after riding 18 miles, we never saw another rider on the course. The first half of the ride is really scenic, and we set our own pace. Despite the fact that the roads weren’t marked, we only got off-course once in Middleton, which we realized very quickly when the road surface turned to gravel. As the temperature climbed through the 80s, we stopped at the West Village Provisions in Boxford before continuing on.

Fifty miles in, we reached the first rest stop: a bike shop in Newburyport. At this point, the route diverged from the one I’d ridden in 2012. From the bike shop, this year’s ride would do a 25-mile loop up one side of the Merrimack River and down the other, returning to the shop for another rest at mile 75 before returning to Manchester.

At this point, the temperature had exeeded 90 degrees, and we had emerged from the woods and begun traversing roads which were more exposed to direct sunlight. All the other riders, most of which were from the Essex County Velo cycling team, decided that the heat was too much, and they were going to skip the river loop and go straight home. Pussies, all of them. Noah and I were the only people who wanted to do a complete century, so I downed a package of crackers and some berries and we (perhaps stupidly) headed off toward the river.

The Merrimack loop was pretty scenic, but brutally challenging for me due to the heat and a surprise bout of exhaustion. While we’d averaged 17.5 mph over the first 50 miles, my speed dropped to 14.5 on this segment, and my average heart rate climbed up to 86 percent of my max. I’d lost all power, and that was reflected by the fact that I needed to stop and rest three times over that 25 mile stretch. Fortunately, one of those stops was right next to a stream emptying into the river, so I walked in and at least cooled my feet off!

When we finally got back to the shop, I was seriously overheating and just sat in the shop for about 15 minutes. Having assumed that all the riders had gone straight home, the shop had put away all the supplies for the ride, so the only thing they could offer us was room-temperature water. We took it gladly and reluctantly climbed back on our bikes for the final 25 mile trek home.

Half of that leg follows Route 1A, which is a busy main road with absolutely no cover. It was another brutal segment, and I found myself having to stop every couple miles just to bring my heart rate down. It was an epic struggle to make any meaningful progress. At this point, Noah decided to go on ahead of me, subsequently getting lost and finding his own route back to the shop. He did break 100 miles, but that left me as the only rider who was going to finish the ride according to the published route. Hopefully…

Several miles later, having drank the lukewarm water and poured an equal amount of it over my head, I needed to refill my bottle. As I crossed the Ipswitch town line, I spied a restaurant—The American Barbecue— and figured they might not turn away a dying cyclist. I went in and spied Nirvana: one of those soda machines where customers walk up and dispense their own drinks… and ice! SCORE!

I jammed my bottle full of ice and filled it with lemonade, then pulled up a bar stool and drained it. I also sucked down a disgusting apple-cinnamon energy gel. It was the first time I’d ever had an energy gel, so this was either a really great thing or an absolutely stupid idea, but things couldn’t really get any worse, could they? Knowing that whatever liquid was in my bottle would wind up being poured over my head, I refilled with ice water and headed back out onto the road.

Just one-point-seven miles later I rode past an ice cream stand. Well, when I say “rode past”, I actually mean “rode straight into”. There really was no conscious contemplation about whether I was going to stop or not; it just happened all by itself. It didn’t matter that I’d just rested, or that I’d just downed a quart of lemonade, or that I’d just swallowed that pukey gel; ice cream was cold, and if my delirium allowed me any thought it was that cold equalled good. So on top of all that crap already in my stomach, I threw in a big pile of chocolate chip.

This was either going to save me, or I would be leaving a huge smear of technicolor barf in the breakdown lane of Route 1A.

Much to my surprise, once I got back on the road I managed. I can’t say I felt much better, but instead of having to stop and rest every 2 miles, I managed to go 5 or 6 miles between stops. It remained a slog, but I managed to maintain a 13.4 mph average speed and eventually crawled into the finish in Manchester. Again, because they didn’t think anyone would actually do the whole century, they had already shut down the post-ride cookout. But it didn’t matter; I was happy to just grab a Coke and some ice.

Even though every other rider DNF’ed, and despite how ridiculously difficult it had been, I alone had kicked it! I was damned proud of my accomplishment, even though I averaged only 15.5 mph and took 8 hours 14 to do it. It was my second century of the year, and probably good hot-weather training, which I will need to get me through this year’s upcoming Mt. Washington century and Pan-Mass Challenge.

But even sooner than that, I will need that reservoir of strength to complete the grueling 130-mile Outriders ride—always the longest ride of the year—which is now a mere week away.

The TdEC ride was last Saturday, and on Tuesday I had my first full postride massage appointment. He did a lot of therapeutic work, which left me pretty sore the next morning, but I tested his work with a hilly 50-mile ride. I have to say, scenic Glezen Lane in Sudbury has to be one of my absolute favorite roads in Massachusetts.

Then I came home in time for my annual expedition to the Scooper Bowl, where I demolished 34 cups of ice cream, in the interest of charity, of course!

This weekend’s a family visit, so no riding, which should give my legs a little time to recover and prep for next weekend’s big ride to Provincetown. Here’s hoping the weather cooperates!

Prelude

Epic rides deserve epic ride reports, so here’s the tale of the 2012 Mt. Washington Century…

The story begins with last July’s Climb to the Clouds ride. For at least the past three years, my Pan-Mass Challenge training culminated with that century ride up Mt. Wachusett a couple weeks before the PMC. But that ride isn’t well run, and last year my buddies and I reached the breaking point (ride report). As we sat around recovering from a brutal ride, all four of us concluded that we never wanted to do that ride again.

So this year I proposed a different ride that occupies the same spot in the New England cycling calendar: the Mt. Washington Century. It took very little convincing that a different ride would be more fun than yet another disappointing Climb to the Clouds.

The bonus is that this isn’t just another ride; it is an epic 108-mile ride over three named passes in the White Mountains. The route accumulates more than a mile of vertical by traversing the well-known Kancamagus Highway, Bear Notch, Crawford Notch, and Pinkham Notch. Billed as “New England’s most challenging century”, it circumnavigates most of the Presidential Range, including Mt. Adams and, of course, Mt. Washington, which is the highest peak in the northeastern US.

Preparation

In anticipation of the most difficult route I’d ever attempted, I spent a couple weeks doing hill repeats on the biggest hills in the area. On July 3rd I did four ascents of Great Blue Hill… and, of course, four high-speed descents, which I would also need to be ready to tackle. And on July 8th I did six trips up Eastern Ave to Arlington’s water tower… again with six screaming descents down the Route 2 on-ramp. While I wasn’t sure I was ready for 108 miles of mountains—especially after my self-destruction on my attempted Harvard century two weeks earlier (ride report)—I figured I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

I also wanted the Plastic Bullet to be ready, and it needed help. After a recent cleaning, my shifting had started skipping around. It had been more than a year since my last tune-up, so on Tuesday I brought it in and had them true the wheels and replace the chain and cassette. Seemed like a wise idea, right? Let the shop make sure everything was in good order for the big ride.

On Wednesday I biked to work, and the shifting was just as bad, if not worse. It was bad enough that after work I rode directly to the shop and asked them to fix it up properly. But as soon as the tech touched it, the shifter cable snapped at the shift lever: a problem that has happened to me two or three times in the past. When it happens, your shifter locks into the hardest gear and there’s nothing you can do about it. In short, had that happened during the Mt. Washington ride, I would have been absolutely screwed. I had really lucked out.

Getting There

The day before the ride, I left work at 4pm and met my buddy Noah drove me from my place out to Jay’s in Waltham. Rather than try to fight Friday rush hour traffic, we followed the first of several insightful suggestions I offered: get Thai from the restaurant around the corner. Everyone loved that idea… even me, who’d already eaten Thai for lunch for two days in a row. Hey, I figured it was good veggies and carbs! So that was my first good call.

Hanging at Jay’s, the sandbagging began. It was clear that each of us had some level of anxiety about the ride. Paul hadn’t ridden in a while. Noah hadn’t ridden much all year. Jay was surprised to learn that the ride’s site had lied about how much climbing was involved, proclaiming 4800 feet of vertical instead of a more realistic 6000'.

We also took a moment to acknowledge that this would be our last major ride together as a group, with Jay moving to Florida next month. We’ve had a great run together, and I think everyone’s sad to see it pass. On the other hand, doing the White Mountains would be a fitting and memorable way to go out!

The 3-hour ride up was pretty uneventful, and we arrived at the hotel Jay had booked at 10:30pm. That’s when the fun began: the woman at reception couldn’t find our reservation. Jay whipped out his laptop, but all he could come up with was some followup spam that Marriott had sent him. Apparently their central booking agent had added him to their spam list, but never bothered to make our reservation! Thankfully, by the time all was said and done, the local manager gave us a two-bedroom for a ridiculously low price; another crisis averted!

Departure & the Kanc

After grabbing some stuff from the hotel breakfast, we hit the road to the start: the Tin Mountain Conservation Center just outside Conway. We were already running later than Noah or I wanted, since it promised to be a very hot day. We signed in, got all our stuff together, and finally rolled out at 7:30am. The first mile featured a screaming descent which we all knew would be a kick in the teeth on the way back.

Within a mile, we turned left onto the Kancamagus Highway, arguably the most famous road in New Hampshire. It was a bright, beautiful morning. The road was smooth and steady. The mountains towered above us, the evergreens covering the hillsides offered fragrant shade, and the granite boulder-strewn bed of the Swift River ran along the road, keeping us company as we climbed toward its source.

My buddies stopped to stretch for a while, but I was eager to keep moving, so I went on ahead alone. The Kanc climbs gradually but steadily, but I kept a comfortable pace, knowing that I’d need lots of strength in reserve for the peaks that lay ahead. Still, I kept my buddies at bay until shortly after making the left turn onto Bear Notch Road. The Kanc had ascended about 800 feet in 12 miles.

Bear Notch

Ornoth climbing Bear Notch

On the course’s elevation profile, Bear Notch looked like the easiest of the three ascents, with more gradual, easy climbing. And that’s pretty much how it turned out. It never seemed to get steep for any sustained period of time, and I climbed alongside my buddies, who had finally caught me. It was cool that three of us were together when we passed the event photographer, who captured us.

The climbing we’d done on the Kanc (800 feet over 12 miles) had put us more than halfway to the top, so the actual climbing on Bear Notch Road really only amounted to another 600 feet over 4 miles.

Then, without really expecting it, we were over the top and coasting at 35 mph down a winding, wooded road. Thankfully, the road surface was beautiful, and we zoomed down almost without touching our brakes, admiring the mountain and valley vistas that opened up on our left.

After a long descent (over 1000 feet in 5 miles)—but still too soon—we were dumped into a little village called Bartlett, where the first rest stop sat in a public common. We all had big grins on our faces as we recounted our experiences to one another. So far it had been a wonderful day, and the temps were still in the low 70s.

Crawford Notch

We rolled out and turned left onto Route 302, a somewhat busier road. Paul and Noah caught and passed me, but Jay hung with me as we fought an unexpected northwest headwind—the only time that happened all day.

Again, the ascent was long and gradual but very manageable (550 feet over 12 miles). As we got close to Mt. Jackson, we stopped for a photo opp at the Willey House pond, close to the source of one of my favorite rivers (the Saco).

We caught a slower paceline just as the road started kicking up at the summit. Jay and I debated passing them, but that soon sorted itself out, as some of them distanced us while others went backwards. The last two miles or so was a real struggle, gaining another 550 feet, but that made it all the sweeter when Jay and I crested Crawford Notch together, yelling weightlifter Ronnie Coleman quotes at each other (“Yeah buddy!”, “Whoooo!”, “Lightweight baby!”, and the ever-popular and slightly-modified “Everybody wanna be a cyclist; nobody wanna climb these big-ass hills… I’ll do it tho!”). It felt like a victory worthy of celebration, and thus it was nice to share that moment with Jay.

The problem with Crawford was that there wasn’t any real descent afterward. The road leveled out and angled down just a hair, but not enough to really make a big difference. The road was also barren, having emerged from the woods, and the temperatures were into the mid-80s.

Fortunately, the second water stop materialized in a convenience store parking lot. Surprisingly, the organizers had run out of sports drink, and we had to go buy our own from the convenience store. That was the organizers’ one obvious shortfall: we shouldn’t have to pay for Gatorade out of our pocket on a ride we’d paid to do!

Going Round the Mountain

Jay and I left Crawford and continued north on 302. I pulled him for a few miles as we turned east by cutting across Route 115 to Route 2. Here there was a mix of rolling climbs and a few long descents, but nothing like that off Bear Notch. Jay pulled away but Paul caught up and rode with me for a while before he too moved on.

Then, shortly before we reached Gorham, I rounded a corner to find myself facing an immense wall known as Randolph Hill. In the distance, the road looked like it took off like a jetliner, soaring into the sky (in reality it climbed 200 feet in less than a mile). By this point, temps had climbed to 90 degrees, and there was little if any shade along the route. I poured the last of my Gatorade over my head and plodded up the brutally steep climb.

Fortunately, the third water stop was at the top of the hill, where I collapsed in the heat. Thankfully, the organizers had cold drinks on ice in coolers, and I shoveled ice into my water bottle for the next segment. I also had a couple sips of Coke, which certainly went down nicely.

It was at this point that my stomach started doing flip-flops. At the rest stops, I felt bloated and queasy, full of too much liquid, which I’d been pouring down my throat; but on the bike, I felt pretty good for the most part. This would continue for the rest of the day.

Mount Washington and Pinkham Notch

Jay and Paul left the rest stop shortly after Noah showed up. Noah was pretty cooked, but I rested for a few more minutes and we left the stop together. The good news is that the road continued to descend (650 feet in 4 miles) after the rest stop, and Noah and I rode together through Gorham, where we finally turned south onto Route 16 for the climb up to the base of Mt. Washington.

Route 16 was a really long, steady climb, but a bit steeper than the easy slopes we’d taken to approach the other notches. It was grueling, but I found it manageable, so long as I kept pouring water on myself. On the other hand, Noah was still struggling and fell behind quickly, although he stayed within sight of me much of the way up.

Eventually I pulled into the gravel parking lot at the base of the infamous Mt. Washington Auto Road. Again, no shade was to be found, but with the temp peaking at 95 degrees, I loaded up on ice and headed out with Jay and Paul, who quickly gapped me as the climbing continued for another 4 miles to the top of Pinkham Notch. Overall, that climb had ascended 1200 feet over 11 miles.

Then came the final payoff: a 15-mile, 1500-foot descent down from Pinkham Notch, into the woods and down to Jackson. My legs were so beat that I didn’t push the descent, but just rolled with it. Just as I was thinking I could go wade in a mountain stream, Noah caught up with me and left me behind, so I plodded on.

I eventually reached the town of Glen, where 16 rejoins 302 and again becomes a major thoroughfare. As I looked left, I saw a moderately-sized hill that just wasn’t going to happen. So I pulled into a Dairy Queen parking lot and rested for a few minutes before finishing the final two miles to the last rest stop. That was the only unscheduled stop I made during the ride; I hadn’t gotten off on any of the hills, but I needed to gather my strength before attacking that one just before the rest stop.

The Final Countdown

The last rest stop was a grassy lawn—essentially someone’s yard. I laid on my back and just gasped due to the heat. It was only 13 miles to the finish, so I would certainly finish it, but I needed another good rest first. I downed half a can of Coke, filled up with ice, and poured ice water over my head before following my buddies, who had left five minutes earlier in hopes of finishing within eight hours.

Again, once I was back on the bike things settled into place, and I made okay time. I wasn’t strong, but made steady progress. With all the climbing behind me, it was just a question of closing it out, and surviving that final mile.

The final segment—West Side Road—was a long but nice ride, although it felt like I was still climbing a false flat. Finally I came back out onto Route 16, and half a mile later passed the point where we’d turned onto the Kancamagus. I marshaled my strength and made the turn onto Bald Hill Road that led up a punishing ascent up to the finish at Tin Mountain (officially it gains 300 feet in 1 mile). It was as steep and difficult as anything we’d done, but I finally drifted into their driveway and hung gasping over the bars for a minute before signing in and meeting up with the guys.

Final tally: 108 miles in 8:15, with 5800 feet of climbing and an average speed of 16 mph. For the mappy junkies, here’s a link to the GPS log.

The After-Party

I tried to eat a bit as we sat outside the Tin Mountain cabin, but really only managed to down a couple chocolate milks. It was still too hot to let our core body temperatures drop, and we all were feeling the effects. But this is where my second grand pre-planning idea paid off in a huge way.

I knew it was going to be hot. I knew we were going to be near lakes and streams. I knew we were going to be four stinky, grimy, sweaty guys stuck in a car for three hours. So one of my pre-ride emails suggested that everyone bring swim trunks, and they had. We briefly discussed where to go, then went back to the truck and exchanged our sweaty kit for trunks and drove to the nearest possible water: the Swift River we’d ridden by on the Kancamagus at the start of the ride.

We quickly found a swimming hole others were using, pulled off the road, and picked our way down to the torrent. As I said earlier, the whole area was just a pile of granite boulders: the smallest being the side of a dog; the largest being as big as a tractor trailer. The water was absolutely blissful: cold yes, but not blisteringly frigid. We dunked in the deeper parts, then sat in the middle of the rapids and let the cold water flow over us. Jay clambered around and found a way to swim underneath a huge monolith in the middle of the river. Everyone agreed it was the perfect way to relax and cool off.

At this point, I saved the day again. Jay jumped into the water and lost his sunglasses in the torrent, but I was able to spot them, so that was gratifying. Less gratifying was learning that Noah had stolen a towel from the hotel, when we had earnestly promised them we wouldn’t incur any incidentals. That was the one sour note of the trip.

The road home included a stop at a donut shop that featured (for me) more chocolate milk and a blissful rest in a big overstuffed armchair. Then we hit the Wolfetrap, a restaurant in Wolfeboro, Paul’s home town, so that was kinda cool, and my huge burger and cornbread were precisely what the chirurgeon prescribed. That was also where I saved the day yet again, pointing out to Paul that—despite his claiming otherwise—he really was about to leave his credit card behind with the check.

We got that straightened out and hoofed it back to Boston, where I was anxious to begin my next task: recovery! It was still Saturday night, and I had all day Sunday to shower, relax, fuel up, and rehydrate.

Das Ende

I really enjoyed the Mt. Washington Century. I think it lived up to its billing as a very challenging ride, but it was also just an awesome day all around. The scenery—the rivers, the mountains, the woods—was just breathtaking. The climbs were long and steady which made them very manageable but they still packed some challenging sections, and the descents were long and smooth. Sure, with a newer bike I could have pushed the top speed on the descents, but it was just as nice to let gravity do all the work.

The Plastic Bullet once again did its job admirably for an old bike with more than 20,000 miles on it. After the cable was swapped out, I literally didn’t once think about the shifting problems I’d had earlier that week.

This was my third complete century of the year, which puts me about on pace with my previous two years, and it certainly puts me in good shape for the PMC, which is only two weeks away (as of this posting). I’d love to do this ride again, but I’m not sure whether that will happen, with Jay moving away and the group likely to fragment.

Which brings me back to the idea that this was the last major organized ride for Jay, Paul, Noah, and I. From the ride to the post-ride swim in the Swift River, this was a perfect day and a fitting way to honor our friendship and our mutual encouragement. It was epic.

And I’m so glad I was able to convince them to go for Mt. Washington instead of the Climb to the Clouds. After last year’s CttC, we were too exhausted, overheated, and demoralized to even stay for a post-ride swim in nearby Walden Pond. The contrast between that and this year’s relaxing dip in a wild mountain stream just underscores what a truly awesome time we had on the Mt. Washington Century, making memories that we’ll take with us for years and years to come.

Chapeau, boys!

Go Higher

Jul. 8th, 2012 06:02 pm

Another summary of recent news to tell you about.

Cape Ann

Three weeks ago, there was the first beautiful, warm, sunny day in a long time, so I decided to take the train up to Salem and do my traditional 65-mile Cape Ann loop. It had a respectable amount of climbing, and I generally felt strong. (GPS log)

Having just ridden Cape Cod, which I really adore, I was also reminded how enchanting Cape Ann is as I rode past all the familiar postcard scenes: the rocky headland of the hidden village of Magnolia; Gloucester’s Hammond Castle and idyllic Buswell Pond; the huge rock and hidden crescent beach at Stage Fort Park; the old Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial; the Rocky Neck artists’ colony; the elegant mansions and crashing surf at Bass Rocks; Good Harbor Beach, where my mother took her children; the touristy fishing village of Rockport; the granite quarry and slag pile at Halibut Point State Park; the tiny village of Annisquam and its wooden footbrodge over the Annisquam River; the hospital where I was born and the first house I lived in, both on Washington Street; the endless sand of Wingaersheek Beach; and Salem’s common and witch house.

The one odd bit happened at Wingaersheek. I brought my bike out onto the beach and leaned it against one of the huge rocks so I could keep an eye on it. After wading in the ocean and sunning on the rocks, I noticed that the tide was coming in. But Wingaersheek is a very flat beach, which means the tide comes in *fast*. In about 15 minutes, the water had advanced a good 30 feet, and submerged my bike up to the rear derailleur! Not a great way to treat your bike, especially when you’ve got to cross a sandy beach and ride another 30 miles with a very crunchy drivetrain!

But all in all it was just a great day on the bike.

… Which is in sharp contract to the next weekend. I had hoped to do a full century, which would put me in good shape for my upcoming Mt. Washington ride.

Harvard “Century”

I should have known better from the start. On the way out to Arlington I felt a bit slower than normal. After meeting up with my buddies Jay and Paul and Noah at Quad Cycles, I managed to flat on the bike path out to Bedford. Swapped the tube out, only to discover that my spare was just as bad. While I patched the original (thank god for self-adhesive patches), I managed to expose myself to a patch of poison ivy lining the path. Having completed repairs, I caught up with my buds, who had waited at the end of the bike path.

There’s a bike shop at the end of the path, and I’d planned on buying another tube there, so I wouldn’t be without a spare. However, my friends had invited another six riders—all fast guys—to ride with us, so I couldn’t very well hold them up longer than I already had. I figured that if I flatted, at least they’d be around.

So we set off, with me showing folks where to go. At least, that’s how it worked for a couple miles, until we got to the first turn in the route. I’d been setting a steady 18 mph pace on the front that wouldn’t fatigue us, since we had 85 miles ahead of us, but as soon as I rolled off the front, the next guy in line (one of my buddies) slammed it up to an unmaintainable 22 mph. Knowing none of us were going to finish a century at that pace, I just let them go, watching my promised spare tube go with them. Ironically, that friend who had picked up the pace and dropped me: he abandoned the ride within a couple miles and went home.

I figured we’d regroup again once the others noticed that I had dropped off, but that didn’t happen. I didn’t see them again until I pulled into the general store in Harvard, 25 miles later. I asked my two remaining buddies to loan me one of their spare tubes, and both refused, saying that they’d slow down and ride the rest of the way with me.

Can you predict what happened next? Yep, we started out again, and after a couple miles they kicked it back up and rode off without me, leaving me again out in the middle of nowhere, riding on a patched tube, without a spare. At least I knew the route, whereas those guys just kept going, leaving the route and continuing on with absolutely no idea where they were headed. At one point, two hours later, I was standing at a traffic light when two of the group rode past, perpendicular to my path. I called out to them and one of my buddies looked over toward me, but just kept riding along.

As the temperature hovered around 90, I started feeling nauseous and weak. It might have been that I uncharacteristically drank a Coke at the general store, or it might have been that I didn’t eat anything other than that and Gatorade. After another hour, I pulled into our customary post-ride coffee shop and just caught the rest of the group before they dispersed to go home. I was in a bad way, with 10 miles left between me and Boston. I limped along, trying not to vomit, being passed by little Asian girls on rickety utility bikes with grocery bags in their front baskets.

Unable to go further, I stopped and sat on the lawn at MIT, barely a mile from my house. After a long rest, I hobbled slowly home. I was just shy of completing a century, but I couldn’t possibly imagine riding another 5 miles, which was all I needed. I could have ridden around my neighborhood three times and been done, but it simply was out of the question. (GPS log)

It was probably the worst day I’ve had on the bike in a long, long time.

Hill Street Blues

Last week was July 4th, and on July 3rd (Tuesday) my employer let us out early. That gave me a chance to get back on the bike and get in my first round of hill repeats in preparation for next weekend’s Mt. Washington Century. So I found a route over to the Blue Hills and climbed the 400 foot Great Blue Hill access road. And did it again. And again. And again. The whole day I felt strong on the bike, and felt good enough to do my usual climb up Dorchester Heights, even after four Great Blue Hills (GBHs)! (GPS log)

What scares me is that next weekend’s ride contains three major climbs, each the equivalent of three or four GBHs, yielding a total of about 12 GBHs over a hundred miles. It’s billed as the most challenging century in New England; hence the focus this week on training with hill repeats.

Today I went out to Arlington Heights and did my usual pre-PMC hill: one trip up to the water tower from School Street, and five more via Spring Street and Eastern Avenue. (GPS log)

Hill repeats are great strength training, and they look great when you look at your GPS log’s elevation profile, but nothing’ll make you want to puke faster. As I told one friend, I was wheezing like a poorly-sealed steam engine, twitching like Max Headroom, and grunting like Monika Seles!

But hopefully all this agony will serve me well next weekend, when I attempt what might be the hardest ride I’ve ever done: I’ve got an appointment with the Kancamagus Highway, Bear Notch, Crawford Notch, and Pinkham Notch.

Stay tuned to hear how well *that* goes!

Jujuly

Jul. 23rd, 2011 02:07 pm

Right now my life consists of work, cycling, fundraising, and occasional sleep, so my periodic updates this time of year tend to cover a lot of ground… like this one, which covers the past month.

July was a memorable month, but not for good reasons. Although I usually spend most of the Fourth of July holiday on the bike, with one of those days comprising a century ride, this year a terrible cold hit me Friday afternoon and kept me housebound the entire holiday weekend. Pure suckage!

The next weekend I had to go up to Maine, and convinced myself that I could get some training in by riding the 70 miles from Portland to Augusta. That ride wound up being really difficult, thanks to my lingering illness, a 25-35 mph headwind that hadn’t been forecast, and a mile-long section of muddy dirt road up and over a big hill in Sabbatus. But at least I managed to get some time in the saddle…

Ornoth's CttC

Which I needed, because the weekend after that was the CRW’s Climb to the Clouds, a very hilly century that goes up Mt. Wachusett, and is a traditional warmup for the Pan-Mass Challenge.

So CttC was just brutal. Combine my reduced training this year with oppressively humid 96-degree blazing sun and the CRW’s extremely limited idea of what constitutes a supported ride, and you can begin to imagine how difficult it was. Thankfully, I can say that my age wasn’t a factor, as my three buddies (all 17+ years younger) also concluded that they never wanted to do that ride again.

The ironic thing is that I spent half the day hammering, thinking I was chasing them, when actually I was ahead of them. Although I let them go ahead after the first 10 miles, they stopped at a water stop I skipped. I was surprised to see them ride past me in Princeton, where I stopped but they did not. So I got back on the bike and chased, unknowingly passing them *again* when they stopped at a convenience store. So I beat them over the mountain, and they only caught up with me after I’d spent 20 minutes at the next water stop, 53 miles in.

And as I predicted last year, the summit road was closed to us for the third year in a row, which was disappointing.

Toward the end of the ride, I was nauseous and unsafely overheated, and kept pouring water over my head to cool off. I stopped at the little Chinese grocery in West Concord and picked up their last two bottles of water, only to discover on gulping it down that it was seltzer! I sipped what my stomach could tolerate and poured the rest over my head and limped to the finish, where I pretty much just collapsed. But not before getting shit from the ride organizers for asking if I could have some ice. I was too destroyed to muster any argument when the guys decided to go home early rather than take the traditional postride dip in Walden Pond.

Ornoth's CttC

Definitely one of my worst days on the bike. There damned well better be some training benefit, after all that suffering!

And to make matters worse, my brand new $700 bike computer / GPS failed to record the quarter of the ride that included Mt. Wachusett and the following descent (GPS data). I had already left its heart rate monitor at home, because it had been malfunctioning. At least Garmin is replacing the HRM strap; hopefully the new one will last longer than the first one.

And then yesterday Boston tied the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the city’s 140 years of keeping records. Thinking I couldn’t get into much trouble in just one hour, I biked home from work in 103°F / 40°C heat. Against a convection oven-like 25 mph headwind, over three sections of stripped/grooved pavement along one of Boston’s biggest and fastest 6-lane arterials, and then stupidly up and over Dorchester Heights, just for fun.

That kind of heat will raise your heart rate 10 bpm no matter what you’re doing, and by the time I was done my heart was pounding and I was feeling very lightheaded. Kinda scary! Hopefully this stretch of intense heat will break and the weather will be more forgiving for the upcoming PMC ride!

And that brings me around to the tiny list of positive things that happened this month. First, Garmin did replace my problem HRM strap, and the new one seems to be functioning well; tho I probably will use it sparingly until PMC weekend.

Second, a question I’d sent in to the RoadBikeRider online magazine was published this week. The question was about how to fit a cooldown, stretching, shower, and recovery meal all into the half hour after stopping that is the optimal window for those activities. You can see the full question and RBR’s response here.

And, finally, the news that really matters: PMC fundraising. Once I finally started getting fundraising letters out, the money came in quite readily. I’ve surpassed the minimum and made the Heavy Hitter level for the sixth year in a row, and have settled at $7,200 for the moment, which is quite satisfactory, although there’ll be additional donations coming in over the next month or two.

Naturally, if you haven’t made your donation yet, please do so here.

And PMC weekend is only two weeks away. I’d normally be excited, but after the difficulties of the Maine ride and CttC and this brutal heat, I’m a little gun-shy about looking forward to riding. It hasn’t been a great year for any of my cycling buddies; just ask Lynda, who canceled her plans to do the epic 745-mile PBP ride; or Paul, who bought a pricey new bike only to have Jay destroy it by driving his truck over it on the way to the 150-mile Harpoon B2B ride that was supposed to be the highlight of his season.

The bad juju is in full force this year.

So we’ll see. There’s two more weekends before the PMC, and I don’t have anything special planned for them. Hopefully there’ll be a couple Quad rides and some hill repeats in there, and then a relaxing, rewarding PMC ride once the calendar turns to August.

Hopefully…

Finally, things started coming together over the past month.

First, after nearly two months of uninterrupted cold and rain, the sun came out! We’ve now had about three nice weekends in a row, during which I’ve been doing back-to-back rides with the Quad Cycles crew.

Speaking of the QC rides, Johnny H. has finally resumed putting up his Quad Cycles ride photos. My favorite is the one shown here, where I’m hanging out at left while ride leader Bobby Mac can be seen barking at the other riders. As always, click for bigness.

Speaking of the weekend rides, that’s been the only time I’ve been able to ride, because after three years I’ve finally rejoined the working world. It hasn’t been bad, but it sure cuts out those long weekday rides! On the other hand, there’s an opportunity to commute. Right now I’m working at a client site that’s only two miles from home, but I could lengthen that, and the ride out to our real office is about 12 miles each way.

Weekends have also been the only option because my friend Inna has been in the hospital, and I’ve been visiting her every evening. I haven’t gotten much sleep or eaten regularly for the past two weeks, so I’ve been concerned about my training, and made sure to take advantage of the weekend rides.

And speaking of the weather having turned, this weekend was hot! It was 96 degrees on Saturday, and 94 on Sunday, although Sunday felt much worse due to the humidity. Despite the heat, both days I did 87 miles, taking the extra-long Quad Cycles route, plus a trip down to JP to see Inna. Boy, is my butt sore!

On the other hand, just about everyone I rode with made effusive comments about how strong I looked (irrespective of how strong I felt). As someone else said this weekend, muscle memory is a wonderful thing, and I’m feeling pretty good about where I am in my training right now, just four weeks after complaining about it in my previous post. It’s nice that it’s turned around, and over such a stressful period.

The other problem this has caused is that I’m more than a month late in starting fundraising for this year's Pan-Mass Challenge ride. I’ll be posting more about that soon, but if you’re chomping at the bit to make a donation, you can bring your credit card here.

Lots of things to talk about this week, not all good.

I've started my fundraising, and am presently at $435. That's slightly ahead of where I was last year at this time, but not up to where it ought to be. I've had a lot of people delaying or reducing their donations this year, and I haven't had any luck with the posters I put up. It's a little discouraging, but hopefully things will pick up over time.

Wednesday I had the first ride I ever had to abort. Although I was already sensing that I was weakened from overtraining, I'd planned to ride to Gloucester and back, about 80 miles, but in the 95-degree weather I started suffering heat exhaustion about 30 miles from home. Now, I'm an exceedingly proud person, and calling for help is completely humiliating, but I had to admit that I really needed it. I wound up limping to Jeanie's house, where I took a cold shower, sat in front of her A/C, then was driven home. Still, I enjoyed tooling around Gloucester, and did get 70 miles in...

On a positive note, I've surpassed several mileage "milestones", as it were. I've done more than 100 miles per week for five of the last six weeks, and have biked 1500 miles since October. I am also a day or two shy of passing 500 total hours on my bike (since October 2000), and have ridden over 7000 miles in that same time period. Of course, about a month from now I'll have eclipsed 7500...

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