Orny's Cycling Journal

It’s been an eventful month since my last update. There are a lot of topics to cover, which means I’ll be only saying a couple sentences about each one. Rapid-fire, go!

After two years of use, at the end of April I brought Pæthos into the shop for a quick tune-up. What a terrible experience! They kept my bike for 15 days… that’s longer than it took me to recover from heart surgery! They never sent the promised estimate, so the $765 fee was a shock; plus they included an extra bicycle chain that I didn’t request. And the tech installed my Di2 rear derailleur cable incorrectly, so the cassette yanked the cable out of the frame. Fortunately I noticed it when I got home and fixed it myself before it caused any serious damage or injury.

Circuit of the Americas

Bicycle House Ride

Friday Truancy Ride

Bloody Knee

The larger problem for me was that I was completely off the bike for those two weeks. My Fitness again plummeted, from 40.6 down to 29.1 (it stood at 56.6 back on March 5th, before my heart surgery). The shop returned my bike only two days before an event I wanted to do. Although my heart was strong enough, after a long layoff post-surgery, followed by an even longer one for the tune-up, my legs just didn’t have the stamina or conditioning for a 100 km event. So I didn’t do the Stampede on the Chisholm Trail ride I’d hoped to try, which was frustrating.

But there was another, less formal ride a week later. The only problem was that suddenly we were in the middle of our first Texas-style heat wave, and… while I might consider 100 km in normal weather, I was in no way prepared to do so at 42°C! So I also bailed on Trek’s Pedal Around Austin ride. Another swing and a miss… but I got some good heat acclimation rides in that week!

Around this time, my partner left on a monthlong trip to the northeast to visit family. That left me with lots of free time, so recently the only limit on my riding has been my ability to recover in between rides!

One highlight was the decidedly low-impact Ride of Silence in honor of cyclists killed or injured on the roadways. I got to ride some new roads, and on my way home I enjoyed my first night ride of the year. I purposely made stops at several scenic locations around town, and finished up just after 10pm.

I’ve done four of my regular Friday Truancy group rides, but even there I had one of those embarrassing low-speed tip-over falls at our cafe stop, which resulted in a scraped knee. And when you’re on blood thinners, such minor mishaps produce an inordinate amount of bleeding, bruising, and tenderness! And if I’m being honest, my inability to even pretend to keep up with this “intermediate” group has been incredibly frustrating.

I have also joined a conveniently-located group ride I discovered, the Saturday morning shop ride out of Bicycle House on Burnet, which I’ve now done twice. They split the sizable group into fast and slow groups, which I found helpful, and about a third of the route is new to me. So that’s promising, and I’ll see if I can get out of the house at 6:30am to make future editions.

And I also managed to make 2025’s final Bike Night ride at the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 racetrack. I usually hit this about twice a year, and it was nice to be back, although that Turn 1 hill always makes this a challenging ride.

That brings us up to present-day. All this riding has brought my CTL back up to 46, with the plan from here featuring more recovery and hopefully some longer rides. There are two main targets…

In two weeks there’s the Fire Ant Tour up in Gatesville, a metric century I’ve done for the past two years. Although I’d aspired to do other events sooner, being ready to complete Fire Ant has been the main goal of my recovery from the medical misadventures of the past eight months. So I’m pretty firmly committed, if the weather cooperates.

I’m also using the Fire Ant Tour to judge my ability to ride another remote “reimagined” Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride this year. I’m still recovering from my stroke and heart surgery, and learning what my new limits are. But hopefully they’ll allow me to do a creditable job of “earning” my sponsors’ donations to support cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, especially now with NIH funding under direct threat from our shortsighted lawmakers.

So stay tuned, because the rubber is about to hit the road…

Sunday saw the return of the Mon Valley Century, which I rode once in 2016, but which was not held for the past two years due to landslides: a fact of life in Western PA.

After driving down to Monongahela city and getting kitted up, I set out at 6:35am in foggy and chilly weather, the route following wooded (and mostly flat) creek beds. The first segment was a long 40 miles: 2.5h in the saddle without a break. The sun slowly burned through the fog, leaving yet another near-perfect day for riding.

Summer morning near Glyde, PA

Although I’d been told at the start that about ten riders started before me, I was the first to arrive at the eventual rest stop, despite only passing one other rider; three others arrived a few minutes later.

The middle part of the ride followed the (mostly flat) Monongahela River, with two notable exceptions: Brownsville Road, which climbs over a ridge to eliminate a big bend in the river (a mile climb at 8% grade); and an unexpected detour in Fayette City where our riverside route had been blocked by a major rockfall.

The route passed through several old, failed steel towns that had been built along the river. While not complete ghost towns, most of the buildings were long-abandoned industrial shells from the 1800s that felt more like a post-apocalyptic movie set than any 21st century communities. Pretty surreal; I really should’ve taken pictures.

I arrived at the advertised Belle Vernon rest stop (mile 60) at 10:30am to find two empty cooler jugs and a canister of Gatorade powder lying on the ground, unattended. Great. Thanks for all the support, ride organizers!

Fortunately, I still had a little fluid left in my bottle, and the lunch stop was only another ten miles further on. I arrived there at 11:15 and downed a turkey sandwich. The group behind me, which had swollen to five, arrived 15 minutes later.

After a good rest for tiring legs, I set off on the next leg, which (at mile 70) passed by the start-finish on the way to a 30-mile bonus loop to make a full century. After a moment of confusion about whether to turn at the Monongahela 7-Eleven or the New Eagle 7-Eleven, I left the river and passed up into the pretty Mingo Creek county park.

Three of the riders from the following group finally caught me in the last mile before the final rest stop at mile 90, which again was completely unmanned, but at least someone had bothered to fill the coolers with water and ice.

From there, four of the other riders split off, having started the ride from that area that morning and thus “completed” the ride. My final companion was on a recumbent and dropped me almost immediately, leaving me to toodle home casually over the last ten miles, which included a long, gentle descent. I returned to the car at 2pm, completing 102 miles in 7h25m, which was about right, given the half hour I’d killed at the lunch stop.

The main highlight of the ride was the countryside. Following creek beds and the river not only ensured the course wasn’t too hilly, but also provided a very pleasant mix of cool, shady, wooded glens and warm, sunny, open farmland.

That was complemented by another beautiful weather day. Unlike last year’s record rainfall, somehow all seven of my calendar-firm event days have provided stunning conditions. I hope that’ll continue for my three remaining scheduled events!

On the downside, there was a pretty large quantity of loose oil & chip roads, which are arduous to ride, damaging to equipment, and sometimes dangerous to riders.

But the biggest problems were entirely the fault of the organizers. Not providing GPS route data is lazy and unfriendly. Leaving rest stops stocked but unmanned is pretty sketchy. But not bothering to even set up an advertised water stop is inconsiderate, dangerous, negligent, and unforgivable.

If you ignore those issues—which fortunately didn’t inconvenience me too much—it was a really nice ride. My third century in three weeks, and my ninth of the year, which ties my previous annual record.