Orny's Cycling Journal

Every year has its ups and downs, and its major milestones. But every so often something happens that is so significant that you can divide your whole cycling career — perhaps even your entire life – into “before” and “after”.

2024 started quite well; I was riding consistently, tried some new things, made a few events, but missed a few others. In the first nine months of 2024, I knocked out 7,000 kilometers, an average of 25.75 km per day.

Showing off the Austin skyline during my Pan-Mass Challenge ride.

And then there was October 4th: my stroke. Thankfully it was extremely minor, but it negated all my plans and goals as a cyclist in an instant. It reduced everything I’d done before then to history, forcing me to begin again from scratch.

The good news is that I’ve recovered remarkably well. As I mentioned in my first post following my stroke, I’ve prioritized riding the indoor trainer over riding outside. Since I got back on the bike in mid-October, I’ve logged another 2,000 km, or about 25 km per day, a rate which is almost even with my pre-stroke riding.

My plan was to get back out on the road this spring to test my capabilities. But that’s the future; for now, let me look back on the past year and give you an idea how things went both before and after October 4th.

All told, I knocked out a total of 9,250 kilometers, or the distance between London and Tokyo, or from Los Angeles to Rome. That actually surpassed my 2023 total by 1,000 km, and my riding was split 63% outdoor rides and 37% Zwift.

As for whether I met the goals I’d set for myself…

My Original 2024 Goals

Ushered in 2024 with a New Years Day Pan-Mass Challenge group ride on Zwift.

I returned to the Fire Ant Tour metric century for a second year.

Tried the Team Tacodeli group rides, but barely saw anyone but these two…

I was again a regular at the Friday Truancy group rides, tho I struggled to keep up.

Last year at this time, things were still up in the air following our move to Austin, so my 2024 goal-setting exercise was short on specifics. But I did call out three specifics areas of focus.

More 100k and Century Rides

2024 was a little better than 2023 in terms of long rides, but there were also a lot of missed opportunities.

On the plus side… I did complete two centuries: my first Red Poppy Ride, and my solo Pan-Mass Challenge Day 1. As for metric centuries, I rode my second Fire Ant Tour, plus two solo rides out to Manor, one of those comprising my PMC Day 2.

But the list of excuses and missed rides is regrettably long. I didn’t feel ready for the early-season Pedaling the Prairie or the two-day Texas MS 150. I skipped the Tour de Boerne so that I could make a rare kyūdō practice at the outdoor range. I canceled my planned Katy Flatland Century when I learned that the local Trek club was hosting a long tour around Austin, which I still missed because I contracted COVID. And my second Livestrong Challenge eluded me when I had a stroke two weeks before the event.

So I was both happy and a tiny bit disappointed with the first nine months of the year. And after my hospitalization, long rides just weren’t in the cards anymore.

Find My Group Ride Niche

I continued my frustrating quest to find enthusiast-level group rides in Austin.

Continuing last year’s trend, I regularly attended the Friday Truancy rides, making 28 of them before being sidelined by my stroke. However, for the first time in my life I was utterly incapable of keeping up with the group. So, for me, these still wound up being essentially solo rides: group rides in name only.

I did try riding with Team Tacodeli on Monday evenings, which were shorter and at a more moderate pace. I joined them five times in June, but three of those were only attended by two other riders, and once I was the only rider to show up at all! Then they went on summer hiatus, and that was the end of that. To my knowledge they haven’t resumed on any regular basis since.

So despite giving Team Tacodeli a fair shot, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

A Big Pan-Mass Challenge

On a much more positive note: after skipping the event in 2023, I enjoyed a tremendously successful return for an 18th PMC ride. In brief, it was:

• My first PMC ridden remotely in Austin
• My first PMC as a member of Team Kermit
• My first PMC as a sexagenarian
• The ride went really well
• I enjoyed creating an awesome 2024 PMC highlight video
• And I raised $7,300 for cancer research; a stunning 62% increase over my previous ride (2022), bringing my lifetime fundraising total to $130,800

My ride video and all the deets live in my 2024 PMC Ride Report.

So in terms of meeting the goals I’d set for 2024, I’d say I did okay. It certainly could have been better, but I’m still happy with how it went.

Charts

Because I kept riding throughout the winter of 2023-2024, I had virtually no drop-off in my Fitness level, as measured by my Chronic Training Load (CTL) numbers.

Previous years – including my first year in Austin – featured a lot of variability, characterized by peaks in Fitness during the summers, and troughs in the winter. In contrast, my Fitness stayed almost constant throughout 2024. Thus it wound up being my most consistent year on record, as you can see in the following chart.

To quantify how steady it was: in the decade from 2012 to 2023, the standard deviation of my Chronic Training Load averaged 16.7 – and it was never less than 11.7 – but in 2024 it was just 4.9! And it was actually a mere 3.5 before I contracted COVID in July and my stroke in October, which were the only noteworthy hiccups in my training all year.

Another way of looking at it is to compare my Fitness with my long-term average, as you see in the following chart, which zooms in on 2024:

In a February blogpost, I predicted that my my natural response to having rideable weather year-round would produce a much flatter curve than in previous years. I projected that my Fitness would be higher than average during the winter months, but during the extreme heat of summer it would never reach my usual peaks… and might even decline slightly from springtime highs. And that’s exactly what happened in 2024.

Basically, this is what I think it’s gonna look like to be a year-round cyclist in Austin.

The Centuries

Big turnout at the start of the Red Poppy Ride, my first century of the year.

Early morning haul down Lime Creek Road toward Volente on my 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge century.

All I can say is that two is better than one. After one lone imperial century in 2023, I was eagerly planning for Livestrong to bring my 2024 tally to three, but greater concerns intervened. But the two I did complete were:

5/11: Red Poppy Ride

Although marred by a flat tire and criminally bad route markings, this was a delightful return to long-distance riding, and a big relief after the bad experience I had on the 2023 Livestrong Challenge (blogpo). But this ride’s challenges still prompted me to invest in new tire levers and a tire jack.

8/3: Remote PMC Day 1 Century

I’ve already covered this above, but my 110th century and 18th PMC was the biggest high point of my year.

It’s still a little premature to say for sure, but it’s worth mentioning: considering my age and health issues, it’s possible this was the last imperial century that I will ever ride.

Noteworthy Purchases

This year’s spending report falls into two main categories: a ton of mostly minor maintenance stuff, and not one but two automated selfie camera drones.

The first of those drones – the HoverAir X1 – created the entire category of selfie drones, and would have been the best purchase of the year on its own, after giving me the ability to take pretty decent video footage of myself while riding.

But later in the year they released the X1 PRO, which took the groundwork laid by the X1 and improved upon it immensely. I’ll spare you the details, and instead point you to my Gear of the Year blogpost for a full writeup. But in summary, it’s a fantastic piece of equipment that I hope to make even more use of in the upcoming year.

Here’s a two-minute compilation video I made that only uses footage from the original X1. Starting next year perhaps I’ll add a new section to my year-in-review post for an annual cycling highlight video!

Beyond that, my purchases were all pretty regular stuff.

In terms of new kit, I got a new cycling jersey for riding the 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge, and ordered three sets of PMC-branded fingerless gloves. As a team rider, I also purchased a 2024 Team Kermit jersey, and received a couple PMC-branded insulated (non-cycling) water bottles that our team captain had surplused from the ride organizers.

After struggling with hydration on last year’s Livestrong ride, I picked up a bottle of SaltStick electrolyte gelcaps. I’d used them back in Massachusetts in 2010 for cramping, but hadn’t noticed any obvious benefit; however, I was willing to give them another shot in order to help me deal with Texas’ heat. Results continue to be inconclusive.

Routine maintenance included buying inner tubes, CO2 canisters, a new tire, a replacement saddle bag, helmet padding inserts, and a new heart rate monitor. Also had to replace a battery cover on my Garmin power meter pedals, which I’d over-tightened and had to destroy to get into. And I got a new electric shaver (for the legs, of course).

In hopes of alleviating some of my tire-changing worries, I replaced my Park Tool tire levers with ones from Pedro’s, and a funky tire-seating device called the Rehook Tyre Glider; but I actually didn’t get to test either of those, so I can’t say they were of any value. I also tried my hand at patching punctured inner tubes with vulcanizing glue patches, which was an almost universal failure.

So really, aside from the selfie drones, it was a pretty underwhelming year in terms of equipment.

Additional Highlights

Dramatic backdrop on the new Walnut Creek bike path extension to Manor during my PMC Day 2 ride.

A stunning sunset atop Turn 1 at the Circuit of the Americas F1 track.

Unlocked Level 80 on Zwift’s indoor trainer platform.

Proved there was no drop in my FTP after my stroke on Zwift’s new “The Grade” hill climb.

Team Kermit group photo at the finish line of the 2024 Livestrong Challenge.

Obviously, the highest-impact unplanned event of the year was my stroke, and starting my cycling life over from scratch. So far, my recovery seems near complete, even though I’ve kept my focus strictly on the indoor trainer so far. And I also recovered from my first bout of COVID in July.

But before my stroke, there were still some nice surprises. The Southern Walnut Creek trail was extended another nine kilometers to the town of Manor, which could serve as a gateway for rides farther to the northeast of Austin. And I made two trips down to the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 track for Bike Nights, which is the same number of sessions I made in 2023. Sadly, illness forced me to miss their first actual post-sunset “under the lights” night ride.

Life on the indoor trainer was eventful. My Kickr CORE smart trainer got its first firmware updates in 2½ years, adding automatic calibration, which is a nice convenience. I also picked up Zwift Play handlebar-mounted controllers, which provide several convenient functions, including virtual shifting (which I disliked) and in-game steering.

Within Zwift’s virtual world, I began the year at Level 62 and finished at Level 81, although after four poorly-conceived redesigns, they’ve botched the XP system so horribly that levels just don’t mean that much anymore. In addition to an updated heads-up display, Zwift introduced a couple dozen new routes, including two small but noteworthy expansions: The Grade, a hilly section which features a short-form FTP test; and an updated copy of Zwift’s original 8 km Jarvis Island loop. So it took some work for me to reinstate my “Route Hero” status. And after having avoided the initial hoopla, I finally checked out Zwift’s Climb Portal, and had the pleasure of riding up Mt. Fuji while that route was featured back in May. Four years later, I’m still waiting for Zwift to bring it to their permanent Japan-inspired Makuri map.

But I have to call out two of my formerly-favorite vendors, who made stupid, user-hostile decisions that have me seriously reconsidering doing business with them.

Garmin Screws Its Users

I’ve been using Garmin’s portable GPS units to plan routes and record rides since 2000, using the original yellow eTrex, the eTrex Vista, the bike-specific Edge 800 and Edge 820, and about 18 months ago I picked up their newest bike computer, the Edge 840 Solar, which I reviewed here.

For the past two and a half decades, when you connected a Garmin GPS to your computer, it would appear as a disk drive that you could interact with just like any other: copying and moving files on and off the unit as desired. It was incredibly convenient, and one of my top criteria when evaluating bike GPS units.

However, a December update disabled disk access in favor of MTP, simulating an Android device that the user cannot interact with directly.

This is an immense pain in the ass for me. I have automated programs that rely on disk access to automatically save copies of my logs after every activity I complete. Furthermore, I use disk access to backup all my user data, settings, and key system files quarterly. Garmin’s change means there is no way for my programs to read anything on the device, or for me to manually copy files from it.

So far I’ve been able to decline installing the update that does this, but that also means forgoing all future fixes and enhancements. There are shareware programs that give some limited access to MTP volumes, but they’ll never be as scriptable as the simple file system disk interface.

As I said, being able to programmatically read files from the unit is one of my most important criteria when buying a bike GPS. If Garmin is no longer going to support that, it forces this longtime Garmin user to very seriously consider moving to their competitors.

Strava Screws Its Users

Despite being the incumbent athletic social network, Strava has a long history of lack of innovation and user-hostility. But this year they’ve shown a newfound ability to screw their customers.

First, there was their amateurish handling of a substantial price increase, which was never publicly announced and varied pricing dramatically by country.

Next, Strava alienated or outright forbade the API-based applications that most athletes rely on. By prohibiting third-party applications from showing one user’s data to anyone but that user, they immediately destroyed a whole ecosystem of communities that rely on their data, including athlete coaching, athlete leaderboards, and the ability to sync Strava data with other platforms. Strava has stupidly banned the very apps that make it useful to its customers!

Finally, in another completely unannounced change, Strava stepped up its effort to get rid of spammers. But in typical Strava fashion, they completely botched it. Instead of using technology to identify problematic users, they simply decided one day to ban every Strava user from using URLs. Suddenly overnight, and without any notice, any link posted in a user profile, an activity description, or a post simply disappeared, with no error message or notice. Worse yet, this was so poorly coded that even decimal numbers like “30.4 kilometers” were deleted for looking too much like those dreaded URLs!

This is all just so typical Strava, and it absolutely underscores the company’s completely user-hostile orientation. Needless to say, I’m unlikely to renew my paid subscription when it comes up for renewal next spring.

Blogposts

In recent years, I’ve had less to say in blog form, and loaded more of those things into my usual ride reports or my annual year in review. But here’s this year’s inventory:

• 2/11: The Shape of Things to Come (charting changes in my seasonal cycling pattern)
• 5/16: Poppies! (Red Poppy Ride century ride report)
• 5/10: Anty Up (Fire Ant 100k ride report)
• 8/20: 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge Reimagined (just a pointer to my full PMC ride report page)
• 9/15: Covidiocy (comparing my fitness pre- and post-COVID)
• 11/14: Livestroke Challenge (my cancelled Livestrong Challenge and cycling after my stroke)
• 12/7: Gear of the Year (my new HoverAir X1 selfie drone)
• 12/31: 2024: Second Life (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

Goals for 2025

Ornoth’s 2024 cycling calendar/log

My 2024 Strava Year in Sport summary

For the past few years, this section could have been shortened to just “more of the same”. I wish I could say the same again for 2025, but my life as a cyclist has changed at a fundamental level, forcing a complete reset in my expectations. So we start with my most basic and important goal:

Stroke & Cardiac Recovery

While the symptoms of my stroke have long passed, the followup continues, with several hematology and cardiology visits planned.

I have two more months of relative normailty, but then I will have cardiac surgery to repair a hole between my atria, and will be under doctor’s orders for absolutely zero exercise for all of March and into April.

Once I’m cleared to exercise again, cycling life will start from scratch all over again, while I first test whether I’m okay to ride, then rebuild some fitness, and finally test my endurance and learn what demands my body will still be capable of meeting.

My questions won’t have changed much since I came home from the hospital: Will I be able to participate in group rides? Can I still do a metric century? An imperial? Will I be able to trust my body again? Can I ever return to what used to be “normal”?

My 19th Pan-Mass Challenge?

Sadly, the PMC is once again a big question mark. While I really want to do it, I won’t have any idea what’s physically achievable until May, at earliest.

Even if I were in perfect health, there are still a lot of questions up in the air. Would I try to simulate the full 2-day, 300 km route? Would I still do it in August, or perhaps choose a different time? Would I ride as a member of Team Kermit or return to being a solo rider? And will I have time and energy to fundraise?

Like everything else, I won’t have any way to answer these questions until I get through my upcoming heart surgery.

More, Better Videos!

Whatever riding I do, I hope to capture it with the newer, more capable HoverAir X1 PRO autonomous selfie drone. With video quality, subject tracking, and speed all improved, I’m excited to see what I’ll be able to do with it, and equally excited to share the results with you in this cycling blog and on my Strava feed.

My trusty steed waits, ready for another summer in the Texas sun.

Some Anticipated Purchases

Having spent the past three months on the indoor trainer, I’ve been sitting on a few ideas for next year’s cycling upgrades, including the following:

On the bike: After two years and almost 18,000 kilometers, my bike could probably benefit from its first thorough tune-up. And some new bar tape.

Cycling kit: Although my current ones are only 18 months old, I could probably use a couple new pairs of bibshorts. And my Shimano cycling sandals really need to be replaced.

As for tires: I’m really tired of struggling to get my Conti GP5000 tires mounted on my tubeless-ready rims, so when they wear out, I’m going to replace them with Pirelli P-Zero tires and see how that goes. And I’m perpetually on the fence about whether I should try running lighter and higher-performance latex or TPU inner tubes, instead of the much more convenient and economical default latex. Maybe next year we’ll give those a shot; just don’t expect to ever see me going tubeless!

Conclusion

2024 started well, but ended on a sour note. The high points that I’ll remember include a very successful first solo Austin PMC ride, and the purchase and videos captured with my first autonomous selfie drone.

But by far the most defining moment of the past year was my stroke. It was a miracle that I came away from it without any significant loss of function, but also a very grim reminder that one’s time is limited, and life can disappear in any instant. And my upcoming cardiac work casts an immense shadow onto 2025 and beyond.

It’s hard to get past that realization and return to making plans and setting goals as if nothing had changed.

And at the same time, it underscores how precious every day – and every ride – is, how big a blessing it is simply to be able to get out, travel around under our own power, and experience nature and the world around us.

That’s the attitude I’ll try to bring with me on every precious ride this year as I deal with my surgery, then try to recover enough to resume outdoor riding.

Happy 2025 to everyone I share these roads with!

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

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

Feeling ballsy

Friday Truancy ride

Tour of Watopia celebration

Zwift PMC group rides resume!

Zwift fondo series returns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At this time last year, I summarized my first winter using a smart trainer and Zwift to maintain fitness. Now this year's spring blogpost is due, even though the Corona virus and shelter-in-place orders will extend the indoor riding season into April, and May, and June, and...

But let’s start with the good news and winter happenings before turning to the more unpleasant, ominous future.

The Harrogate UCI World Champs course

Epic KoM

Scenic ride through Titans Grove

Not a bad day, for December!

My Xmas gift: the Tron bike

New Year's in the Italian village

Combo Jersey

Halloween dinosaur on a mountain bike

The Herd kit

In the six months from October through March I rode 2,830 miles, 99 percent of them on the indoor trainer. I did one-third more riding than the previous winter, mostly because I didn’t get my trainer until December of that year.

In that time, Zwift has given us a lot of changes and additions. The most noteworthy were the addition of the undulating Titans Grove route, the Yorkshire UCI World Championship course, the short Crit City expansion, and a much needed redo of the half-baked Richmond (Virginia) UCI course. Zwift introduced mountain bikes and even tested steering in a short off-road path. And they debuted individual and team time trials, although I haven’t tried those as of yet.

And one has to mention how well Zwift have handled the dramatic and unexpected growth in usership resulting from the Corona virus lockdowns. A year ago, it was noteworthy if there were 10,000 to 15,000 people Zwifting simultaneously. Recently we’ve been topping out around 35,000: three times last year’s peak.

The biggest farce of the year has to be the Fence, a tool that community organizers have long begged for, to help keep group rides together. I found it inconvenient and fiddly. And ride leaders only transitioned their whining about fly-away riders to complaining about people merely riding close to the Fence. Plus Zwift botched the implementation so horribly that they had to withdraw the feature after a short time.

Meanwhile I made a few improvements to my own Zwifting setup. The biggest win was buying a smart outlet, which allowed me to turn on my cooling fan using my smartphone, without getting off the bike. I also wrote a background program called zwift-pic-monitor that automatically displays any screen shots I take while riding (normally Zwift saves each photo but doesn't show it). And I added a new IRL cycling jersey to my already large collection when The Herd—the club I ride with on Zwift—completed its long-awaited design.

On the negative side, I’ve been plagued by chain drops and slippage, particularly during high-power sprinting efforts. I’ve already installed a new chain, so I suspect my outer chainring is worn; however, I can’t verify or fix that at the bike shop until the current Corona virus lockdown is lifted.

That brings us to this winter's achievements; it’s quite a list.

In December I completed my first year on Zwift. Disappointingly, I never got the anniversary email they usually send out.

I finished the December 100-mile mission, the April 250k mission, the Italy and Everest challenges, the 5-stage Tour of London, the 7-stage Tour de Zwift, the 3-stage fondo series, and the 3-stage Haute Route Watopia. I rode 16 stages of the (nominally 5-stage) Tour of Watopia because they were doling out double experience points; but I only did one out of 3 stages of the Tour of Innsbruck. I earned the Zwift mountain bike & tires, acquired the Zipp 808/Super9 disc wheelset, and was awarded the much-coveted Meilenstein Lightweight wheels upon completing my 10th ascent of the formidable Alpe du Zwift.

I started the now-poorly-titled “off-season” at Level 26, and am currently at Level 38. But after two winters I’m only 56 percent of the way to the current max level (50) because it takes lots more XP to level-up at higher levels.

And then we get into the really noteworthy stuff...

After ascending 5.7 times the height of Mt. Everest, I earned Zwift’s Tron “Concept” bike. Everyone covets it because it takes a long time to get and has ostentatious glowing tires. Although noteworthy, it’s tacky and doesn’t perform any better than several “real” in-game bicycles, so it’s of little interest to me.

I earned the Masochist badge for completing 25 ascents of the Alpe du Zwift. That’s hard and also takes time to complete. A nice, respectable achievement. Tho I’ve just about given up on breaking the 60 minute ascent barrier.

I’ve already written about completing Zwift’s challenge for completing each of the in-game routes: first an initial 25 routes, then the full 67 routes. The second set was my most memorable and noteworthy achievement of the year, because it included several of Zwift’s hardest courses.

The longest of those routes was 107 miles, and I also extended the second-longest one to 100 miles. As you know, 100+ mile rides are how I judge my year. The following week I notched a third one by repeating the 33-mile Stage 1 of the Watopia Tour three times in one day.

With my usual real-world events being cancelled due to the Corona virus, I’m hoping to do rides on Zwift that match the distance and climbing of the outdoor centuries I’ll miss. The first of those was a challenging 200k (125 miles) with 8,400 feet of climbing that I completed yesterday, but that deserves its own separate blogpost. However, that means I’ve already completed four “Zentury” rides so far this year.

Mimicking my first IRL event is a segue to where my training stands now. In a normal year, I’d use this space to summarize my level of fitness and preparedness for the transition to upcoming spring events. Although outdoor riding is going to be severely curtailed, there’s still good reason to review where my fitness stands.

My Chronic Training Load (CTL) bottomed out around 50 at the end of October, as I recovered from a strained achilles, but the aforementioned route challenge motivated me to train hard through November, December, and January. By New Year's, my CTL had risen to 80, which exceeds my usual summertime peak. After those two Zenturies to complete the route challenge, my CTL maxed out at 98, setting a new and unexpected all-time fitness record—in January! Since then, I’ve let it subside back down to 75, which is still above my summertime peak form.

While recovering from last fall’s injury, I produced a disappointing 197W back in my November Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test; but in February I bounced back up to 215W, and a subsequent Alpe run bumped it up to 227W, which are both closer to what I would expect when I’m in form. I’ll see where I stand again in May.

Based on my CTL and FTP, I’m in great shape for whatever riding I'll do, indoors or out. But thanks to the Corona virus, it’ll be more of the former than the latter. All my group rides and major events in April, May, and most of June have been cancelled, and I expect that will also be the case through July at least.

It might make sense, then, to revisit the goals I set for this year. Ironically, four months ago, I wrote the following:

I don’t really expect to surpass my 2019 season, due to this year's confluence of circumstances. Will 2020 also feature great weather, limited travel, no job commitment, and an understanding partner who will loan me her car to get to distant rides? And can I continue to evade the growing concerns of age and health?

While I couldn’t foresee cancellation of the entire cycling calendar along with all other public gatherings, I was skeptical that 2020 would be as good as 2019. That was eerily prescient, huh? Barely two weeks into spring we knew that unless the trajectory of the pandemic suddenly changed, there would be no outdoor centuries for me this summer. We’re left now to do what we can with what we’ve got.

That’s why I can’t tell you how glad I am that I bought my smart trainer and started Zwifting in 2018, so that my indoor setup was up and running a year before we were ordered to shelter in place. I hesitate to imagine how stir-crazy I’d be now if I wasn’t set up for indoor riding!

But I’m not looking forward to spending one of my remaining summers inside. I already miss being warmed by the sun, fresh air, being out in nature, exploring new places, and making lasting memories. But putting miles down on the turbo is infinitely better than not riding at all… or being deceased.

Stay tuned, and stay indoors!

With my recent purchase of a thermal jacket and awesome thermal bib tights from Craft, I’ve become a lot more comfortable riding in colder temperatures. Matched with a balaclava and either thermal gloves or lobster mitts, I’m able to ride comfortably for hours at 20-40°.

However, there’s always been one glaring problem with cold-weather rides: full-fingered gloves make it impossible to operate my new bike computer. Its capacitive touch-screen requires contact with skin to complete an electrical circuit to determine where the touch took place.

Although not a critical issue, it was most pressing (pun intended) when relying on the computer for navigational cues. But the computer just won’t respond to fingers insulated (in both thermal and electrical senses) within full-fingered gloves.

This difficulty first came up on the 3-2-1 Ride, a chilly century along the Great Allegheny Passage. Fortunately, being mostly on a bike path, the route didn’t require much navigational work. I easily made do by just bending down low over the handlebars and operating the touchscreen… with my nose!

In later months I’d also work it by removing the computer from its handlebar mount, bringing it up to my face, and rubbing it against my nose. But after a few swipes, it became apparent that a nose just isn’t a particularly good stylus, and a smear of nose grease really detracts from a screen’s legibility.

I considered buying some newfangled gloves with capacitive finger pads, but that seemed unnecessarily expensive, since both my sets of gloves are fairly new and otherwise work great. I looked into capacitive gel and dots that you could apply to the fingers, but those had pretty poor reviews.

Finally, I decided to spend ten bucks on a bobbin of conductive stainless steel thread, sewing it through the fingertip of my full-fingered gloves, lobster mitts, and my non-cycling winter gloves.

While it isn’t perfect, the conductive thread doesn’t work too badly, doing the trick more often than not. And that’s good enough, when the alternative is stopping and taking off one’s gloves in 17° weather!

I’d generally recommend the thread. It’s not too heavy gauge, so it’s plenty flexible and easy to work with. And, of course, it works just as well with capacitive cell phone screens as it does with bike computers.

However, there are a couple things to be aware of.

There’s no need to be cheap here, so buy reputable thread. There are plenty of people out there selling fakes.

Secondly, remember that the thread works by conducting the electrical charge from your body to the screen. Thus, you can’t just sew the outside surface of the glove; you have to go all the way through the material to the inside, ensuring that there’s a good contact with the flesh of your finger inside the glove as well as the screen. When the thread doesn’t work, it’s most likely because it’s not in solid contact with your finger.

And although it’s pretty easy to work with, trying to manipulate a sewing needle in the tiny, narrow inside of a glove’s finger can be difficult. It doesn’t have to be the cleanest sewing job, but you want it to be both effective and at least a little durable, so take your time.

Do that, and you can keep your gloves on and your fingers warm, and keep the nose-grease off your bike computer!

A proficient cyclist rolling down the road is an image of liquid grace, economy of motion, and effortless speed. Like a soaring seagull, otters playing in the water, a swan gliding along the surface of a pond, or deer running through a forest.

Whether it’s a seagull in flight or a cyclist on a long ride, grace comes from an organism adapting to its particular environment. Over years of training, the roadie has developed a very specific skill set, and his body has adapted to suit it.

But that seagull is not so elegant if forced to walk down a cobblestone alley. An otter trying to climb stairs is nothing but awkward. When that swan ambles down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, he looks completely alien. And have you ever watched deer swimming in the ocean? They suck at it.

And like any other highly-adapted being, when the cyclist steps off the bike, out of his natural environment, he too loses all sense of dignity; he looks stupid.

Following that unnatural moment when he plants two feet on the ground, the illusion of grace is irrevocably shattered. He walks gingerly, like an arthritic, top-heavy mallard. He’s all gangly knees, legs, and hands. Don’t ask him to bend to touch his toes, because he can’t. His underdeveloped hamstrings barely allow him to reach his knees.

The accoutrements that make him suited for the road—the special shoes, the protective sunglasses, the Lycra shorts, and the high-visibility clothing—all look ridiculous in an everyday pedestrian context.

But taking his “kit” away reveals an underlying reality that’s even worse. His deeply tanned arms and legs are horribly betrayed by the sad, sickly-pale areas around his hands, eyes, feet, and torso. He looks like a farmer who spends every day on his tractor, or someone who fell asleep in a tanning booth with their clothes still on! He lives in deathly fear of going to the beach, where his cyclist’s tan makes him a laughingstock.

On one hand, the cyclist looks woefully underfed, like the proverbial scrawny Ethiopian in an advertisement for world hunger relief. But at table he eats like a ravenous hawg, consuming three or four times as much food as any normal person. But people hate him all the more for it, because he never seems to put on an ounce weight.

The one enviable aspect of a cyclist’s body that doesn’t miraculously disappear is his legs. Usually clean-shaven, well-defined, and tanned bronze, they’re probably the best legs you’ve ever seen. That is, if they’re not covered by disgustingly exaggerated varicose veins…

In their daily lives, most normal people don’t pay any attention when a cyclist rides by, because the cyclist is pretty unremarkable while quietly operating in his natural element. But like that swan in Manhattan, everyone both notices and remembers cyclists when they’re walking around awkwardly, looking stupid.

However, if you take the time to really study the cyclist when he’s doing his thing, you might be surprised to see someone much like yourself, flying effortlessly down the road, mile after mile, with the grace of a dancer, the elegance of a bird in flight, and the exuberant joy of an otter at play.

And you might realize that a cyclist is perhaps not such a ridiculous, pitiable thing for people to be, after all.

This is the second post in a weekly series I've begun on hints, tips, pointers, and advice for other Pan-Mass Challenge charity riders. These are the things I've learned during more than a decade of participating in the PMC.

The full list of posts will be compiled and permanently available online at http://www.ornoth.com/bicycling/hints.php

Whether you're a first-timer or a longtime veteran, may you find these ideas useful, and I hope you have a wonderful PMC experience!

This week's topic is one that everyone loves: Equipment!

• If you're riding a hybrid or mountain bike, get skinny tires. The difference in rolling resistance is very significant.
• Clipless pedals: they're also usually a good idea. Shimano mountain bike style cleats are recessed, so they're easier to walk in than traditional road cleats.
• Wear padded cycling shorts. Like all of the odd things that cyclists do (well, most of the odd things), there's a good reason why everyone wears them. Without underwear.
• Sunglasses. Use them! Riding all day in moving air dries your eyes out something fierce, and glare's no fun. And I haven't even mentioned flying insects, gravel, and branches...
• Get a water bottle with a wide mouth, so that you can stuff ice into it as well as liquid.
• You can buy insulated water bottles at your local bike shop. They're not going to perform miracles, but they're definitely worth the small extra cost.
• If you have room for two bottles, make one a sports drink and one water. You can always pour the latter over your head on a really a hot day.
• If you are prone to muscle cramps, consider bringing electrolyte pills to ingest along the way. There's no guarantee they'll work for you, but they probably can't hurt. As always, test these out on training rides before the day of the event.

Next week's topic: Training!

Whenever I talk to non-cyclists about riding, two topics inevitably come up. The first is wonder that anyone in their right mind could handle being on the road with all those crazy drivers. The other is always—believe it or not—derision at cyclists because of the colorful outfits we wear.

I’ll relate one typical incident. Some years ago, a car overtook me as I approached a sharp right hand turn in the road. The car cut the apex of the turn right to the curb, as if I wasn’t even there, pinching me up onto the sidewalk. At the next light, I caught up to the car and alerted the driver—a woman who didn’t even acknowledge my presence—that she’d driven me off the road. Her passenger, a man, responded thus, “If you want to wear yellow, you should go to France”. This is how a lot of drivers think.

Now, never mind that concern over our sartorial choices is an act of high judgmentalism over something ludicrously trivial, since cyclists’ choice of clothing has absolutely no impact on anyone else’s well-being.

What really irks me is that these people are completely ignorant of the reason why cyclists wear bright colors. It’s not because we’re all gay or lacking in fashion sense or a bunch of counter-culture crazies. No, idiot, it’s so that drivers like you will actually see us.

Wearing muted earth tones—which are the only clothing that is socially acceptable to narrow-minded mainstream America—would make cyclists easier to overlook, and therefore will put them at more risk of being run down than a rider wearing garish colors.

Being highly visible is in fact the single most important factor that allows cyclists to be safe on the road with all those crazy drivers. Even following the rules of the road is kind of secondary to being seen. And it stupefies me that many drivers deride cyclists for doing something so simple and obvious to make themselves more visible and safer on the streets.

Bicycling has certain protocols. One of them is that you don’t wear team kit unless you are being paid to weat it, or can at least hammer faster than anyone else in the vicinity. Anything less would be incredbily gauche. Picture a 275-pound flab-gator tooling around, sweating profusely at 13 mph on the flat, piloting a replica of Lance’s bike, wearing Lance’s team jersey. Tack-ay. But sadly far too common.

That goes eightfold for the yellow jersey: the symbol of leadership in the Tour de France. Any cyclist who can wear the yellow jersey for real, that is the best day of his entire life, without exception. People devote their entire professional lives to earning that right. Whole squads of people devote their lives just to have the opportunity to indirectly help someone else earn that right. In the past century, only 261 people have earned the right to wear a yellow jersey.

So you can imagine how massive a faux pas it is for a weekend hacker to put on a replica yellow jersey. It’s like showing off your (replica) Nobel Prize for Literature when you’re not even professionally published. It’s like proudly displaying your “Olympic Gold” at work, when in reality the closest you’ve come to the Olympics was spending one Saturday laughing when Olympic curling was on television a few years back.

Wearing a replica maillot jaune is the single biggest act of hubris a cyclist can conceive of.

So you can see where this is going. Recently some blithering idiot showed up for our group ride in a replica Tour de France leader’s jersey. A woman. Wearing sneakers, rather than cycling shoes. Who felt the ideal accessory for the maillot jaune was a big ole fanny pack. On a cheap department store flat-bar bike. With reflectors and a kick-stand, for Christ’s sake!!!

Now sure, you can mark all that down to ignorance, but that’s some absolutely amazingly superlative kind of ignorance, unabashedly paraded out in public in a way that just demanded to be noticed. That’s much worse than nine-months-pregnant-in-your-wedding-dress level stuff.

Folks, don’t do stuff like that. Please! You’ll get spat out the back of the ride like a wad of stale chaw, and be left behind, alone on the open road but for the echoing laughter your offensive hubris earned.

Back in 2003, shortly before the PMC, I did the 60-mile version of the Charles River Wheelmen’s “Climb to the Clouds” ride, which goes up 2006-foot Mt. Wachusett and back.

This year’s ride was scheduled for Sunday July 17th, and I was planning on doing the 105-mile version of the same ride. I’d even gotten a friend to agree to drive me out to the start in Concord and pick me up afterward.

The day before—Saturday the 16th—rather than staying off the bike, I decided to do my usual 60-mile Quad Cycles training ride. I had an afternoon barbecue to attend out in Lexington, so it only made sense to ride out that way in the morning and stop at the BBQ on the way home. Of course, I would take it easy, to ensure that I’d have plenty of energy left for the century ride the next day.

As the miles went by, however, I noticed that I was getting more and more uncomfortable in the saddle. In fact, it was getting downright painful! By the time I got to the BBQ, my butt was thoroughly chafed and very tender.

Now, I’ve never been prone to “saddle problems”, although I did have some normal bruising at the start of the season due to my singular lack of padding for my sit-bones. However, this problem was in a completely different area, and it really stung anytime I put weight on it. So I called up my friend and reluctantly canceled the Sunday ride.

That was most of a week ago now, and things seem to have improved. I just got back from Maine, where I bought a couple new pairs of Sugoi cycling shorts, and I plan on putting those shorts (and my backside) through their paces in this weekend’s QC rides. Hopefully everything’ll be in full working order soon, because the PMC ride is only two weeks from now!

Follow this link for my full 2001 Pan-Mass Challenge ride report.