Orny's Cycling Journal

Ornoth modeling the 2025 Team Kermit jersey.

Just as 2024 was all about my late-season stroke and return to fitness, 2025 was defined by my heart surgery in March, and my post-op recovery.

Happily, the procedure went well, and after a two-month break, I was able to resume training, taking three months to build up to a successful remote Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August, followed in November by the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge.

In the end, 2025 was a very successful year, and there were lots of milestones and noteworthy highlights along the way. Here’s my year-in-review post to distill it all down to a coherent narrative.

My Original 2025 Goals

Last December 31st, my 2025 New Year’s Eve began with a visit to my cardiologist to schedule my PFO closure heart surgery, which I learned would take place on March 7th. After that appointment, I drove home, finalized my list of cycling goals for the coming year, and posted them in my 2024 annual summary blogpost.

At that time – just months after my stroke and facing impending heart surgery – it was hard to commit to any concrete goals, but here’s what I thought made sense at this time last year, and how it played out.

Stroke & Cardiac Recovery

The Amplatzer Talisman Patent Foramen Ovale Occluder they implanted inside my heart!

Ornoth meets the sunrise, already four hours into his Day 1 PMC ride.

Taking a quick break as a freight train passes Austin's 1947 Amtrak station.

Obviously, my primary goal was to get back to full health and fitness following my heart surgery.

I was off the bike for 10 days surrounding the March procedure, and wasn’t allowed to do any meaningful training for another month. Although I hoped to recover as quickly as I could, it would be a long, gradual process, exacerbated by my bike being in the shop for an unexpected two weeks.

However, from today’s vantage point, it went miraculously well. Just 2½ months after resuming training, I was able to complete the Fire Ant Tour: a metric century. That gave me the confidence to register for my big remote PMC ride, which I completed in August. And in November I rode the 100-mile Livestrong Challenge, which I’d missed in 2024 due to my stroke.

It took me four or five months to get back to my normal level of fitness and endurance, but I’m as confident and capable as cyclist today as I was before my stroke, and that’s an immensely satisfying feeling.

My 19th Pan-Mass Challenge

Although I listed riding another PMC as one of my goals for 2025, it was with a humongous questionmark. Would it even be physically possible?

After surgery in March, I would have barely enough time to recover, train up to adequate physical fitness, and do the necessary fundraising work. Thankfully, I suffered no physical setbacks, and on PMC weekend I completed my usual two-day, 300 kilometer remote PMC ride. It was incredibly heartening to show that I’d overcome my health issues, and a poignant reminder of what a blessing it is to be able to spend a long day in the saddle.

Given the Trump administration’s 44% cuts to the NIH budget, this year’s PMC fundraising was more important than ever, and I brought in a post-hiatus and post-pandemic record of $9,450 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I chose to earmark 25% of my fundraising for the pediatric neurological cancer lab favored by Team Kermit, and the rest was unrestricted, so that DFCI can use it wherever it is most needed.

That’s all I’ll say about this year’s PMC. For my full writeup – plus my 5-minute highlight video – be sure to check out my 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge Ride Report.

And look below for my Goals for 2026 and some exciting news about next year’s PMC!

More, Better Videos!

In terms of video, I could have done better. I made limited use of the new selfie drone and its expanded capabilities, but I did capture a number of short video clips here and there.

On the plus side, I pushed out another 30-second PMC ride jersey reveal, produced another PMC ride video, and gathered many of my little clips into a second yearly highlights reel, which appears just below.

I hope to do even better next year, especially since I recently picked up a wireless DJI mic that’ll hopefully allow me to capture decent in-ride audio.

Some Anticipated Purchases

When I wrote last year’s goals, I was grasping for anything I could, so I included a “goal” of pulling the trigger on several planned upgrades. That was kinda lame, since I always devote an entire section of my annual review to stuff I’ve bought, anyways.

But briefly: I made those expected purchases, as well as several others. As expected, 2025 was an interesting year in terms of equipment; however, I’ll enumerate all that in detail in the “Noteworthy Purchases” section below.

But taken as a whole, while 2025 won’t top my list of greatest cycling achievements, I’m absolutely delighted by the success I’ve had in achieving these goals and exceeding the expectations I had, coming into 2025.

Highlight Video

Here we go: a quick 2½ minute look back at some of this year’s highlights (or at least the ones I got on camera).

For my Pan-Mass Challenge buddies, you might see how many different PMC jerseys you can count!

Charts

Let’s start this section with a new chart to understand how my cycling has changed in recent years. Here’s how many kilometers I’ve logged each year since getting back on the bike as an adult cyclist 25 years ago.

There are two things I want to call out. The first is that I’ve ridden considerably more each year after 2018. As you can see, that extra ~4,000 km per year is almost entirely attributable to Zwift and the indoor trainer I purchased at the end of that year. And that trend has surprisingly continued even after our 2023 move to Texas.

The second thing has to do with 2025 in particular. This year I logged 9,500 kilometers in the saddle, split pretty evenly between the indoor trainer (47%) and the open road (53%). It might not look like much on the chart, but despite losing a big chunk of time due to my surgery, I still rode more this year than any year since 2021!

Now let’s look at my cycling Fitness numbers, which only go back to 2011. Still, that’s a full 15 years of Fitness data, as you can see in the following chart.

Looking at this, I’d concentrate on the right half of the chart. 2017 was a normal year, but it ended with my only Dirty Dozen ride, which left me shattered, leading to a very mediocre 2018.

But at the end of 2018, I bought an indoor trainer, which allowed me to begin each spring at a higher level of Fitness, leading to higher summertime peaks. In terms of Fitness, the four years from 2019 through 2022 were my lifetime peak.

My most recent inflection point was at the end of 2022 when we moved to Austin. Two years ago I wrote a blogpost entitled “The Shape of Things to Come”, considering how my riding might change following the move. I expected my Fitness to be much more steady throughout the year, with fewer lows during the winter months and fewer peaks in the summer. And, as you can see above, that’s exactly how the past three years played out.

Now, let’s look more closely at 2025:

Having regained my Fitness following my stroke, and with heart surgery coming in March, I spent January and February doing as much cycling as I could and maintaining a fairly high Fitness level.

March and April show two consecutive dips in my Fitness, as I recovered from heart surgery and then sat around doing nothing while my bike was serviced. My Fitness plummeted to its lowest point since I bought my new bike three years ago.

In May, June, and July, I was committed and focused on steadily rebuilding my Fitness in time for August’s two-day Pan-Mass Challenge. I was overjoyed to complete it, which also marked my maximum Fitness of the year.

For the rest of 2025, I tried to keep my Fitness at a reasonably high level, including a secondary peak leading up to November’s Livestrong Challenge century. Then things fluctuated a bit in December, while I recovered from a pulled hamstring and broken toe.

The Centuries

Crossing the finish line after 100 miles of the Livestrong Challenge.

Last year, I wrote that – due to my age and health issues – I might have ridden my last 100-mile ride. I’m happy to tell you it wasn’t true. This year I trained back up and knocked out two imperial centuries. You already know what they were, but here are my ride reports:

• 8/3: Remote PMC Day 1 Century This year’s Pan-Mass Challenge was my 111th imperial century and a signal accomplishment in my recovery from stroke and heart surgery.
• 11/2: Livestrong Challenge A full year after my stroke, I enjoyed a triumphant return to the Livestrong Challenge, capping an insanely busy week that included a big concert the night before my 112th 100-mile ride.

My Year in Zwift

For the first time since the COVID lockdown, I rode nearly as many kilometers on my indoor trainer using Zwift as I did outdoors. And because Zwift usually gives me several things to talk about, I’m going to put all the Zwift-related business into this new section. And since there’s so much of that this year, I’m just gonna do bullet points.

Modeling the Level 100 jersey in front of Zwift's Austin-inspired 360 Bridge.

Ornoth (in his Didi the Devil cap) leading the PMC group ride on Zwift.

• I started the year at XP Level 81 and successfully made my way to Level 100, which is the highest you can go… for now! This was a huge achievement that was 7 years and 34,000 kilometers in the making (see blogpo).
• When I reached Level 85, Zwift sent me a free pair of Zwift Play controllers, which replaced my old ones that had been malfunctioning. But Zwift also decided to stop making them.
• Zwift started granting experience points for regular outdoor rides, with four outdoor kilometers earning the same XP as one km in Zwift. Yaay!
• Zwift held big events to introduce major expansions and new routes in France and New York City, plus a handful of miscellaneous other routes.
• By completing the “Tour Fever” Climb Portal challenge, I earned a full Didi the Devil cycling kit. While I usually wear the in-game PMC kit, my avatar still wears the skullcap with devil horns from the Didi kit.
• Zwift introduced a handful of new in-game bikes, but also implemented ways for users to earn five levels of upgrades for their bikes, and the ability to unlock (frankly stupid looking) “halo” bikes.
• They also introduced a major new long-term challenge: the Factory Tour, which eventually unlocks “lightning socks”.
• Zwift also finally added TSS points, Fitness, and Form charts and trendlines: the same data I’ve tracked and charted for the past 14 years.
• They also replaced the beloved double-XP Tour of Watopia with a new Zwift Unlocked Tour. It still grants 2x XP, but they moved the time frame from late winter (when you’re building fitness for spring) to mid-autumn (when you should be relaxing), which is disappointing.
• The PMC’s Zwift group rides decreased from weekly to monthly, and moved to 7am on Saturdays. Not a huge fan, but we’ll make it work somehow.

All this (plus the XP bonus for keeping a weekly ride streak alive) actually kept me Zwifting throughout the summer, when I would normally put the indoor trainer away. There’s no denying that Zwift has been a major contributor to both my recovery from medical issues and my overall fitness each year since 2019.

Noteworthy Purchases

It was a good year for shopping, and there’s a lot to cover. To conserve spacetime, let’s divide this year’s purchases into two groups and just list them out.

First the new kit:

• Two pair of Craft bibshorts, which were discounted by 20% after I talked with customer support
• A new pair of Shimano SD501 cycling sandals to replace my old ones
• The 2025 Team Kermit cycling jersey
• Of course, the 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge jersey
• A blue & gold Reggie Miller “BoomBaby” cycling jersey
• Doublewide wrist sweatbands for Zwifting and occasional outdoor use; although I never used to sweat, having it running down my arms has been a problem since moving south!

A lot of my cycling equipment purchases were covered in my October blogpost “Rolling Resistance”, so here’s just a quick enumeration:

• My inexplicably slow and expensive tune-up included new brake pads, chains, bar tape, and cassettes (I erroneously ordered the 30-tooth version rather than the 34), and a long-awaited firmware update for my Di2 shifters.
• New Pirelli P-Zero clincher tires were great, if prone to cuts, but TPU plastic inner tubes proved completely unusable.
• Fanttik battery-powered pocket air compressor/inflator has been a lifesaver.
• I enthusiastically recommend the Rehook Tyre Glider to easily mount & dismount even stubborn tires; I will never ride without one!
• Replaced my outer chainring, after I bent the old one when I dropped the bike.
• Installed a pair of cheap but very useful plastic enlargers for the hidden buttons on my Di2 shifters.
• A new CamelBak Podium Ice water bottle (plus a new dishwasher to clean them!)
• DJI Mic Mini Bluetooth microphone to capture quality audio to go with the video I capture while riding (to debut next year).

Finally… This might be a bit odd, but it’s worth mentioning three products that I was eagerly awaiting, but did not purchase. Coincidentally, all three were announced on the same day: September 9th! Those were:

Wahoo Kickr CORE 2 indoor trainer

My original Kickr CORE – from 2018! – is still working fine after 34,000 simulated kilometers, and the new, revised version doesn’t have any compelling improvements, other than being $250 cheaper. It can wait.

Garmin Rally 210 SPD power meter pedals

Similarly, the second generation of my power meter pedals aren’t significantly better than my old ones, and come with a 10% price increase. Plus they’re a whopping 60% more expensive than Assioma’s equivalent power meter pedals! No thanks.

Garmin Edge 850 GPS bike computer

I’m a huge fan of advanced bike computers, but Garmin’s newest generation is a big step backward compared my two year old Edge 840. Garmin cut the battery life in half; they removed the solar charging feature; its weather maps are awkward and crash the unit; and they raised the price 30-40%! Those are the kind of “improvements” I can live without.

Additional Highlights

Riding past Salado Creek on the Volksride 100k.

Friday Truancy group ride on Austin's Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge.

The Bicycle House ride regrouping at Walnut Creek Park.

Ornoth's 2025 cycling calendar/log.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, what else stood out about 2025? Here’s a small handful of significant bits.

Outside of my centuries, I did a few noteworthy event rides. My first long ride after surgery was June’s Fire Ant metric century (my third year). And my late-season included doing the Barrow Volksride metric for the first time. And I made it out to the Circuit of the Americas F1 track once in May, just before they closed it up for the year (they didn’t open for their usual fall dates).

Between surgery, Zwift, and event rides, I didn’t do as many Friday Truancy group rides (about 20), and when I did I was mostly alone off the back, as I’m really not able to hold the pack’s pace anymore. But I tried a half dozen Saturday morning shop rides out of Bicycle House, and those went really well (except for having to get up at 6am on a weekend).

I also reported out on my experience consulting with a nutritionist, which was marginally useful.

In one of the more noteworthy developments, I finally canceled my paid membership on Strava, which is why you won’t see my “Strava Year in Sport” summary image for this year. Although they’re the default social network for cyclists, in recent years Strava has taken numerous corporate actions that are overtly hostile to their users. I complained about them in last year’s annual summary, and somehow it got even worse in 2025! Those actions have included: banning all users from posting any links in activities, comments, or posts; claiming ownership of users’ data; surprise price increases; lack of new feature development and bug fixes, especially on the website; drastically restricting their API and thereby breaking numerous popular third-party tools and services with no warning; and filing a frivolous lawsuit against Garmin – their closest business partner and number one data provider – for requiring the exact same data attributions that Strava themselves force on their third party developers. Strava’s corporate “leadership” is deluded, out of touch, and utterly out of control, and I (along with many other users) are done giving them money to enable their asinine, hostile behavior. Don’t let the door hit you in the face as we leave, Strava!

Blogposts

I only post about once a month, but when I do, my articles are kinda long and jammed with detail. Here’s this year’s inventory, in case you wanna dig deeper into any particular topic:

• 1/7: Rolling into 2025 (a notable update to my blog’s Fitness chart)
• 3/10: Special Operations (leadup to my heart surgery)
• 4/16: I Care About Nutrition (my experience consulting a nutritionist)
• 4/24: Rode to Recovery (my progress seven weeks after surgery)
• 5/1: Why Specialized? (why I ride their bikes)
• 6/2: Event-ful… Or Not (missed some events, made some others)
• 6/18: Adamant (my 3rd Fire Ant 100 km event)
• 8/18: 2025 Pan-Mass Challenge Reimagined (just the usual brief pointer to my full 2025 PMC ride report page)
• 10/5: Rolling Resistance (lots of new equipment, especially tires & tubes)
• 10/23: Volksriden (my first Barrow Volksride 100 km event)
• 11/13: Strong Living (my return to Austin’s Livestrong Challenge)
• 12/4: Zenturion (hitting the max Level 100 after 7 years of Zwifting)
• 12/31: 2025: Ya Gotta Have Heart (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

Goals for 2026

So that was 2025. Let’s talk about next year’s goals, because now that I’m fully back, there’s some big things I’m looking forward to. Let me share ’em with you…

Surpass 100,000 Adult Cycling Miles

In the arbitrary milestone category, I am about to surpass 100,000 miles of riding since I took up cycling as an adult back in 2000.

100,000 miles is a common lifespan of the typical family car. It’s the equivalent of riding around the Earth at the equator… four times. Or perhaps it’ll make sense if I tell you that it’s like traveling the whole Oregon Trail 46 times, without dying of dysentery!

That also means I’ve averaged nearly 4,000 miles a year for the past 25 years. That’s a measure of how devoted I’ve been to this particular pastime.

With good weather and only a couple hundred miles left to go, I ought to tick this one off soon. Look for a commemorative blogpo before the end of January.

Return to Boston to celebrate my 20th PMC and $150,000 in fundraising

Yes, it’ll be my 20th Pan-Mass Challenge. Yes, I’m coming back to Boston to do the in-person ride for the first time since 2014! It’ll be my 15th traditional PMC, having ridden my last five alone and remotely in Pittsburgh or Austin. And in 2026 the PMC will be inaugurating a new starting location in Worcester, rather than the traditional (and now former) start in Sturbridge. Very exciting!

Plus, I have a huge fundraising goal: to surpass a lifetime total of $150,000 raised for cancer research at the Dana-Farber. Raising the necessary $10,000 is a makeable stretch goal, and I’m asking you and all my amazing sponsors past and present to help. Plus if fundraising goes exceptionally well, it could also mark my return for a 10th year as a PMC “Heavy Hitter”.

The PMC has always been the most important highlight of my year, but next year’s PMC is going to be out-of-this-world special, and deeply emotional. I hope you will be part of it too, in one way or another!

Conclusion

So that’s 2025 in the books.

Starting with last year’s stroke, and through my heart surgery nine months ago, I had no idea whether I’d be able to continue riding. After eight long months of uncertainty, I’ve worked my way back to full fitness and proved that – even in my sixties – I’ve still got what it takes.

Despite my age and health challenges, 2025 was a surprisingly successful and memorable year, highlighted by covering more ground than any year since 2021, strong performances in my solo PMC and Livestrong century rides, tripping Level 100 in Zwift, raising another $9,450 for Dana-Farber, as well as all the other bits I’ve mentioned in this writeup.

After nearly a year of uncertainty, today life as a cyclist is pretty much back to normal again, and that’s an incredibly rewarding and reassuring feeling.

And it’s great to be able to look forward to an exciting 2026 season, featuring a very special trip back to Boston to ride and enjoy and celebrate my 20th Pan-Mass Challenge, with renewed confidence and free of worry.

Ready? Let’s do it!

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!

2022 began poorly. For the second year in a row, my winter training was interrupted by worrying chest pains, and also a lengthy scouting trip to Austin in April.

However, the majority of 2022 was pretty satisfying. Another year brought another incremental step toward normality following the Covid-19 pandemic. I got to enjoy many of the major events that Covid had interrupted, although I missed some opportunities due to weather and other considerations. As summer turned to fall, I was pretty pleased with how my season had gone.

Ornoth and the Allegheny River, with the downtown Pittsburgh skyline in the background.

The FTP test that set off my January chest pain and interrupted my training.

The first Team Decaf group ride of 2022 at the Point State Park fountain.

Four friends' ride out to Sewickley, with Suraj, Ornoth, Ben, and Oscar.

Ornoth modeling the 2022 PMC Jersey with downtown Pittsburgh as a backdrop.

But the year also ended abruptly. I spent some time off the bike in November, recovering from saddle sores and a tooth extraction, and that was followed by another two-week trip to Austin over Thanksgiving to secure housing. My early winter training was crowded out by the hectic insanity of packing up house in preparation for our move, which is currently in-process. Really… We said goodbye to all our belongings – including my bikes and indoor trainer – on Wednesday, and won’t see them again for a couple weeks!

2022 was a pleasant return to my “normal” summertime routine. However, it might be the last year I’ll enjoy the standard six-month summer cycling season I’ve always been accustomed to. I expect the seasonality of my riding might look somewhat different once I set my wheels down in Austin!

My Original 2022 Goals

As always, let’s begin with how well I achieved the goals I set out for myself when 2022 began…

Go 100% metric

My big New Years resolution was to go fully metric, and that was surprisingly easy. It was like learning a new language, but one with only a couple dozen words and prefixes, so it quickly became familiar to me, to the annoyance of my life partner.

Another 10,000 KM year

My January chest pains and our April travel immediately put me behind the pace I needed to ride 10,000 kilometers in 2022. And my late-year health issues, November travel, and packing meant this goal just couldn’t be met. But I still racked up a thoroughly enjoyable 8,000 KM.

While I’m on that topic, I should mention that 61% of that distance was outdoors, making 2002 the first year since 2019 that I’ve ridden more outside than I did indoors on Zwift!

More major events

This year I enjoyed several events that had been suspended or shortened in recent years due to Covid. In addition to 18 weekly Team Decaf group rides, I returned to the Absolutely Beautiful Country ride, the PMTCC 3-State Century, Pedal the Lakes, and Pittsburgh’s Every Neighborhood Ride. But travel, weather, and cancellations meant I still missed several annual favorites.

Video ride reports

I expected to put together a handful of ride videos this year, following last year’s purchase of a new GoPro action camera. Unfortunately, videos are a lot of work to assemble and put together, so I wound up doing just one 7-minute video for my “reimagined” 2022 Pan-Mass Challenge ride. Still, the GoPro was handy to carry around to capture still photos.

Although not full ride reports, I did capture and post a few brief video clips. Strava began allowing users to attach short videos to their activities, so I took advantage of that cool new feature several times.

Another remote PMC?

Although I attended 21 consecutive PMC group rides on Zwift over the winter, I delayed registering for my 17th Pan-Mass Challenge – my third riding remotely – due to my chest pains. At the last minute, the event I’d planned this year’s ride around changed its date, and then wet weather caused me to do a 130 KM indoor ride on Saturday, followed by a 170 KM outdoor century up to Butler and back. It wasn’t the ride I’d planned for, but it was still fun, and I raised another $4,500 for cancer research and treatment.

Zwift team time trial?

Although a TTT has been on my radar for several years, I’ve always been stymied by the chest pains that come when I push myself to my maximum. Needless to say, it was absolutely not happening this year. I might just have to let this one go.

Bike repairs?

My worn chainrings have become a huge issue, causing frequent chain drops when trying to sprint, but my options for fixing them remain very limited. All the bike shops I’ve gone to have told me the only thing I can do is scour Ebay for used, second-hand parts, which I’m reluctant to do.

I could, of course, replace my entire bike. I’d rather not do that because I really love my R2-Di2, and would rather keep riding it. But after our impending move, this might be something I can look into in the next year or so, once I know exactly what kind of riding I’ll be doing in our new location.

Charts

Every year I post and discuss my training and fitness as measured by my Chronic Training Load (CTL). That’s nice, but I update these charts after every ride, and I thought it might be cool to share that up-to-date data. So this year I added constantly-updated charts to a pinned/sticky post that will always appear at the top of my cycling blog. So now you can see how my year is going anytime you want, here.

But let’s talk about how my 2022 performance compares to previous years. Here’s the chart:

While it looks like a pretty good year, I never reached the same level of fitness I had in the previous three years. That’s because I started ramping up my training a lot later in the year, thanks to taking time off for chest pains and our trip to Texas. That was followed by a great summer, but I tailed off pretty quickly toward the end of the year due to health and relocation.

Now let’s zoom in on this year in more detail:

Here you can really see how much my fitness declined in January, and then again during that April trip to Austin. But after training back up in May and June, I enjoyed a productive summer, with six century-plus rides (the red dots). And note how my fitness plummeted due to health issues in October, travel in November, and packing and moving in December.

Still, six centuries is two more than I did last year. Let’s talk about those…

The Centuries

Rolling through flat, exposed Ohio farmland on the Akron Bike Club's ABC Century ride.

What passes for a Pittsburgh sunrise over Lake Wilhelm before setting out on the 2022 PtL ride.

Ornoth & Phil at Tomlinson Run SP in West Virginia during the 3-State Century.

Ornoth & Phil receive their finishers' medals following the 3-State Century.

My new Garmin Rally XC200 power meter pedals!

In addition to being two more than last year’s total, none of this year’s six centuries were simulated on the indoor trainer. I hadn’t done six or more outdoor centuries in one year since the good old days before Covid (2019)! And now I haven’t done an indoor “Zentury” in nearly two years (March 2021)!

Not that it was all great. The only reason why I didn’t do an early-season “Zentury” was because of my chest pain. Then I wanted to do the Pittsburgh Randonneurs 200k, but was away in Austin that weekend. I wasn’t trained up enough to do June’s two-day Escape to the Lake. I was rained out of doing my first Sunday in June. The Tour of Mercer County cancelled its century route due to insufficient registrants. The cursed Mon Valley Century cancelled yet again. And the Rough Diamond century on PMC weekend both changed its date on me, and then got rained out!

But neither you nor future-me want to read about rides I didn’t do, so let’s celebrate the long rides that did come off.

5/31: Bunola solo
This familiar route was an important test of both my cardiac health as well as my delayed training. I enjoyed the summery weather, but I really suffered from lack of form.

7/10: Absolutely Beautiful Country
Six weeks later, I drove to Ohio for one of my favorites – the ABC ride – which I last rode back in 2019. The weather was stellar, and my performance felt pretty normal. My only disappointment was that my power meter decided to conk out for the last 30 KM.

7/31: PMTCC 3 State Century
My friend Phil always seems to be my constant companion for this ride, and so it was in 2022. The day was temperate and a bit grey, providing (for once) unchallenging weather. It was a pleasant ride up until about 10 KM from the finish, when it started to drizzle. And then I pinch-flatted on a poorly-set railroad crossing on our finishing loop. But we made repairs and finished the ride.

8/7: Butler solo Reimagined Pan-Mass Challenge
I’d planned my “Reimagined” PMC as the Rough Diamond century on Saturday, but when they moved the date, I was left with no specific plan. When it rained on Saturday, I decided to do a shorter ride indoors, then made up the lost distance with a full outdoor century on a slightly-drier Sunday, using the familiar route up to Butler and back. It wasn’t the ride I’d hoped for, but it was successful enough.

9/3: Pedal the Lakes
Another ride I hadn’t done since 2019, the PtL route had been largely redesigned, broken into 50 and 110 KM loops. It wound up being an overcast, solitary ride, but pleasant, and I finished in exactly seven hours.

10/8: Every Neighborhood Ride
My final century was the always-challenging ENR, which I last rode back in 2018. I rode with the slower group and enjoyed a much less taxing ride. Between the pace, rest stops, and extending it to a full century, it was a 12-hour marathon. It seems appropriate that ENR was my last century before leaving Pittsburgh.

Noteworthy Purchases

This year’s most noteworthy addition has to be my Garmin Rally power meter pedals. I’ve wanted an SPD pedal-based power meter for many years, and I’m delighted with these.

A smaller but memorable change was when I got new brake pads, after suffering three straight flat tires when my worn, misaligned old pads wore through the sidewall of my tire! Gotta remember to keep an eye on that!

I also picked up the Fanttik Apex battery-powered tire inflator, mostly for our car’s steady leaks, but it also came with a Presta valve. However, its compressor is way too loud for indoor use, so I’ll probably only use it to top off before rides I’ve driven to, rather than packing my floor pump.

And I finally picked up something I’ve thought about for a long time: white brake hood covers! I’ll put these on next spring with some new white bar tape. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look quite as good as when I still had my bike’s stock white saddle, but maybe that can be switched up, too, depending on how long the R2-Di2 continues to be my primary vehicle.

Does a cardboard bike box and movers count as purchases? Perhaps not, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to box and ship a bike. Stay tuned to see whether that winds up being a success or a tragedy!

Additional Highlights

I’ve written enough about my chest pains interrupting my early-season training.

Aside from that, this year’s overarching theme has been enjoying my last season in Pittsburgh. But return visits are expected, due to intolerable Texas summers and Inna’s mother still living in Pittsburgh.

This year I was very consistent: I rode almost every single Tuesday, either the Team Decaf outdoor group rides or indoor PMC rides. I only missed a couple weeks, usually because I was in Austin at the time.

I was also pleased when a small riding crew spontaneously formed with locals Ben, Gary, Suraj, and Oscar. But it was also a year marred by friends having big crashes: Ben on a trip to Toronto, Suraj coming off multiple times, and a woman being seriously hurt on one of the Decaf rides.

Another big development was finally moving my blogs off Russian-owned Livejournal. As you know, my cycling blog now lives at https://ornoth-cycling.dreamwidth.org/ and also has a sticky post with my up-to-the-minute fitness charts.

In other social networking news, I started posting short videos of up to 30 seconds on Strava, and started using the ActivityFix plugin to automate some previously manual tasks when I post. And I started moving my fitness data over to the Elevate app rather than the browser plugin, which is being de-emphasized.

I did manage to assemble a video ride report for this year’s PMC ride. Although I haven’t used it yet, I also learned how to synchronize and overlay data from my bike computer on top of video, which could be fun and useful in some circumstances.

And there have been developments on the indoor training front, too. Zwift recently added roads in a new region called Urukazi, which is modeled after Japan’s Ryukyu Islands, and they’ve said that a small Scotland expansion will arrive in the next month or two. Another major update was their release of Levels 51 to 60, and I advanced to Level 53 on my last ride of the year. That also came with some new “fire socks” that leave a cool trail of fire during hard sprints. And I also unlocked the rider jersey from the “Long Riders” cycling anime series.

And then there was a final goodbye to the Plastic Bullet, my first road bike, which saw me through 30 centuries and seven PMCs.

Blogposts

• 5/16: Sticky: Up-To-Date Fitness Charts (new sticky post with current CTL charts)
• 4/8: Pedal to the Medal (power meter pedal purchase)
• 4/18: Heart of Glass (chest pain & winter summary)
• 5/30: The Fix Is In (ActivityFix plugin for Strava)
• 6/1: Bunola: Corn Goodness! (solo century ride report)
• 7/14: Ohio Gozaimasu (Absolutely Beautiful Country ride report)
• 8/2: Three States of Matter (3-State Century ride report)
• 8/17: 2022 Pan-Mass Challenge Reimagined (just a pointer to my full PMC ride report page)
• 9/12: Pedal More Lakes (Pedal the Lakes ride report)
• 10/11: Neighborhood of Make-Believe (Every Neighborhood Ride report)
• 12/7: Everybody Called It Good Clean Fun (saying goodbye to the Plastic Bullet, my first road bike)
• 12/31: 2022: Bye Bye Burghie! (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

Goals for 2023

Ornoth's 2022 cycling calendar/log.

My 2022 Strava "Year in Sport" summary, averaging 22 kilometers per day.

That pretty much covers 2022. What does 2023 hold? Thanks to the move, I have almost no idea! But here’s a couple aspirational guesses:

Moving and Orienting in Austin

This will be a chaotic year, for sure. I’ll be trying to orient in a new city and region, trying to find riding friends, group rides, and some noteworthy major events. I’ll be dealing with Texas heat, belligerent redneck drivers, and SUV-centric roadway design. And I expect my usual seasonality to get all screwed up. After all, Texas presents the possibility of riding more through the winter, but will perhaps force me to ride less in the summer, reversing my usual annual riding pattern!

I certainly won’t be committing to any 10,000 KM distance goal this year, and might even find my time taken up by gainful employment for the first time in years. And then there’s also the possibility that I might go and buy myself a new steed, or at least repair the old one. The move is going to be the biggest change my 22-year cycling career has ever seen.

And for the Yinzers in the audience… Just getting out of our new house’s cul-de-sac is a short 15-20% climb, and there’s a certifiable Dirty Dozen-difficulty hill called Ladera Norte (“North Slope” in Spanish) just 4km from home . So I can’t throw those Pittsburgh climbing legs away just yet!

18th Pan-Mass Challenge and $125,000

Even my remote participation in this year’s PMC is in question. Will Texas provide a suitable outdoor course and tolerable weather – and will I be ready to fundraise and ride it – in August heat? I have absolutely no idea! But I’m on the threshold of $125,000 in lifetime fundraising for cancer research, which is a tempting milestone.

And perhaps a summer trip back to Boston might be in order sometime… although the traditional route’s $6,000+ fundraising minimum would be nearly impossible to meet.

Zwift Level 60

How much use will my indoor trainer get over an Austin winter? Or summer? I have absolutely no idea! But I do know that I’ll continue doing the weekly PMC virtual training rides and progressing toward Zwift’s new peak: Level 60.

Health and Turning 60

While I’m here expressing my hopes for 2023, how about just getting through the year without a cardiac scare or other health issues such as dental surgery, saddle sores, calf pain, whatever… While aging comes with inevitable limitations and loss of performance, it’d be nice to enjoy a healthy last summer before I turn the big six-oh. And maybe I should start giving some thought to how I want to spend this milestone birthday…

Conclusion

R2-Di2 at Mon Wharf with river tug hauling coal barges beneath the Fort Pitt Bridge.

2022 saw the end of a seven year long chapter in Pittsburgh. I won’t try to summarize my time in Western PA; you need only read backwards through my blog to review those experiences. The cycling here has been superlative in both positive and less-positive ways, but in both cases it’s certainly been memorable, and I’m happy to have met some good people and gotten so much use of the topography of Western PA.

As the calendar transitions to a new year, I find myself making an immense, intimidating, and exciting change as Inna and I relocate to Austin. I hope you’ll stay tuned and continue to share this road with me!

It really wasn’t anything special, just the regular 25-mile “Team Decaf” Tuesday night group ride out of Highland Park.

At the same time, it was a rare and special event, for several reasons.

Beginning with the most mundane of those reasons: it was the first Team Decaf ride of the year. That’s normally a chance to catch up with riding buddies I haven’t seen all winter long, and perhaps test one’s legs to determine one’s current position in the hierarchy of speed. The first group ride always has a bit of a “reunion” feel to it.

First post-Covid Team Decaf group ride

Sunrise on the castle climb in Zwift's new Japan-themed world

But never mind this year, this was their first group ride in more than 1½ years, as they've been on hiatus since October 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After such a long break, getting back together felt like an extremely special occasion.

For me, this also (hopefully) marks my return to outdoor riding. I actually did a couple outdoor rides back in March, but Zwift’s Tour of Watopia and my mission to reach Level 50 kept me on the indoor trainer through the end of April. With those out of the way and a new all-time record fitness level, I was all set to rediscover the hilly roads of Allegheny County as the calendar ticked over to May...

I started the month with a couple outdoor rides, only to be sidelined with a bad case of achilles tendonitis. Between my injury and additional downtime around my Covid-19 vaccinations, May was a near-complete write-off. The only things that got me on the bike (gingerly!) were the final PMC group rides of the season on Zwift, and Zwift’s release of a new Japan-themed virtual world (which I must admit is pretty cool). Meantime, my fitness absolutely plummeted. That’s what happens when you cut your training down from 200 miles per week to less than 50.

However, I’m now fully vaccinated, which means this was also my first time riding with any other people in more than 18 months. During the pandemic lockdown, I rode 7,700 miles; only 1,250 of them were outdoor, and all of those were solo.

So with all those milestones, yesterday’s group ride was memorable and even a little emotional. Enough so that I felt inclined to actually smile and photobomb. My ankle felt reasonably good, although there’s enough pain — both on and off the bike — to constantly remind me that I’m not 100 percent, or even 90 percent.

The next question is what will the summer of 2021 riding season look like?

The first order of business is getting my achilles fully healed and ramping my mileage back up. That might take quite a while, both because tendonitis is a long-term injury, and it is aggravated by overuse. So returning to long endurance rides is going to be a slow process.

I don’t know when I’ll be able to return to full century rides, which has implications for my goals for this year. I’d like to hit the Akron Bicycle Club’s century in July, do some kind of “reimagined” Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August, and either the Epic Tour in Toronto or the PMTCC’s three-state century in mid-September. And I’m eager to get my milestone 100th century ride under my belt, whatever that winds up being. But there’s no way to know when — or whether — any of that will happen.

In the short term, it’ll be a bunch of short rides, probably sprinkled amongst lots of recovery days. And putting some time into my PMC fundraising, as well. That’s really all I can do until I’m injury-free and back to full fitness.

It looks like my return to normalcy following the Covid-19 pandemic will be a very slow, gradual one.

What a year it was... or wasn’t, actually. What can I say about the 2020 cycling experience?

Having begun the year with lots of indoor training, in January I achieved a new all-time record level of fitness.

Modeling the 2020 Pan-Mass Challenge jersey on the Grandview Overlook above downtown Pittsburgh

Autumn on the Mon Wharf with R2-Di2

Honoring Paris-Roubaix with 22 secteurs of Pittsburgh pavé, including Climax Street

Flew my BikeMS kit on my virtual Escape to the Lake

At the front of the line for the first-ever PMC weekend virtual ride on Zwift

But it was all downhill from there. Before the spring outdoor season began, the outbreak of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of all group rides and every major event on the calendar. On top of that, I kept my solo rides short to avoid risky convenience store replenishment stops. In terms of outdoor riding, 2020 was a complete and utter write-off, as I logged a 20-year low 1,140 outdoor miles.

In contrast, my investment (back in 2018) in a new smart trainer and the Zwift indoor training platform proved prescient and timely. Over 80 percent of my 2020 cycling happened indoors, as I rode simulated versions of all my usual summer events. I even completed my 15th Pan-Mass Challenge (virtually) when this year’s real-world ride was called off. Needless to say, my 4,903 miles on the trainer was a new record.

Combining indoor and outdoor riding gave me an annual total of 6,043 miles in the saddle, only 513 miles less than I rode in 2019. I consider that quite respectable, given the extraordinary circumstances.

Let’s hope 2021 sees the pandemic situation improve.

My Original 2020 Goals

After a superlative 2019, I didn’t have a ton of specific goals coming into the 2020 season, which was a good thing, because I never would have lived up to them! But I did have some general expectations. Let’s see how each of those turned out...

“I don’t really expect to surpass my 2019 season”

The Covid-19 lockdown put an early end to any pretense that 2020 would be a good — or even normal — year. I didn’t do any major events or even a single group ride all year, and only one outdoor ride that was over 40 miles.

The only way I surpassed 2019 was in time spent on the indoor trainer, completing eleven Zenturies (indoor rides over 100 miles). But that’s not how I’d envision a successful year.

“I’ll certainly continue Zwifting”

I’m not going to enumerate all this year’s Zwift achievements, but there are a handful worth calling out. I completed every one of Zwift’s many routes in January, along the way earning the “Masochist” badge for completing my 25th Alpe du Zwift ascent. But to retain that “route hero” status, I had to subsequently complete two more sets of routes when Zwift released expansions for Paris/France and Watopia. I also took three series of FTP tests, registering 215/215/196W in the 20-minute tests; unlocked the new in-game version of the Herd team jersey; and I ended the year at experience level 44 (out of 50).

I also wrote a useful program for myself to automatically open a full-screen display of any “photos” I took while in-game. That way I didn’t have to wait until the end of the ride to see how they came out, nor did I have to fiddle with the laptop to open them myself.

The Herd’s Epic Tour in Toronto

Another big disappointment was the cancellation of a planned September trip to Canada to do a (nominally) epic ride and meet up with online friends from the Zwifting club The Herd. I never even received the (personalized!) ride jersey I ordered.

Charts

As always, my two fitness charts really put the year’s efforts into perspective.

This chart shows my fitness trend over the past ten years, with peaks in the summer and troughs in the winter. Looking at 2020 in this context, the major themes I’d like to call out are:

• My fitness peaked incredibly early in the year (January 26th).
• I set a new all-time record fitness level (98.18).
• After coming off that peak, I spent most of the summer at a moderate fitness level (around 65) before taking it easy at the end of the year.

If we set aside comparisons to 2019, I had a surprisingly good year from a fitness standpoint; despite the pandemic, it doesn’t look grossly different from any normal year. And looking forward, I’m in a decent position to make the most of whatever 2021 offers.

This second chart shows my 2020 fitness in detail, including my eleven Zentury rides (the green circles).

Note my record fitness peak in January, and how much fitter I was than my long-term average (the grey line) all spring long. Despite that, I did gradually lose fitness through the spring, with it slowly falling to match my long-term average at the start of summer in late June.

Similar to most normal years, my summer featured a familiar shark-tooth pattern that comes from periods of alternating rest and recovery with big hundred-mile rides… It’s just that they all took place indoors this year, rather than outside.

A late September interruption caused my fitness to start falling off, when both my heart rate monitor and the laptop computer I ran Zwift on failed and needed to be replaced. At that point, I reconsidered my goals, and decided to abort my last two century ride simulations and start my off-season a little early. Taking some time to relax, my fitness gradually fell to an annual low of 43.53 on December 7th before I started ramping back up again. Looking forward hopefully toward 2021, I finished the year well ahead of my typical level of fitness.

Waving to imaginary crowds as I arrived at a virtual Provincetown to complete my two-day PMC Zwift ride

Taking my laps on the Champs-Elysees in Zwift's new Paris/France expansion

Enjoying the French countryside, with Mont Saint-Michel as backdrop

Giving the crowd a sprint to cheer for in Zwift's Crit City expansion

Exploring Zwift's pretty new sylvan cliffside road

In group rides, I swear sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who knows how to ride properly...

A rare outdoor ride: autumn at McCahill Park in Fox Chapel

Sprinting for the line on Zwift's new Crit City course

When in Italy...

Looking back on downtown Pittsburgh from Herrs Island

My 2020 Cycling Calendar

The Zenturies

For the first time since 2001, I didn’t do a single century ride.

But I did complete eleven indoor Zwift centuries, or “Zenturies”, simulating both the distance and amount of climbing found in my usual real-world rides.

How did I simulate them? I created a web page called The Zenturizer where I could input my preferred distance and climbing, and the site would determine the courses on Zwift that most closely matched my desired profile. It was a very handy time-saving tool, which anyone can use!

I had targeted thirteen Zenturies for 2020, but after completing eleven, I took a three-week break to replace both my heart rate monitor and my laptop. At that point I decided to end my season early and save those two extra centuries for springtime. More about that when I get to my 2021 goals!

Here’s the list of the eleven that I did complete:

• Uber Pretzel Zentury (Feb 13) The penultimate course to ride in my quest to acquire the badges for completing every Zwift route.
• PRL Full Zentury (Feb 20) Rode a very repetitive course all alone, but completed Zwift’s route badge challenge… for the time being!
• Tour of Watopia Stage 1 Zentury (Mar 30) Did Zwift’s ToW Stage 1 three separate times in one day to accrue 100 total miles.
• Pseudo Greenville 200k (Apr 19) My first time cobbling together a route on Zwift that simulated an actual outdoor ride, and at 125 miles my longest single ride of the year.
• Pseudo Tour d’Essex County Zentury (May 25) Since May is devoid of big events in Pittsburgh, I simulated this Memorial Day ride I used to do back in Boston!
• Pseudo Escape to the Lake Zentury (Jun 6 & 7) Simulated my annual MS Ride: usually the only two-day ride on my calendar.
• Pseudo 3-State Zentury (Jun 28) Although this event was postponed and eventually run informally later in the year, I simulated it on its original planned date.
• Pseudo ABC Zentury (Jul 12) Also informally run as an unsupported ride, I just did this Akron event virtually.
• Pseudo Pan-Mass Challenge (Aug 1 & 2) Surprise! My 15th Pan-Mass Challenge ride to fight cancer! Participating in my signature event once more as a virtual rider was a treat!
• Pseudo Mon Valley Century (Aug 18) This “annual” ride has only gone off two of the past five years. At least my Zwift simulation avoided the MVC’s curse!
• Pseudo City Century (Sep 2) The local advocacy group pretended to sort-of run this unsupported, so that they could still collect money. Fed up with an organization that’s completely lost the plot, I was happy to do my own (free) substitute ride on Zwift.

Additional Highlights

After five years away from the event, reconnecting with the Pan-Mass Challenge was my biggest unexpected pleasure of the year. I was the first person to join the PMC club on Strava; I participated in prototype PMC meetups on Zwift that led to an official weekly series of PMC virtual group rides; I registered as a virtual PMC rider for the first time; and I simulated the entire two-day, 192-mile route indoors on PMC weekend. Along the way, I made a bunch of new friends, did a lot of reminiscing, earned my 15th PMC rider’s jersey, and added $3,000 to my lifetime fundraising for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which now stands at $114,222. Here’s my full PMC ride report.

Although the year featured many other memorable Zwift rides, one of the unique ones was participating in a 2,000-person ride led by Watanabe Wataru, the mangaka who created Yowamushi Pedal, an extremely popular cycling manga and anime series.

I should also add that in October I marked the 20th anniversary of purchasing the Cycles Devinci hybrid that started me on the path to becoming a PMC rider and serious cyclist. It’s been a good — but extremely long — road!

Noteworthy Purchases

This wasn’t a great year for pimping my ride, but a few items do stand out as worth mentioning:

• When my old laptop died, I replaced it with a new Macbook Pro, which improved my Zwifting experience by upping both my graphics quality and frame rate.
• I bought a hydration pack, in hopes that it would enable me to do long rides without having to replenish fluids at convenience stores, but it just didn't keep drinks cold enough to be palatable.
• I bought a new Wahoo heart rate monitor that produced unacceptably inaccurate data, so I got a warranty replacement unit. However, the second unit was also garbage, so I demanded a refund and bought myself a new Garmin HRM instead. But amusingly, a late-year firmware update seems to have fixed the Wahoo HRM’s problem, so I’ve held onto the one unit that they told me to keep rather than return!
• I bought a collapsable selfie stick and fashioned a nice rubberized frame mount for it, making it much easier to get interesting photos during rides for my Strava and social media posts.
• And I added the Wind & Rain app to my Garmin bike computer. The real-time weather data it provides would be really useful if I ever actually did any long outdoor rides...

List of Blogposts

It wasn’t the best year for blogging — how much can you write of interest about indoor rides? — but I still managed to get 16 stories written. Here‘s the full list:

• 2/3: Cycling Tool Kit (modeling three new jerseys)
• 2/21: Honey, Badger Don’t Care! (two Zenturies & route hero achievement)
• 4/20: Winnertime (winter training summary & achievements)
• 4/21: First Unreal Ride (first indoor 200k, substituting for a cancelled IRL event)
• 5/26: Zenturize Me! (my Zwift IRL substitute course selector)
• 6/8: The Lake Escaped (indoor 2-day Escape to the Lake MS Ride)
• 6/29: State Change (substitute PMTCC 3-State century)
• 7/13: Centuries: 8, Tan: 0 (Akron ABC ride substitute)
• 8/17: 2020 Virtual Pan-Mass Challenge Ride Report (my PMC Reimagined charity ride, full ride report here)
• 8/19: The Elusive One (substitute Mon Valley Century)
• 8/23: Wahoo, I’m Flatlined! (counter-recommending Wahoo TICKR HRM)
• 8/25: My Advocate: My Enemy (BikePGH comes out against law enforcement)
• 9/3: Not Pedaling, Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh’s populist ride simulated)
• 10/15: Stand Down Margaret (autumn end-of-season catch-up)
• 10/21: Nice Curves (curvy roads and Strava awards)
• 12/31: 2020: Outdoors is Lava! (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

Goals for 2021

Even after writing off the entire 2020 season, Covid-19 shows no signs of abating anytime soon, so I still have no idea what 2021 will look like. But everyone’s top goal for next year is obvious:

Normality

How about a return to normality? Being able to ride farther outdoors than I can manage on a single water bottle? Participating in group rides with other cyclists? Or even do some centuries and my typical big events? Right now, that sounds pretty aspirational and more than adequate.

My 100th Century+ Ride

As far as I can tell from my sketchy records from 2000-2005, I’m currently sitting on a lifetime total of 97 rides of 100 miles or greater. I’ll probably get in shape with a couple indoor Zenturies in the spring, then find some way to do a special 100th century outdoors. It’s probably the biggest thing I’m anticipating and a milestone well worth celebrating. Planning out a route will be a good wintertime activity...

Zwift Level 50

In about 3,575 trainer miles — which is currently estimated to happen around August 13 — I will hit Zwift’s highest XP level. There’s a nontrivial possibility that they’ll soon add more levels beyond 50, but that won’t dilute my satisfaction at reaching what’s currently the top of the chart.

Another Virtual PMC?

At this time, I have no idea whether 2021 will see me doing another virtual Pan-Mass Challenge or not, especially since my fundraising mojo has atrophied. But that’s another decision I’ll make as the season begins to take shape.

Toronto Epic Tour Redux?

It’s the same story for this ride. Since they deferred my paid 2020 registration until 2021, I’d certainly like to take advantage of the opportunity to ride, but whether it’ll happen or not remains unknowable.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about this pandemic-canceled 2020 season. As of the start of the new year, things are still looking quite iffy. But as the calendar turns over to 2021, I’m hopeful that some signs of normality will begin to appear in the coming months.

Hopefully I’ll see you out there!

In contrast with a miserable 2018, 2019 was a complete renewal: possibly my best remaining year on the bike, and arguably the best of my entire lifetime.

MS Escape to the Lake Finisher

Indoor Training on Zwift

MS Escape to the Lake

I’m in Brilliant Physical Health!

PedalPGH Pittsburgh Overlook

The Herd's Leelanau Harvest Tour

Akron Bike Club's ABC Ride

My 2019 Cycling Calendar

While it lacked crowning moments like the Pan-Mass Challenge or the Dirty Dozen, I set dramatic new high water marks for miles ridden, century rides completed, and level of fitness.

Beyond the numbers, though, was how easy it felt. After my first winter using a smart trainer and Zwift, I began the season already near peak form. It was such a different feeling, without the usual early-season suffering to build fitness, and I went into every major event strong, confident, and at ease.

It made setting and chasing my cycling goals an unblemished pleasure, making 2019 a complete reversal of my disappointment in 2018. It was an absolutely stellar year!

My Original 2019 Goals

Let’s review my 2019 season goals. A year ago, I set three secondary and three primary ones.

My secondary goals laid the groundwork for achieving my primary goals.

“My secondary goals for 2019: spending the winter riding Zwift on the trainer, allowing me to enter the road season at a high level of fitness, and monitoring that by performing regular FTP tests throughout the year.”

Spending the winter riding Zwift on the trainer

I really enjoyed Zwift, as described in my summary blogpost. The virtual world was entertaining, the smart trainer changing resistance to simulate climbing kept it interesting, and the social interaction through Discord audio chat was engaging. From December through the spring, I tallied an unprecedented 2,600 simulated miles on the trainer.

Allowing me to enter the road season at a high level of fitness

I monitored my training using my usual fitness charts, which you’ll see shortly. I made steady progress throughout the winter, but would it improve my outdoor riding?

The big test of Zwift’s effectiveness came on April 14th, when one of my first outdoor rides of the year was a 125-mile 200k brevet. It went fabulously, as described in my blogpost.

Performing regular FTP tests throughout the year.

Since my indoor trainer includes a power meter, I can gauge my fitness with a new metric: functional threshold power (FTP). I took two different FTP tests every three months to monitor and quantify my progress, plus automatic FTP increases detected by Zwift while riding. Depending on how you measure it, my FTP varied from 197 to 234 watts, averaging 215W.

That set me up for success reaching my main goals for the year.

“My primary goals for next year are simply this: to finally get beyond the malaise of 2018, to ride more, and get back to peak fitness this summer.”

Get beyond the malaise of 2018

Although the turnaround started with my new indoor trainer and Zwift membership, several other factors helped rekindle my desire to ride. Bypassing the usual springtime pain of riding my way into fitness certainly helped. I also lost less time to traveling. And after suffering through 2018 being the rainiest year in Pittsburgh’s history, all of this year’s major rides had gorgeous conditions (despite 2019 being our third wettest year ever). And by staying on top of my fitness and fatigue levels, I avoided overtraining, which can also sap motivation.

Ride more

In 2019 I rode 3,400 miles, which is more than I average, and 625 more than I rode in 2018. So you can check that goal off.

But that’s only 52% of the story... The other 48% are the virtual miles I put in on the trainer. In my first full calendar year on Zwift, I logged an additional 3,182 indoor miles.

My combined total was 6,582 miles, which constitutes an all-time record for me. Ride more? Double check!

Get back to peak fitness

All that indoor and outdoor riding ensured that I got back to peak fitness. I was in the best form of my life, which I’ll quantify in the two charts in the following section.

Charts

These charts provide the next level of detail about my year, plotting my Chronic Training Load (CTL), which is a measurement of cycling fitness. The charts really tell the story for 2019.

Before addressing 2019 in detail, it’s worth looking at my fitness over the past nine years, which allows me to visually compare 2019 to previous seasons.

At a high level, four major themes jump out of this chart:

• I was much fitter than usual earlier in the year
• My training was much more consistent in 2019
• I peaked higher, reaching new record levels of fitness
• I spent a much longer duration at peak form.

If you compare 2019 to 2018, it’s obvious that 2018 was a substandard year, and that 2019 was an immense improvement. My max fitness in 2018 was 66.3; in 2019 I spent six and a half months above that level, peaking in June at 94.3! And looking forward, I’ll begin January 2020 with a CTL of 79: higher than I ever reached in all of 2018!

A little further back, my previous all-time max fitness levels occurred briefly in 2016 and 2017 around 82.5 (follow the horizontal grey line on the chart). In 2019 I spent more than four months above that level!

In other words, it was a record-smashing year. Now let’s zoom in and take a closer look at 2019.

First, note that grey line inside the chart. That’s my average fitness level from 2011-2018. Thanks to my winter training, I entered 2019 way above my usual fitness, and surpassed my typical midsummer peak form by the middle of February! And my fitness remained above average over the entire year.

Another big difference from last year is my consistency. In 2018, I couldn’t ride regularly, so its chart had lots of ups and downs. This year was steadier, only showing brief dips (for travel) in March and July, followed by that big dip in October, when travel, an achilles injury, and a cold kept me off the bike. I hopped back onto Zwift in November to build fitness for the 2020 season.

These two charts document a ton of hard riding; I could stare at them all day long.

And those green circles on the chart? Those represent my 100-plus-mile rides. That’s the next level of detail to talk about…

The Centuries

When asked what kind of cyclist I am, I say I’m a centurion. The most important and memorable target events of my year are centuries (100 miles) and 200ks (125 miles).

This year I demolished my previous mark (nine), logging no less than a record-shattering thirteen centuries over just six months! Two of those were longer 200ks, and one was my first-ever virtual century on an indoor trainer.

With seven of them crammed into an eight-week period in July and August, I relied on a well-planned, repeating pattern of: train, taper, ride your event, recover, and repeat.

My biggest disappointment of the year was that I missed Pittsburgh’s arduous Every Neighborhood Ride while doing another ride I’d already committed to.

Here’s my full list of centuries with comments and links to ride reports. Or you could watch my late-season summary video.

• First Zentury (4/7)
  I extended one of Zwift’s 64-mile gran fondo events to complete my first-ever imperial century on an indoor trainer.
• Sandy Lake 200k (4/13)
  Nearly my first outdoor ride was a 125-mile brevet: my longest ride in two years, confirming the effectiveness of indoor training.
• Shades of Death solo (5/23)
  Rode a solo century from Pittsburgh to the West Virginia border to explore the Panhandle Trail and Shades of Death Road!
• Escape to the Lake (6/8)
  Incomparable weather for the annual MS ride to Lake Erie, my only two-day event of the year.
• PMTCC 3-State Tour (6/30)
  A foggy start gave way to a warm day for a familiar PMTCC ride to West Virginia and Ohio, with a thankfully modified route.
• Absolutely Beautiful Country (7/14)
  Off to Akron OH for a club ride whose flat route was also altered this year, outrageously omitting the usual free ice cream rest stop!
• Meanville Greenville 200k (7/27)
  Returned from a week of travel and dove straight into another long 200k brevet with the Pittsburgh Randonneurs.
• Butler solo (8/4)
  Extended one of my long solo rides up Sun Mine Road, through Saxonburg to Butler and back.
• Mon Valley Century (8/11)
  Enjoyed the return of an event that hasn’t been run since 2016 due to landslides; a third ride with a modified route (and poor support).
• Four Rivers solo (8/19)
  My interwebs were down for 48 hours, so I went out and rode an easy solo century along Pittsburgh’s four rivers.
• PedalPGH (8/25)
  As usual, I extended the PedalPGH metric to a full century, despite riding on an injured achilles and more ride organizer negligence.
• Pedal the Lakes (8/31)
  Ended summer with a speedy and enjoyable PtL ride, completing 6 centuries in 6 weeks, and 8 in 10 weeks.
• The Herd @ Leelanau Harvest Tour (9/14)
  The culmination of my season was a weekend trip to northwestern Michigan for an international gathering of Zwifters… and a scenic century alongside Lake Michigan.

Additional Highlights

One major development was my ability to train with a power meter, which allowed me—for the first time—to track my functional threshold power (FTP) and my power curve, which in turn helped me figure out my cycling “phenotype” as described in this blogpost. I also picked up and made good use of the defining treatise on the discipline: Allen & Coggan’s book “Training + Racing With a Power Meter”.

The biggest setback of the year was my late-August achilles injury, due to a combination of overuse and over-stretching. Although I completed three centuries while injured, it wouldn’t heal without time off the bike, which brought my season to an abrupt end. I’d hoped to do more easy autumnal riding, but there was very little of that.

I’ve already alluded to this year’s weather, which was simply amazing.

One fun tech project was creating the AlpenTimer, a Javascript webapp that helps you monitor and predict your pace up the Alpe du Zwift climb in order to earn the sub-60 minute achievement, break your own personal record, or just track your historical performance.

An artsy project was cutting hand-shapes out of Coroplast and spray-painting them cyan to mimic the blue “Ride On!” thumbs-up symbol that appears in Zwift’s virtual world. I hung a large one from the ceiling of my “pain cave”, and made a bunch of small ones for my jersey pockets.

One final disappointment was BikePGH’s Tag-o-Rama cycling/photography game. Regular participant Yale Cohen started harassing other players, driving many of them away. I don’t tolerate online abuse, so despite picking up 25 tags in 2018, I also quit Tag-o-Rama this spring.

Noteworthy Purchases

In the past, many of my “Additional Highlights” were things I bought, so I’ve carved out a new section to specifically highlight my new toys.

Most of this year’s purchases were on-bike equipment. A new Giro Aether MIPS helmet. New Prizm Road lenses for my Oakley Half-Jac sunglasses. A couple pairs of my favorite Craft Hale Glow bib shorts.

I ordered three new cycling jerseys, each of which comes with a unique story. I’m eager to show them off, but I'm still awaiting delivery of the last one, so I won’t say any more until an upcoming blogpost.

In terms of the bike, I got a Cygolite Hotshot 150 taillight, which crapped out after its first wet ride. I finally tested some Continental GP4000 tires I’ve had lying around; they were okay, but now I have to try their new GP5000s to see if they’re any improvement over my usual Michelin Power Endurance rubber.

I updated my Garmin bike computer with two new apps. I’m using Heart Rate Stress Score to replace Strava’s “suffer score” app, which became worthless when they changed its calculation. And I tried Multi-Page Race Notes for handy course notes, but fell back to old-school white electrical tape on my top tube.

The only noteworthy purchase that didn’t go on me or my bike was the aforementioned Allen & Coggan book “Training + Racing With a Power Meter”.

List of Blogposts

And one final item before I look forward to 2020... It was a busy year here on ornoth-cycling.livejournal.com, with 24 ride reports and blogposts. Here’s the full list:

• 1/30: Catch the Wave (average fitness over the year)
• 2/7: Performance Buh-Bye (Performance Bicycle shop closure)
• 3/26: Here Comes Your Slutspurt (international cycling terminology)
• 4/8: Don’t Be Stupid, Be A Smarty... (Zwift training & my first Zentury ride report)
• 4/16: 125 Miles of Pudding (Sandy Lake 200k brevet ride report)
• 4/28: A Phenotypical Male (lessons from training with power)
• 5/6: Ornoth and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (aborted WPW Spring Rally ride report)
• 5/15: Der AlpenTimer (Zwift pacing utility I wrote)
• 5/25: Back From the Shades of Death (Shades of Death solo century ride report)
• 6/14: Master Escapologist (Escape to the Lake ride report)
• 7/2: State Machine (PMTCC M3ST ride report)
• 7/15: Another Bloomin’ Century (ABC century ride report)
• 7/28: High Season (Greenville 200k ride report)
• 8/5: Buttle Aboot (Butler solo century ride report)
• 8/13: Mon Again (Mon Valley Century ride report)
• 8/20: Four Rivers (solo century ride report)
• 8/27: Pedal Piggie! (PedalPGH century ride report)
• 9/1: Four Lakes (Pedal the Lakes century ride report)
• 9/18: Here’s the Song of Shear and Torsion (Leelanau Harvest Tour century ride report)
• 10/27: Dirty Birds (photographing Pittsburgh’s Dirty Dozen ride)
• 11/13: Hey Nineteen (video summary of the 2019 cycling season)
• 12/1: Climb Every Mountain (frustration with my inner voice)
• 12/20: My Chariot of Fire (I finally figure out what kind of rider I am)
• 12/31: 2019: The Best a Man Can Get (my year in review: you’re reading it!)

My 2020 Vision

That’s all she (he) wrote for 2019… What’s my outlook for the coming 2020 cycling year?

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?

I’ll certainly continue Zwifting through the early season in order to hit the ground running once temperatures start to warm again. And I’m starting the new year at an even higher fitness level than 2019!

I’ll mostly target the same events I do every year, but there’s one known wrinkle in next year’s schedule. Instead of repeating the Leelanau Harvest Tour, next year’s Herd gathering will be outside Toronto, at the Epic Tour. That’s geographically convenient, and their 180km route will be the perfect distance for a September ride.

Other than that, 2020 will probably look an awful lot like 2019, and I have no problem with that whatsoever, since 2019 was one of my best years on the bike.

Bring it on!

… come and join the Zwifting party!

So four months after buying a new indoor trainer, how did my winter training go?

It went well, according to my stats in Zwift. I rose from Level 0 to Level 20, completing the California and Everest Challenges, earning 32 out of 40 achievement badges. I finished the 9-stage Tour de Zwift, and 5 monthly fondo rides. I climbed the Alpe du Zwift (their facsimile of the real-world Alpe d’Huez) 5 times, and even earned an orange jersey for setting a fastest lap time on their Innsbruck course. I took 2 Step Tests and 2 20-minute FTP tests; in the former set, my Functional Threshold Power rose from 212 to 221; as measured by the latter it went from 198 to 210. And I finished with my first ever indoor/virtual century (more below).

Taking the start/finish banner

April Fools brought flaming roostertails!

Climbing the Alpe…

My first “Zentury”

Our Hero riding off into the sunset

I also made use of Zwift’s social element, joining a supportive team called “The Herd”. They have members all over the world, and I hope to join a gathering of them in September at the Leelanau Harvest Tour century in Traverse City MI. It’s cool having an open group audio channel with other riders who might not be in the same area (either on the virtual course or in the real world). I’ve befriended folks and have projected my usual offbeat presence. I created coroplast examples of Zwift’s thumbs-up “Ride On” symbol and posted a photo of me riding with them, which earned 115 Likes.

Let’s compare this winter (December, January, February, and March) to the previous two years. In the winter of 2016-2017 I rode 282 miles. In 2017-2018 I rode 535. Although Zwift miles aren’t quite the same as real-world distance, this past winter I logged over 1,900 miles (only 24 were outdoors)! That’s equivalent to my usual summertime riding volume. According to the Fitness (Chronic Training Load) charts I keep posting, I retained more Fitness this winter than ever, and by mid-January, I was back at a Fitness level I wouldn’t normally reach until the beginning of June!

This past Sunday was the final step of my winter training regimen: completing a “Zentury”. It was my first time ever doing a hundred miles on an indoor trainer. Obviously, it was my first century of 2019, and also the earliest in the year I’ve ever done a century (by 10 days).

In some ways, indoor miles are easier. There’s no traffic lights, no need to ever stop, and no wind to battle. For those reasons, indoor rides are generally faster; I completed 100 miles in 5h20m, when an outdoor one would usually exceed 7h. However, many people feel trainer miles are harder. After all, you can never rest or coast, which grows hard on the legs. In terms of TSS (Training Stress Score), my Zwift century ranked as my 14th most difficult ride, which puts it respectably among my harder centuries.

Thanks to Zwift, this winter has been an unqualified success. Back in December, when I set my annual goals for 2019, I came up with two: getting over the post-Dirty Dozen malaise that plagued me throughout 2018, and using Zwift to begin the 2019 season at a high level of fitness. As far as I’m concerned, we can check those two goals off already!

But all the positive numbers in the world don’t mean anything until I put them to the test outside, in the real world. Yesterday’s indoor century was part of an overall plan to be ready for 2019’s first outdoor event.

Next weekend is the longest ride of the year: the Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ annual spring 200k. Climbing 7,500 feet over 124 miles, it’s a massive challenge, and the perfect way to test whether all this Zwifting has improved my early-season form. I’m relying on it, because over the past 5 months, the only outdoor riding I’ve done was a casual 21 miles on New Years and one 31-mile ride last week.

I think Zwift has set me up for early-season success, but stay tuned for the pudding…

We’re halfway through August, and 2018 persistently continues to be a lackluster year. Even this “catch up on miscellaneous topics” post consists almost entirely of disappointments.

In one of my least exciting accomplishments, I’ve reached 16,800 miles on my 2013 Specialized Roubaix, surpassing the miles I put on my first bike, a steel 2000 Devinci hybrid. Still need 6,000 more to eclipse the Plastic Bullet, my 2006 Roubaix.

Another less than earth-shattering development: I bought this Kool Stop tire bead jack. Why? Well, I guess it does prevent me from pinching and puncturing the inner tube when installing a tire. But that’s about as positive as anything that’s happened this year.

Another unnecessary purchase yielded a worse result. By installing this funky combination headset spacer and Di2 junction box mount, I could clean up my cockpit by getting rid of an ugly rubber band around my handlebar stem. Except it broke one of the junction box’s tiny plastic mounting pins, leaving the whole assembly dangling from my handlebars. Now I have to either spend $90 on a whole new junction box or permanently glue the junction box onto the mount with epoxy. Sigh.

Next, the rider’s—and the bike mechanic’s—worst nightmare: mysterious clicking and creaking noises. First we replaced the bottom bracket. Didn’t fix shit, but the cranks spin a little smoother, and I was pleasantly surprised that a new BB only costs about $30!

After more tinkering, figured out that the noises were because the stem and headset cap bolts weren’t tight enough. Unsurprisingly, those were the exact bolts I’d loosened to fit the aforementioned headset spacer / junction box mount… The ones every mechanic goes to great lengths to tell you *not* to over-tighten. Well that’s annoying. Locked those puppies down, and so far so good.

And then there’s the Gatorade saga. For almost 20 years, my go-to sports drink has been orange Gatorade powder, the most effective and palatable thing I’ve found. And they made me a loyal customer after a lucrative customer service escapade I blogged about.

In May I ordered another three canisters of powdered drink mix, but what they contained was nothing like Gatorade. The powder didn’t mix in water, had neither flavor nor color, and tasted like a moldy bag of burnt plastic. Yup, in the interest of “progress”, instead of just adding some electrolytes to their tried-and-true formula, Gatorade had some evil scientists completely redesign their product, and the resulting “new formula” is simply unusable. And now I’ve got $70 worth of it sitting in the back of a cupboard.

Speaking of companies fucking up something that already works well, Strava recently took the reliable TRIMP-based Suffer Score training tool that I have blogged about and replaced it with an updated metric called “relative effort”. The major difference is intentionally removing exercise duration from their calculation of exercise intensity, so that a tough 10-minute ride has the same training effect as a tough 10-hour ride.

The result? Ludicrous values that make Relative Effort completely worthless as a training tool. Using actual examples from my own riding: if a 9-hour 127-mile ride scores a relative effort of 230, why would a 3-hour 34-mile ride rack up 568 points? A 3-hour ride should have a much lower training effect than a 9-hour ride, but Strava says it was two and a half times the workout?!?! Bullshit! And this doesn’t just go for new activities; they fucked up all my historical trend charts. Way to ruin your product, Strava! And don’t get me started on their unctuous labels for varying levels of effort: tough, massive, and historic.

So yeah, I’m kinda discouraged by all of this. I’ve been hoping this year’s malaise would pass, but it hasn’t yet. But that’s a bigger story which will receive its own blogpost in the near future.

The only thing that’s motivated me to hop on the bike is the Tag-o-Rama game. I’ve claimed 19 tags this year, and with just three more I’ll become one of the top ten players (out of 124 people).

I really don’t know what I was thinking.

Last year’s end-of-year summary included a chart of how much climbing I’d done over each of the past seven years, because after climbing 87,000 to 120,000 feet per year in Boston, my first year in Pittsburgh had tallied a record 190,000 feet. But having been forced to stop riding at the end of September, I added: “If I had ridden at the same pace for the last three months of 2016 I would have broken a quarter million feet.”

You can see where this is headed, then? A quarter million feet of climbing in one year. That’s double or triple the climbing I’d done back in Boston. 76 vertical kilometers. Imagine climbing a mountain that stands 47 miles tall. That’s nearly nine times the height of Mt. Everest… Or a third of the way to Skylab’s orbital altitude!

Now take a look at the chart below (click for bigness). The pink (2016) and grey (2017) lines represent my two years here in Pittsburgh, and everything else is from Boston.

My strategy throughout 2017 was to roughly do the same amount of climbing as I’d done at the same point in 2016. I started six weeks “behind schedule” after my exile to Maine, so I spent February through May catching up to my climbing from the year before. Once those two lines converged, I was back on track, and from June through September I mostly just kept pace with my 2016 numbers.

In October and November, my annual climbing goal was back-burnered while I focused on training for the Dirty Dozen. So although I was still doing a lot of climbing, my progress toward 250,000 feet was haphazard and untracked. And I had nothing to compare myself to once I surpassed by 2016 total…

After completing the Dirty Dozen at the end of November, I checked on my progress toward my mostly-forgotten climbing goal, and discovered that I already stood at 226,000 feet. I was still roughly on track to surpass a quarter million feet of climbing.

But I needed another 24,000 feet: an average of 667 feet per day. In the four previous months I’d averaged 905, 570, 785, and 705 feet per day, so it was certainly doable. But it would still take dedication to achieve, especially in the discouraging cold and snows of December.

Furthermore, my legs were shattered after the Dirty Dozen ride, and I was exhausted by 2½ months of hill climbing. The last thing I wanted to do was go out and spend another whole month doing hill repeats in sub-freezing weather!

But that’s exactly what I did. I spent the next four weeks burying more stupid hills beneath my wheels, accumulating the remaining vertical distance, and finally surpassing 250,000 feet on Christmas Eve. Happily, I didn’t have to endure any of those ridiculous Dirty Dozen ramps, but with much less time for rest and recovery, I did quite a job on my aching kneeballs.

If I was riding in Boston, a quarter million feet of ascent would be a huge accomplishment; but is it really a big deal here in Pittsburgh? After all, if I hadn’t been exiled to Maine last winter, I would have surpassed that threshold in both 2016 and 2017, just by doing my regular amount of riding.

Of course, that’s “regular” for years when I’m not working for a living, and thus able to spend more time in the saddle. Even here, 250,000 feet would be hard to achieve while working nine-to-five. So I’ll say that it was as a noteworthy achievement, especially in the context of my cycling career to date.

When I finished that goal-conquering ride on Christmas Eve, my overall mileage for the year stood at 3,996. Obviously, a numbers-obsessed rider like me wasn’t going to finish the year just 4 miles short of a round 4,000. So once more into the 17° weather for a final ten-mile ride to polish off the last milestone of the year.

Though noteworthy, riding 4,000 miles isn’t anywhere near a personal record; in Boston, I exceeded 4,000 miles per year three times. But the last time that happened was way back in 2010, meaning this has been the most I’ve ridden during any of the past seven years, and the most I’ve ever put on the (2013 vintage) R2-Di2 bike in any single season. So it’s worth noting for that.

Plugging those two numbers into a simple equation—a quarter million feet of climbing over four thousand miles—produces another factoid: over the entire 2017 season I averaged over 62 feet of climbing per mile ridden.

That’s a record amount of hilliness, topping last year’s 58 feet/mile. Thanks to Pittsburgh’s stupid topography, I doubled the 30-34 fpm I averaged in Boston.

All that put a nice cap on my 2017 cycling season, leaving me to take some time off to crunch some numbers and spit out my comprehensive “year in review” post. That will be posted shortly, since I’m finally declaring a belated start of my official “off-season”!

For cyclists, spring is the time to put in some base miles to get your fitness and stamina back up. It’s a time when your riding ramps up from pretty much zero, increasing to what might be 100 to 200 miles per week.

Of course, on April First you can’t just jump on the bike and ride 200 miles. It’d be a recipe for injury, since your body isn’t ready for that. Instead, you need to increase your workouts gradually. The rule of thumb for both runners and cyclists is to increase your mileage by no more than 10 percent per week.

I’ll come back to that in a sec. Now let’s switch gears.

I’ve always been discouraged by how quickly one loses fitness. Stop weightlifting for two weeks, and your body reverts to its old sedentary self. Stop cycling for a month, and your performance and stamina drop like a stone.

But that’s not the whole story. I’ve been cycling for 13 years now, and each year my body has grown more and more used to riding long distances. While ramping up is still an arduous, painful process, I begin each year with a little more of a head start, at least in terms of my ability to do long miles.

Let me show you what I mean.

2013 has been a very haphazard spring for riding. If I told you how many miles I rode each week (starting in March), it would look like this:

For the first four weeks, that looked like a fairly okay progression, with mileage increases of 77%, 38%, and 18% (adding about 20 miles per week).

But look what happened next: two really lax weeks, followed by a sudden jump to nearly 200 miles. That’s 300% more than my biggest week this year, and 740% more than either of the previous two weeks! And the best part is that I don’t feel particularly crippled afterward.

So much for the Ten Percent Rule I was telling you about!

But one year doesn’t prove anything. Looking back, last year (2012) was even stranger. With only one 16-mile ride under my belt, my second ride was 57 miles. Coupled with two commutes, the progression went:

which translates to an instant 638% increase in mileage in week two!

Next let’s look at 2011. After a couple 20-30 mile weeks, I basically took a month off and then jumped into a 63-mile ride:

Oof. That’s a 336% increase, following a month of not riding at all!

Was 2010 any better? Nope. First ride of the year: 70 miles, with no ramp-up whatsoever. Zero to 70? What percentage increase is that? I’ll tell you: that’s an *infinite* increase in mileage, baby!

Obviously, I couldn’t have done anything like this when I first started cycling, but after years of riding, my body expects—and has adapted to be able to handle—big miles, even after an off-season of complete idleness.

Although that’s not the whole truth. Back in 2009 I bought an indoor trainer from a friend and started working out on that each January and February. Of course, I never did a lot of miles on the trainer, but it’s likely that my indoor workouts made it a little easier to pull big miles once the weather permitted my transition to outdoor riding.

But if you ask me, the Ten Percent Rule is probably a good idea for new cyclists, but it’s not the law. Winter training and the body’s ability to adapt year after year render an experienced cyclist immune to the rules that govern the feeble efforts of mere pedestrians!

Unfortunately, while I might have built up massive reserves of endurance, I’ve never developed the other two main factors in overall cycling performance: speed and power. So I can’t sprint and I can’t climb very quickly, but I can ride at a pretty brisk pace for millenia.

And so it goes…