Orny's Cycling Journal

With over 25 years in the saddle, that’s long enough to divide my cycling career into eras. And having just begun a new era in Austin, it might be interesting to see what a typical year looked like in the past, how my riding pattern has changed over time, and what it might look like in coming years.

You probably know that I’ve long tracked the daily variations of my cycling Fitness using a metric that is usually called Chronic Training Load, as explained here.

Looking back over the Fitness data I’ve collected, I’ve grouped the past 12 years’ riding into four “eras”. Those are:

• 4 years from 2012 to 2015, when I was living in Boston
• 3 years from 2016 to 2018, when I was living in Pittsburgh
• 4 years from 2019 to 2022, when I was still in Pittsburgh, but riding the indoor trainer through the winters
• And my best guess for how things will change here in Austin

The following chart plots my average/typical Fitness over the course of a year for each of those eras. Commentary follows, below.

Let’s start with the bottom, orange line. It shows my average Fitness over my last four years in Boston. Things to note:

• I did essentially zero riding from December into March during the New England winters.
• Every spring I started from near zero, rapidly building Fitness back up.
• With nearly all major events crammed into a short 3-month summer, my Fitness peaked from June until PMC weekend at the start of August.
• With my major events done, my Fitness dropped rapidly in the weeks following the PMC, before stabilizing at a lower level during the relaxed rides of autumn.
• As the temperatures fell, so did my Fitness, declining rapidly over the holidays and long winter.

The next-higher, green curve represents my first three years’ riding in Pittsburgh. It’s extremely similar to the previous one, with some subtle differences:

• With a slightly improved climate, I was able to do a bit more winter riding, especially in December and in March of the following spring.
• My major events were more spread out, going from late May through September. And with no PMC ride, my Fitness didn’t spike at the start of August or drop off right afterward.
• Thus I did more riding in August and September, and had a longer period of peak summer Fitness before ramping down in the autumn.

Now look at that almost flat blue line at the very top of the chart. That’s my average Fitness for my next four years in Pittsburgh. Although it looks radically different, the only change was using my new indoor trainer to maintain my Fitness over the winters. Here’s what jumps out at me from that line:

• My Fitness held steady over the holidays, rather than its usual decline. This allowed me to start the new year with dramatically higher Fitness.
• Starting from a higher base and being able to ride throughout the winter meant my buildup to peak form could be more gradual, running 5 months from January through May rather than 2-3 months.
• My summertime peak covered the same duration, but my head start allowed my Fitness to peak at a noticeably higher level.

That brings us to last year’s move to Austin, Texas. How will my annual riding pattern change? Well, if you look at the red dashed line, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.

• I’ll still be using my indoor trainer, and milder winters will allow me to ride outdoors more often, so I expect a very flat pattern, without any huge seasonal dips.
• I expect my Fitness will decline a little bit overall. There seem to be fewer long rides and routes in this area, and I’m also losing capacity as I progress into my seventh decade.
• I expect January and February will continue to be my annual minimum Fitness, mostly because cold weather will make it unpleasant to ride the indoor trainer in our unheated garage.
• And instead of summer being a single plateau, I expect my Fitness will peak once in late spring and again in early fall. In the middle there’ll be a noticeable dip, since Texas events tend to happen in spring and fall. I definitely won’t be riding as much during Texas’ brutal summer as I used to back in New England!

From all that, here are the factors that have shaped my annual riding pattern:

• My acquisition of an indoor trainer at the end of 2018
• The realities of seasonal changes and weather at my home locations
• The number and schedule of major organized rides, especially the Pan-Mass Challenge
• The availability of routes suitable for long solo rides
• The lowered capabilities that have come with aging

Obsessive-compulsive here has been logging his blood pressure weekly since 2014. That’s enough data points to provide a reliable test for the conventional belief that regular exercise lowers blood pressure.

An online search yields a common assertion that daily exercise can lower one’s blood pressure by 4-9 mmHg, although references are inconsistent about whether that refers to both both systolic and diastolic BP or just systolic. The effect is greater for people with existing high blood pressure than for those with normal readings.

Although I do try to ride in the winter, my volume of exercise is still far greater in the summer months, so the seasons make a logical way to compare periods of high versus low activity.

So I defined the winter as the six months from November through April, and the summer as May through October. Collating all my weekly observations and calculating the averages produced the following results:

My systolic blood pressure was 3.5 mmHg lower during the summer months, when I was more active.

My diastolic blood pressure was 3.9 mmHg lower in the summer.

My resting pulse (heart rate) was 2.1 beats per minute lower in the summer.

These all conform perfectly with conventional expectations. The magnitude of change is on par with going onto a strictly low-fat diet, losing 10-20 pounds of body weight, or taking a prescribed blood pressure medication.

I know, that’s not an especially interesting result. I guess “science is right again” stories just aren’t very newsworthy.

September’s been a dud as far as riding goes. It’s been unseasonably cold and rainy, I started the month still suffering from a summer cold, and to be honest even when the weather’s conducive I just haven’t had much desire to lay down the miles. Poop on that!

WPW Fall Rally: Morning on the Yough

WPW Fall Rally: Soutersville Train

I skipped the Pedal the Lakes century up in Mercer County due to a showery forecast and the organizers’ persistent refusal to provide GPS route data, something which has become de rigueur for everyone else.

I had the opportunity to do a 1am night-start 200k brevet, but just couldn’t motivate myself. It was a cold night, a very hilly route, I haven’t got the form, and it was Inna’s last night at home before a long trip. Having seen the weary finishers—all three of them!—I’m glad I gave it a pass.

That 200k ended at the Western PA Wheelmen’s fall rally, which I did go to (at a more respectable 9am). It was still cold and foggy, but it wasn’t dark, and I only had to pedal 35 miles instead of 135! I still went off course twice, and it was hilly enough to dissuade my lazy ass from undertaking an additional 32-mile route after lunch.

On the other hand, I saw the 200k riders finish, got to socialize with a bunch of folks, picked up the snazzy new argyley WPW jersey I’d ordered, and got a free (surplus) WPW “ride leader” tech tee and wind vest.

This month of poop gets even worse going forward, as I’m leaving to join Inna for a week in Seattle and Victoria. There goes what’s left of my late-season fitness!

Unfortunately, I could really use that fitness, because with the change of seasons comes the transition from endurance riding to obscenely steep and painful hill repeats in preparation for my first infamous Dirty Dozen ride. And if I get enough climbing in, I’m hoping to hit a quarter million feet of ascending by the end of the year. But in order to do any of that, I need to re-find my lost bikey mojo.

The sole bright spot has been new advances with my Edge 820 bike computer. First, I was able to wirelessly connect my new phone to my Di2 electronic shifters, download new firmware patches, and install those patches myself. Previously, you had to pay a bike shop to have their mechanics do all that; and even when Shimano’s hardware and firmware supported it, my old phone didn’t. Now, when Shimano introduces new functionality, I can just download and install it myself. So that’s quite a convenience.

And after posting an idea for a new data field on Garmin’s product forum, I found a guy who wrote a ConnectIQ app called AppBuilder that you can download to your bike computer and program to calculate your own data fields, which is exactly what I did. So now, in addition to the regular fields that Garmin supplies, my bike computer now displays how many feet of ascent I’ve done per mile for the current ride. That’s something I’ve been following since moving from flat Boston to hilly Pittsburgh, and having my cyclocomputer display it for the current ride is pretty darned cool.

But the reckoning is coming… DD minus 10 and a half weeks.

I know a lot of cyclists here in New England whose idea of paradise is living in a place where one can ride year-round, where training rides and centuries aren’t stopped cold by winter’s ice and snow¹.

Sure, it would be nice to have the choice of riding anytime one wants, but there are also advantages to having a limited riding season.

The easiest benefit to identify is that it provides one’s body a needed break. Training for endurance events is hard work², and it puts a lot of stress on the body. By the end of the year, I’m physically drained and my muscles and joints need a couple months of rest in order to recuperate. By springtime, I’m refreshed and can attack the new season with renewed strength. Without that enforced time-out, I’d gradually lose strength and possibly cause greater damage to my joints as a result of overtraining.

What’s true of the body is also true for the mind: after months spent highly focused and motivated, one’s interest level wanes and one longs for a break. Mentally, I need that time to rest and recuperate just as much as my body does, so that when spring comes I’m eagerly looking forward to the long hours in the saddle and painful all-out efforts that training requires³. Without any break, my desire and motivation would gradually evaporate, and my performance would follow.

I find the same is true of anything I do. Whether it’s cycling, consulting, writing, travel, my meditation practice, or even relationships, I find it difficult to sustain intensely focused interest in something for years at a time without taking some kind of break.

Besides, taking a break from cycling frees up 10-20 hours a week, which I can devote to all the things I’ve been neglecting all summer (like career, writing, travel, my meditation practice, and relationships)!

But hey, why can’t you just leave the bike in the garage for a few weeks? Who says I’m obliged to ride all year ’round just because the weather’s conducive? Actually, that’s a solution that only a non-cyclist would offer.

A cyclist knows how the dynamic works. Most cyclists are competitive⁴. Whether it’s to put the hurt into one’s buddy on a big hill, or whether it’s simply to avoid having him put that hurt on you, no cyclist wants to lose ground (fitness- and performance-wise) to his buddies. Therefore, as long as the weather’s good, there’ll be someone out there doing hill repeats or interval workouts in an effort to get a leg up on the competition. And so long as that’s true, a cyclist trying to take an unforced break will still feel a strong obligation to ride, knowing that his buddies are out there getting stronger than him because they’re out there training⁵.

So although we might dream of a utopian world where it’s always sunny and warm, I’m very happy to live in a region where nature enforces an off-season. That way I don’t have to feel guilty about hanging it up for the winter, knowing that when spring comes I’ll have renewed desire to ride and my body will be ready⁶ for the challenges I’ll undertake.

¹ Yes, one can ride year-round, even in New England. But I’ve never found true winter riding very useful endurance training. YMMV.

² Yes, one can go into an endurance event with limited training, but one must do so with limited expectations. To thrive requires training.

³ Yes, at a certain point one’s training must focus more on intervals than mindless miles, but that’s only after one has a solid number of aerobic base miles, and distance training still has some benefits even after that.

⁴ Yes, most cyclists are competitive, but there are exceptions. They have wives.

⁵ Yes, more training volume isn’t always better. You need adequate rest, too, which a structured training program will provide.

⁶ Hopefully.