Orny's Cycling Journal

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!

Now that I’ve got three years of riding under my belt, I’ve become a lot more familiar with Pittsburgh’s sights, which in turn has made me a much more effective player in the local Tag-o-Rama game.

Last year I updated you by showing the 17 tags I picked up and 17 I placed in 2016 and 2017 combined. Here’s another annual update for 2018.

This year I picked up (and dropped off) no less than 25 tags. In fact, Tag-o-Rama was one of the only things that motivated me to get out and ride, between three long out-of-town trips, my malaise left over from 2017, and the horrid weather.

The coolest bit is that my 42 total tag pickups allowed me to break into the ranks of the top 10 players overall (out of 125). I was pretty proud of that, since I still consider myself a recent transplant.

That said, here are this year’s 25 pickups/finds (on the left) and my resulting 25 tag drops/placements (on the right). As always, click for teh bigness.

Homestead Labyrinth

"We get back up" mural

Homestead gun reform healing wall

Turreted houses on Ophelia Street

Railroad overpass heart-bike graffiti

Pitt LRDC & Cathedral of Learning

Polish Hill parklet

Big "3" at Strip apartments

Lion statues on Liberty in the Strip

Downlook Street in Stanton Heights

Wilkinsburg Flyboy mural

Eliza Furnace Trail at the jail

East Lib Parole Board

Danny Chew's house

Squirrel Hill post office

Overpass at Gomer in Southside

Landslide off Forward Ave

Church off Fleury Way

Wilkinsburg LPRC sculpture

Church on Saline in Junction Hollow

Church in McKees Rocks Bottom

Art on Friendship Ave pole

Phil's Parking on Penn

Stairs behind Duquesne University

Third Ave parking

Green Canoe building, Southside

Schenley Park disc golf course

Mural on Blackberry in Lawrenceville

Heinz House, Sharpsburg

Spring Garden bird mosaic

Garfield art car

Ravine/Creek footbridge in Homestead

Homestead Grays Bridge memorial

Lawrenceville bus butt

New Guild Studio mural, Braddock

Holy Grail Garage, East Pittsburgh

Pixelated Carrie Furnace

Curry "Street" in Braddock

Ellsworth & Shady footbridge

Prince of Peace bingo, Southside

Duq Light substation off Brighton

Ingham Street, Marshall

Fort Pitt blockhouse

Carson Street WW1 memorial

Second Ave underneath EFT

Titties graffiti on Juniper

Strawberry Way, Downtown

Archeparchy Convert at Riverview

Lemon Way, Downtown

Outbuilding at penitentiary, Chateau

So far, 2018 has been one of those years. Terrible weather that caused the cancellation of several events, lack of motivation following the effort demanded by the Dirty Dozen, a pulled calf muscle, and a two-week trip to Asia that blew a big gaping hole in my training. So there hasn’t been much progress to report thus far this year.

Last year, by May 1^st I had 708 miles under my belt, and 937 the year before. In fact, you’d have to go back to 2014 to find a year with as slow a start as the 519 miles I accrued by the end of April 2018.

On the other hand, I got out for several very short cold-weather rides, overcoming my lethargy to claim no less than 10 more tags in the local Tag-o-Rama game, which combines bicycling, photography, and local landmarks.

How’s the future look? Very mixed. The weather has finally turned the corner. I’ve got more international travel in May, which will hopefully include some memorable riding, rather than leaving me completely idle. But then a meditation retreat will probably blow another hole in the month of June.

It’s not a write-off, but my training is going to remain behind schedule through the entire first half of the year. But the calendar looks more open starting in July.

The degree to which I’ll be able to train up to peak form that late in the year will depend on my motivation, which is still marginal. At least I can be somewhat confident it will have stopped snowing by then.

April and May is the time of year when you go out and suffer, laying down the miles and gaining the fitness which will serve as a base for your major summertime events in June, July, and August.

April was a good month for me. I covered 425 miles, including two 72-mile runs (down Bunola Road to Monongahela, and up Sun Mine to Saxonburg), earning both my Strava Gran Fondo (100 km) and Climbing (24,600 ft) Challenge badges. With respect to making up for five months off the bike, I’d describe my fitness level then as: not feeling strong, but not feeling weak anymore, either. But boy, Western PA sure likes to put up detours for road work in the spring… Closed roads *everywhere*!

My improvement continued this past month, when I covered 567 miles, including regular group rides and three Tag-o-Rama pickups. I finished the month out by bagging the monthly Gran Fondo and Climbing (29,000 ft) Challenges. The only noteworthy event in the entire month was the ceremonial Ride of Silence in memory of cyclists killed and injured by automobiles. By Memorial Day I’d finally caught up with last year’s pace for distance, climbing, and time in the saddle. I’d also surpassed 1,200 miles for the year and 12,000 miles on my four year old R2-Di2 steed.

One new development is that I am participating in the summer-long National Bike Challenge, which I never bothered with before. The competitive nature of the game has gotten me out for more frequent and longer rides, and logging rides is easy now that they just scrape your Strava data. After one month of point-gathering (20 points per day of riding, plus 1 point per mile), I’m 90th percentile among Pittsburgh riders, 88th percentile in PA, and 90th percentile nationally.

As a segue into June, yesterday was the Western PA Wheelmen’s annual Spring Rally, a picnic down in Washington County which included really pretty road loops of 39, 14, and 11 miles. I did all of them (and all 14 ridge climbs, accumulating 4,550 feet of ascent), and generally felt pretty good except for the sitbones.

So despite my abnormally long winter layoff, after a few months of hard riding I feel pretty much back up to an appropriate fitness level again. That’s good, because next weekend is June’s big event: the Escape to the Lake MS 150 ride. It was brutally hot and hard last year, and this year I’m going to ride both days instead of just one.

The one thing my training lacked this year was completing a full century ride before June. Last year I did the Pittsburgh Randonneurs 200k in April, but that was out of the question this year, and I just haven’t chosen to tackle a 100-mile ride recently.

Fortunately, Strava’s incredibly useful Fitness & Freshness chart confirms that I’ll start the MS ride at a higher fitness level than last year. And so long as I taper my training properly this week, I should be fresher and in better form overall. Stay tuned for the results!

Aside from a couple ride reports, the last real update I posted was back in March, and a lot has happened in the intervening ten weeks.

Instead of going chronologically, I’ll organize this post along four major themes. I’ll start with some major repairs I faced, and the challenges presented by the woefully incompetent local bike shop. Then I’ll talk about a pile of new equipment I’ve purchased and tested. I’ll describe several notable rides; and that will naturally segue into a discussion of the downs and ups of my fitness level and training. Ready?

Originally, my repair situation was a whole long blogpost onto itself, so you should be thankful I’m constrained to posting a short summary now. The short version is that after an April 1 recovery ride, I discovered cracks in the rim of my rear wheel on R2 (my primary bike). On 4/6 I ordered a replacement, and began using my old bike, the Plastic Bullet (PB) while waiting for the new wheel to arrive.

But on 4/14, three days before an early-season 130-mile group ride, the PB’s rear wheel started making a horrible screeching noise when I coasted. The mechanic at my LBS said it was probably rideable, so I took a chance and rode it during the 200k. But the problem prevented me from ever coasting. Much of all that got documented in the 200k ride report which you can read here.

But my issues were far from over. Five days later, I attempted to bike out to a meditation retreat at the local zen center, only to have a spoke break on that same rear wheel. Now both of my bikes were out of commission, and would stay that way until…?

May 4, after waiting four whole weeks, I finally got R2 back with its fancy new wheel (details below). For the Plastic Bullet, it took longer. They were able to replace the broken spoke, but all they could do for the screeching freehub was to give it some lube. And that took them an unbelievable five weeks!

If I were to tell the whole story, I’d go on at length about how the shop couldn’t diagnose the freehub and even told me it couldn’t be the issue; how they said they didn’t need a deposit to order my wheel, only to call me back and demand one the next day; the numerous times they told me they’d call me back same-day, but never called at all, ever.

The topper came when I needed to register the new wheel with Mavic’s warrantee program. The bike shop didn’t know the wheel’s product number nor their own vendor number and refused to get them for me. At their insistence, I had to call Mavic myself and pretend to be a shop employee to get the info I needed! Bullshit of the highest order.

But let’s transition from their shitty service to the interesting new equipment I’ve received in the past couple months. It’s much more positive.

As mentioned, I’ve got a new rear wheel on the R2: a Mavic Ksyrium Pro Exalith. I’ve ridden Mavic Ksyriums forever and love their warrantee replacement program, but Mavic is now offering Ksyriums with a new braking surface coating called “Exalith”, which also requires special brake blocks. Visually, the brake tracks are black, rather than the standard silver of brushed aluminum, giving the wheel an all-black stealth look. The other difference is that the brake surface coating has a pebbly texture, which causes the brakes to produce a loud mechanical whine whose pitch is proportional to the bike’s speed. It’s significant enough that derpy recreational riders sometimes think I have paper or something caught in my brakes or chainstays. So far I’m really pleased with the new hoop.

Along with wheels, I’m also running new rubber. Michelin recently replaced its popular but quickly-wearing Pro4 line of tires, so I ordered a set of the new Power Endurance tires. Although I ordered standard 23mms, the vendor sent larger 25mm tires, but I decided to run them rather than sending them back because the larger size has become much more popular recently. My observations have been consistent with what people have been saying: I can run them at lower pressure (90 pounds rather than 100), which smooths out the ride on Pittsburgh’s horrible roads, without incurring much additional rolling resistance. It’s hard to compare the Powers with the old Pro4s without conflating that with the move from 23mm to 25, but I’m hopeful that the new rubber will have better longevity than the fragile old Pro4s.

During a trip to Boston I stopped by the Oakley store and picked up white ear socks and new red-orange lenses for my Half Jac sunglasses. That was mostly for style reasons, but the lenses are interesting in that they give everything a very strong blue tint.

Revisiting an older purchase, I was able to move the Hydrotac stick-on magnification bifocal lenses from my old sunglass lenses to the new ones. Those have functioned absolutely wonderfully since I picked them up last Xmas. They’re perfectly positioned to enable me to read small map details on my Garmin, while retaining normal distance vision looking up-road. Great purchase and highly recommended over expensive prescription bifocal sunglasses.

I recently took shipment of two Ass Savers (red and white, to match the bike), light little plastic wings that attach to the saddle rails and extend backward to provide a stubby little fender. They’re not big enough to prevent a roostertail in the rain, but they will keep some of it from soaking one’s backside with water and road grime. They’re great for those uncertain days with a threat of light showers, when you don’t want to break out a big, ugly clip-on fender for a mostly sunny ride.

Another cool gadget that won’t see frequent use is my new Nut-R. Basically, it replaces the nut at the end of an axle’s quick-release skewer, and provides a wheel-level mounting point for a GoPro action cam or anything that uses a GoPro-compatible mount. It’s an awesome idea, and it’ll come in handy for documenting interesting rides. While I haven’t done much with it yet, you can watch my first test video here.

Finally, I also bought a big pack of disposable latex gloves. Those are really useful when cleaning or working on the bike, which I’d formerly always done bare-handed. Dur. Sometimes the simplest little things can go un-thought-of, even for someone who has been riding as long as I have!

All those acquisitions have turned out really good, and as a result I’m pretty delighted.

But now it’s time to turn to my actual rides. If you watch my Strava page you’ll have seen these already, but if not, here’s a brief summary. Follow the links to see my comments, stats, maps, and more photos.

After a really good March, April pretty much sucked. A trip to Maine, an extended period of cold and rainy weather, and a long list of mechanical woes kept me off the bike for nearly the entire month. The only exception was the huge McConnell’s Mills 200k brevet that I somehow managed to get in. But that ride is already described in detail here.

May began with getting R2 back in working order, but still very little riding, as iffy weather continued. On May 12 I had a bit of fun, going down to the local bike track to perform my own individual hour record, which I wrote about here.

On the 18th I participated in the Ride of Silence, a casual ride in remembrance of all the cyclists who have been injured of killed on the road. Strava log.

The next day I had a bit of fun setting a new tag for the Tag-o-Rama game. Believe it or not, there’s a neighborhood south of town where Arctic Way runs parallel to Antarctic Way, with Flight Way connecting the two. My hint read: “Although there are several ways to get from the south pole to the north pole, there’s only one official way. But by thinking a mile and a half outside of the box, I didn’t have to use the airport to find the shortest flight from pole to pole.” Strava log.

The day after that I was up for a long ride, so I set off from Pittsburgh to Bagdad… Bagdad Pennsylvania, that is, on the banks of the Kiskiminetas River. Quite an adventure, having to traverse two stretches of woefully collapsed road, a mile of climbing, and heat. Strava log.

Then there were two rides in Saratoga Springs NY, while visiting Inna’s father. A 72-mile jaunt up to Summit Lake (Strava log) was followed by a damp recovery ride through the Saratoga battlefield park (Strava log). And then no riding for the last week of May, which was spent camping in the Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts.

That brings us up to June, which has been even better. The first highlight was a day that featured two rides, beginning with my first group ride out of the Performance Bike shop in East Liberty (Strava log). Nice, friendly group, but nothing too strenuous. Later in the day I rode 30 miles out to Sarver (Strava log) to meet up with Inna and friends at an enchanting Lantern Fest.

A few days later I also checked out my first group ride by Team Decaf, which was equally friendly and more challenging. Looks like a good group, although their evenings-only rides are pretty short. Strava log.

Then there was last weekend’s very challenging Escape to the Lake MS Ride, which was my second century of the year. That’s got its own recent writeup, which I posted earlier today here.

The final bit of catchup isn’t quite so glamorous: 50 miles into a 60-mile ride through Export PA, on the way to pick up another Tag-o-Rama game tag, I hit a grapefruit-sized stone in the road and endoed. Nothing major, but a surprising amount of road rash along the right side: elbow, back, hip, knee, ankle. I irrigated it with bottled water from the next convenience store, and rode home, but it was sufficient to warrant a quick trip to an urgent care clinic to have it dressed. Strava log.

And that brings us up to now.

The last thing to talk about is the ebb and flow of my training and fitness.

If you’ve read along this far, you can probably guess how it’s gone. At the end of March, my fitness was way ahead of schedule, but the only meaningful ride I did over the next six weeks was that 200k, so I basically atrophied. My fitness on May 9th was no better than where I’d been all the way back on March 8.

The Bagdad and Saratoga rides brought me back a bit, but they were followed by another idle week in the Berkshires. Some progress was made, but the consistency just hasn’t been there.

June has been better, with more frequent riding, some group rides, and the big MS ride. And I earned June’s Strava climbing achievement after whiffing on April and May but completing March’s.

Overall, I’ve successfully completed the March 200k and last week’s MS ride, which were my first two big target rides of the year. Now I’ve got several weeks of training time before my next big rides. The question from here forward is whether the effort from the past four weeks can be sustained for a while leading up to my next two target events: centuries in the third and fourth weeks of July.

I’ll try to keep you posted!