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

MS Escape to the Lake Finisher

Indoor Training on Zwift

Indoor Training on Zwift

MS Escape to the Lake

MS Escape to the Lake

Brilliant Physical Health!

I’m in Brilliant Physical Health!

PedalPGH Pittsburgh Overlook

PedalPGH Pittsburgh Overlook

The Herd's Leelanau Harvest Tour

The Herd's Leelanau Harvest Tour

Akron Bike Club's ABC Ride

Akron Bike Club's ABC Ride

My 2019 Cycling Calendar

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.

2011-2019 Fitness Chart

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.

2019 Fitness Chart

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 bookTraining + 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:

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!

From start to finish, 2018 was a disappointment.

After the extreme effort to conquer the 2017 Dirty Dozen (blogpost) and my 250,000-foot climbing goal (blogpost), I fell into an enduring malaise and lack of motivation that lasted all of 2018. On top of that, three long trips—smack in the middle of training season—ensured I couldn’t get back into proper form in the spring.

A wet, grim start to Escape to the Lake Day 2

A wet, grim start to Escape to the Lake Day 2

As if that weren’t enough, 2018 was Pittsburgh’s wettest year in recorded history, washing out even more of my training. In July, when my travel was done, I struggled through my remaining four big events, eventually riding myself back into fitness just in time for the season to end.

If we only count outdoor road riding, I rode only 2,776 miles: my lowest total in five years (if we exclude the intentionally light year of my move from Boston to Pittsburgh). And it was by far the least amount of climbing I’ve done since the move. Though if we count the 486 virtual miles I did on the indoor trainer, my annual total rises to a more respectable 3,262: still 20 percent less than I rode in 2017.

2018 wasn’t entirely bad—there were a few minor highlights—but all told, it was a miserable year.

My Original 2018 Goals

I really didn’t have any cycling goals for 2018. In 2017 I had checked off everything I’d aspired to do in Pittsburgh, leaving nothing specific to reach for.

The only item I mentioned at the end of last year’s summary (blogpost) was a planned trip to Tuscany, where I hoped to enjoy some long European riding and even catch a stage of the Giro d’Italia elite cycling race. However, it rained the entire time, allowing only 80km of wet, uncomfortable riding; and I abandoned my Giro date due to a scheduling conflict (blogpost).

My rental Bianchi at our Tuscan villa

My rental Bianchi at our Tuscan villa

Morning light on the Pedal the Lakes century

Morning light on the Pedal the Lakes century

Tag-o-Rama pickup on Lemon Way, Downtown

Tag-o-Rama pickup on Lemon Way, Downtown

Orny descending a mountain in Zwift's Watopia

Orny descending a mountain in Zwift's Watopia

Dirty Dozen rider Jeremiah climbing Eleanor Street on a bikeshare tank

Dirty Dozen rider Jeremiah climbing Eleanor St. on a bikeshare

My 2018 cycling calendar

My 2018 cycling calendar

The Centuries

Another way I judge a year is how many 100-mile rides I complete; therefore, this year I’ve introduced this separate section to enumerate them.

In 2018, despite the weather, my travel, and lack of motivation, I matched 2017’s total of six centuries. I suffered more than usual on these long rides, either due to insufficient preparation or increasing age.

The first century was easy: a slow amble up the Montour Trail with friends De’Anna and Bill, which I spontaneously extended with a solo jaunt to Monongahela and back. But it was so unnoteworthy that it earned only passing mention in my entry for the second century of the year, which was…

The annual Escape to the Lake MS Ride (blogpost) was soggy and sloggy, with rain both days, compounded by an unannounced (and poorly signed) detour and relocated rest stop.

I made a road trip to Akron for my second Absolutely Beautiful Country ride (blogpost). Despite a flat course, it was still a sufferfest. After accidentally bringing only two right gloves, I rode bare-handed all day, which produced a painfully memorable sunburn.

August began with the always-difficult Every Neighborhood Ride (blogpost). This year I had to stop for a vicious cramp halfway up Forbes Avenue. After recuperating and cooling off at the Squirrel Hill rest stop, I fell back and finished the ride with the slow group.

Pedal PGH (blogpost) was as chaotic as usual. Extending the metric to a full century proved costly, as I needed breaks to let the legs recover while recuperating from the heat.

A week later, I drove up to Mercer County for my final century of the year. Though difficult, Pedal the Lakes (blogpost) was manageable, since I’d finally started coming into form… just in time for the season to end!

Additional Highlights

One 2018 highlight didn’t require much effort: picking up 25 tags in Pittsburgh’s Tag-o-Rama cycling/photography game. That was enough to break into the top ten players (out of 125). (blogpost)

I’ve already mentioned that Pittsburgh set a new all-time record for precipitation in a calendar year, receiving over one and a half times our normal rainfall. The resulting landslides washed away several roads, some of which still haven’t reopened ten months later. Many rides were canceled, including brevets, the Western PA Wheelmen’s spring and fall rallies, the Mon Valley Century, and numerous group rides. I only attended 5 out of 27 Tuesday night Team Decaf rides due to rain, and I bailed halfway through one of those due to a sudden mid-ride rainstorm!

The year was filled with other frustrations, as well. Several of those mentioned below are covered in more detail in a short mid-August blogpost tellingly titled “Yeah, Yeah, Bicycle”.

The local bike “advocacy” group decided to withdraw all support for BikeFest, a two-week cycling celebration it had run for 15 years.

My bike had several mechanical travails, ranging from a still-unresolved creak to a fancy new Di2 mount that promptly broke my Di2 junction box.

I spent $70 to re-stock my supply of powdered Gatorade mix, only to discover they’d changed the formula into an unusable dust that won’t mix with water and tastes just like burnt plastic.

And Strava completely ruined the training charts I relied on, which I’ll speak more of below.

I wasn’t in any shape—or mood—to ride this year’s Dirty Dozen hill climb, but that gave me the opportunity to play event photographer, which might have been more fun than actually riding! (blogpost)

The year’s biggest highlight happened in December, long after the riding season was done: my long-awaited purchase of an indoor smart trainer and membership on the Zwift multiplayer online cycling platform (blogpost). In addition to my first FTP test, I rode as “far” on the trainer in December as I did on the road in any other month in 2018! While it had no impact on the 2018 season, it has helped me get over my season-long malaise and should improve my form next spring.

The Charthouse

As mentioned earlier, Strava changed the math behind their “Fitness & Freshness” chart that I relied on for training and event tapering, and which I incorporated into my annual summaries as a graphical overview of the year.

Their “improved” metrics are completely worthless, but thankfully I’ve been able to recreate the TRIMP charts I relied on them for. Updated versions follow:

2018 TRIMP fitness chart

This first chart shows my fitness level over the past twelve months, with centuries highlighted.

What you’ll note is an overall saw-tooth pattern, with sudden gains from intense training followed by immediate backslides; i.e. a complete lack of sustained improvement.

You can see the dips during my travel dates: Southeast Asia in the latter half of March, a mini-dip in May during my week in Tuscany, and my meditation retreat in late June.

But even when I was home, each time I gained fitness, it declined again, rather than moving progressively higher. Every upward impulse is followed by a dip back down; I just couldn’t sustain a consistent string of training.

One easily-overlooked but hopeful sign is the upward trend throughout December. That’s the result of my new indoor trainer and Zwift membership. With any luck, I have already begun my positive fitness trend for the start of the 2019 season!

2011-2018 TRIMP fitness chart

The second chart shows how 2018 compares to previous years. Even though I began the year at a high level, over the summer I never attained the peak fitness of my previous six years. And that pretty neatly summarizes my year.

Goals for 2019

A year ago, I reluctantly set some vague goals for 2018; I’d done all the new rides I wanted to do, and didn’t see any specific challenges to undertake in the new year. In that respect, I’m in the same situation this year.

However, my lackluster 2018 was not a direct consequence of my lack of clearly-identified goals. I blame it all on horrible weather, lots of poorly-timed travel, and the fatigue and demoralization left over from a very demanding 2017.

Fortunately, I’m entering 2019 much fresher, and with no major travel plans. So long as we don’t set any new rainfall records, 2019 is bound to be better than 2018 was.

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

That’ll be aided by my secondary goal 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.

I needed a major change to shake me out of the funk that lingered over me all year, and Zwift is certainly different. I find myself actually looking forward to riding the indoor trainer and learning how to train more effectively by using its built-in power meter. I’m hopeful it’ll be the key that unlocks both my attitude and my fitness level for the 2019 season.

If I can achieve those two simple goals, I’ll be happy, and it will make possible any specific challenges I target as the year progresses. And so far it looks promising!

Taco-Drama

Dec. 30th, 2018 10:53 am

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

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).

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 1st 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.

I ha’ent writ much about the BikePGH forum’s Tag-o-Rama game since my first tag pickup two years ago. I’ve meant to get caught up and share the tags I’ve found and set, but figured I’d wait and post an end-of-year summary.

To review the rules: the person who is “It” sets a “tag” by biking somewhere interesting, taking a photo of the location with their bike in it, and posting the picture on the forum. Then the other players race to figure out where that location is, get there by bike, take a similar picture with their bike in it, and post that. Whoever posts first becomes “It” and can set the next tag location.

It might be easier to explain by seeing it in action, so here’s a link to the start of the 2017 Tag-o-Rama thread.

I started out slowly back in 2016, only chasing down four tags. This year I’ve paid more attention, collecting 13 more, for a total of 17. That puts me in the Top 20 out of more than 120 players!

So here (on the left) are the 17 tags that I picked up, and (on the right) the 17 tags that I subsequently set. As with nearly everything I post, you can click through the thumbnails to get to larger original photos.

My first Tag-o-Rama find: Aspinwall Waterfront Park playground sculpture
Although I knew about the game before I moved to Pittsburgh in December 2015, it took me until March 2016 to claim my first tag. Part of that was unfamiliarity with the area (both in terms of recognizing tag locations as well as good routes to bike there), and part was trepidation about riding in the worst of winter. This is a sculptural playground structure across the Allegheny in Aspinwall. It took me just 97 minutes to claim this tag after it was initially posted to the forum. I wedged my rear tire in between the character's fingers to make it look like he was grasping the bike.
My first Tag-o-Rama tag set: Home Improvement storefront on Centre Ave
For my first placed tag, I picked something I thought might be a little obscure: this abandoned "Home Improvement" storefront on Centre Ave in the Hill District. Apparently it wasn't obscure enough, because it was claimed just two and a half hours later. The "bicycle rampant" is a favorite position.
Magnetom Tag
Two months later, my second tag was this "MAGNETOM" sign located in the back of Allegheny General Hospital, also on the north side.
Arctic Tag
Although technically outside the suggested rectangle that we keep our tags within, I couldn't resist dropping a tag in a neighborhood in Mifflin where Arctic Way connected to Antarctic Way via Flight Way (also near Official Way). I hinted at the location by saying: "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."
Westinghouse Castle
At the end of a 60-mile expedition to Export PA, I returned to town via the towns of Trafford (where I took a digger and incurred some road rash) and Wilmerding, where I got this tag at the Westinghouse Air Brake Company General Office Building (aka Westinghouse Castle).
PVBLIC BATHS
Fifth Avenue isn't a good place to bike, but as a major commuter route I figured someone would recognize the PVBLIC BATHS building, which now houses a convict assistance office. But even I was surprised that it was claimed just 71 minutes after I posted it! Note that I was using my old bike (the Plastic Bullet) when I claimed (above) and set this tag (here).
Scott Electric Tag
My fourth and final tag pickup of 2016 was at the Arsenal Terminal in the Strip, the location of Pittsburgh's Art All Night festival.
Wilkinsburg Church Tag
And my final drop of 2016 was at this church in Wilkinsburg, at the corner of Rebecca and Coal. My hint was a black and white still of a napkin monogrammed "R de W". That's for Rebecca de Winter, a plot element in Hitchcock’s 1940 film "Rebecca".
Braddock ToR Mural
After five months in Maine, it took me about a month to claim my first tag of 2017: this "Welcome to East Pittsburgh" mural on a railroad abutment down in Braddock.
170324 New Tag
As stated in my hint, my first 2017 tag set "has a flavor!" This cafe in Garfield named "Flavors". I wish I'd been more patient, because later in the year the tarp would come off and reveal a locomotive-shaped smoker hidden underneath.
Tag-o-Rama Tag Pickup
By now my Google and Steetview skills were paying off. This church on Herron Ave in the Hill District is heated geothermally using the runoff water from an underground coal mine!
Let's Meet
Although the Little Library is in the foreground, the thing that intrigued me about this location in Mt. Oliver were the WW1 sniper pillboxes (although they're actually hardened "cornhole" games).
IMAG1580-B
Five days later someone posted a tag at a place I recognized: the former Animal Rescue League office near Point Breeze.
CUPACK
I'm always looking for interesting architectural features, and sometimes use them as tagdrops. This Cupack entryway near Woods Run is on a common route for group rides.
National Negro Opera Company
My third tag pickup in the month of May was at this National Negro Opera Company historic marker at an abandoned house in Homewood off Lincoln Ave.
You're Gonna Need a Bigger Street...
This is one of my all-time favorite tag drops. First, it plays on one of my favorite themes: places with strange names; in this case "Bigger Street" in Knoxville. Second, I came up with a really good hint. Playing off the Roy Scheider quote in "Jaws", I simply said, "You’re gonna need a bigger street." Finally, even though the answer was right there in plain sight, it absolutely confounded the veteran Tag-o-Rama players. I consider it one of my best.
IMAG0002-B
This tag was just too easy to let go. Temple Sinai is on a main road less than half a mile from my apartment. Moreover, I walk over there every week for my Wednesday evening meditation group! It would have been shameful if I'd missed that one! And this was a bonus as the first photo I took with a brand new cellphone.
The Knob
My penchant for odd placenames continued with The Knob, a street in Ben Avon Heights which was a bit too far outside the suggested box. But it was priceless!
ToR Tag Pano
This one -- my tenth tag! -- was a strange pickup. The original photo was a bizarrely distorted shot underneath a bridge. But somehow I instantly recognized it as a railroad trestle on Highland Drive by the bike track. I sorta tried to "iron out" the original by exploding it into a flat panorama.
Tag-o-Rama Tag
I carried the tag all the way across town to Sheraden and dropped it on this convenient red dot in middle of Brevet Way. Why Brevet Way? Well, endurance cyclists know that randonneuring events are called "brevets". So I played off that in my clue, saying that "this is the only street in the city where you could ride an entire randonneuring event on a single public way."
Tag o rama
By now I was snagging one or two tags per month. The clues made it clear that this house was near corner of Hazelwood and Bigelow, a mile or two from the apartment, so it was an easy pickup.
Tag-o-Rama Tag
Having ridden by this building in Doughboy Square, I thought its industrial vibe was kind of interesting, especially with the opaque door with "True Believer" spray-painted on.
Tag o rama
Another tag that was easy because it was here in the East End was this one, at Tree Pittsburgh Seedling Nursery.
Tag-o-Rama Tag
There are some people who try to deduce location by triangulating on landmarks along the skyline. So here I tried to give those people something to do, as well as highlight the memorial to the USS Maine in the foreground.
Tag drama tag
This was another interesting one. I knew the area, because of a hint naming Jacob McCrea, who runs the Every Neighborhood Ride. But when I rode around that neighborhood, I couldn't find the right place. When I got home, Streetview told me it was on a side street rather than the main drag, and I'd ridden right past it three times! The next day I went back to Allentown and claimed the Black Forge Coffee House.
Tag-o-Rama Tag
I dropped this tag at an interesting building I'd seen in Homestead: the abandoned Charles Schwab Industrial School. For a hint, I quoted an old newspaper article about the building's dedication that had been very poorly OCR'ed, saying that the founder was: "STEEL TRUST’S PRESIDENT. WHO IS SOMETHING OF A PI H LANTH ROPIST."
Tag o Rama pickup
This one doesn't look like much. That's because I didn't care to include the "TRUMP TRAIN" sign that was the basis for this tag, which was positioned a little higher up the wall. Fuck 'em.
Tag-o-Rama Tag Drop
Then, for my tag drop, I said, "Let’s erase the Specter of the Trump Train with some Good Old Honesty." This warehouse is the former Morr Craft building on Old Honesty Street off Spring Garden, presumably the birthplace of the Formica Sunrise color line.
Tag o rama pickup
I returned to Doughboy Square to pick up this rock garden behind a Family Dollar store.
Tag-o-Rama Drop
Here's another favorite tag. Same reasoning as Bigger Street: (1) it's a cool placename: "The Boulevard" in Carrick; (2) I picked a cool clue: in this case, a link to Jackson Browne's song "Boulevard"; and (3) it stumped the veterans for quite a while.
Tag o rama pickup
Someone dropped this at a playground behind some of the dorms at CMU. Fairly close to home, so an easy pick. My twentieth tag pickup!
Tag-o-Rama Tagset
I've ridden by this house with a lighthouse on Linden Street many times. Unfortunately, after I tag dropped it, I learned that it had been used before, and thus was immediately familiar to some of the veterans. Can't win 'em all...
Tag o Rama pickup
Statues are usually pretty easy to track down using Google Images. This one, called "The Circle of Care" is in the entrance to the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center down in Oakland. This one finally put me into the Top 20 Tag-o-Rama players.
Tag-o-Rama tagset
My penchant for unique architecture spurred this tag drop, also in Oakland, off Morewood.

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.

Team Decaf group ride at the Point

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!

It’s been seven weeks since my February post, which related my having ridden six days out of seven. After that, March was pretty much a write-off from a cycling standpoint, but April is coming together nicely.

I guess I can’t complain too loudly about being unable to ride in March. It was still winter, after all, and the weather was cold and rainy. I’ve aged out of the desire to ride in weather below 40 or 50 degrees. But even on the passable days, I found it hard to self-motivate. Trying to recover lost fitness each spring is always painful, but I’ve been more discouraged than usual this year, since I spent so many months completely off the bike.

Spring is for cobbled climbs
Neighborhood switchback
Rolling Pennsylvania farmland

Once you do motivate yourself to ride, there’s a certain amount of “training stress” that is necessary for building fitness, and that training stress is really good… until it isn’t. Working too hard too soon, without proper recovery time, leaves one with heavy legs, dreading heading out, intimidated by the traffic and so many hills to climb. There’s no real good way to tell when you’ve crossed that line from good stress to bad, but with repeated experience one learns to carefully monitor one’s desire to ride.

That was pretty much how March went for me. Although the Pittsburgh Randonneurs held a 100k and 200k in March and another 200k in early April, I skipped them all. They were earlier in the year than usual, which ensured that I was nowhere near trained up enough to succeed, and the early date also meant that the weather was near freezing. Not the kind of ride I’d enjoy.

Three good things did happen last month, tho. First, I got to play around with my new Garmin Edge 820 bike computer and get it all settled, including the frustratingly finicky Shimano Di2 integration; a full review of the unit will come after a little more road testing. I also picked up a Tag-o-Rama tag down in Turtle Creek, and set my new one in Garfield.

Finally, I learned of another alternate route up to Squirrel Hill (home) from the Eliza Furnace trailhead. Unlike the other two routes, which are kinda hilly, the new one is *obscenely* hilly, taking a couple switchbacks up a steep hill from Greenfield to Bigelow Street, which itself is a very long, steep uphill drag (involving both bricks and Belgian block) to the top of Hazelwood. It’s a nice workout, if I am capable of taking it on after whatever ride leaves me at the end of the EFT.

Although April began with a late-season snowfall, winter couldn’t hang on forever, and the past week provided great riding weather. Since last Sunday’s always-inspiring Paris-Roubaix, I’ve matched my February achievement of riding six days out of the past seven, but logged 236 miles rather than February’s mere 166.

On the 9th, I undertook a 33-mile ride east to visit the sites of two of Allegheny County’s seven active underground coal mine fires, some of which have been burning for more than fifty or sixty years!

The 10th I followed the route of a local club ride north for my first 50-mile ride in seven and a half months. The wind made it extra difficult, and my lack of training (and lack of acclimatization to the sun) produced a mild sunburn on my arms. It hasn’t taken long for my “distinctive markings” to return!

The 11th was a flat 30-mile recovery ride down the GAP bike path.

The 12th I went short (20 miles), but packed several really steep climbs to (further) stress the legs.

That was followed by my one rest day on the 13th.

With beautiful weather scheduled for Friday the 14th, I opted for a long 100k ride down Bunola Road to Monongahela, which wound up being 72 miles when bridge repairs necessitated a surprisingly pleasant and scenic detour up Raccoon Run and down Church Hollow. That capped my first 200-mile week in—believe it or not—nearly two years (since June 2015)!

Then on Saturday I got 30 more recovery-ish miles in my first group ride of the year with the Performance Bike crew. Hopefully I’ll get out one of these Tuesday nights for a spirited ride with the Team Decaf group.

But before I do that, I could use a day or two of recovery to consolidate my fitness gains and take the fatigue out of my legs. I figure it’d be nice to give the bike a rest too, since today is R2-Di2’s fourth birthday!

But the bottom line is that after a fallow March, the first half of April has featured a lot more miles in the saddle, with more expected. But happily, I can afford to take my time building up to peak fitness; with the Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ 200k rides already past, I don’t have any other significant events planned until mid-June.

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?

Ksyrium Exalith
Ride of Silence
Flight & Antarctic
Collapsed roadway
Guns of Saratoga
Overlooking Downtown from Team Decaf ride
Ornoth's MS Ride

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!

The most active cycling BBS in Pittsburgh appears to be that run by BikePGH, the local advocacy group.

One of the more interesting threads is called “Tag-o-Rama” and it’s your basic tag hiding and finding game, somewhat akin to geocaching only with bikes instead of hiking, and photos instead of GPS coordinates.

Whomever found the last tag goes out and bikes somewhere interesting and takes a photo of a landmark or some interesting feature; the bike he rode must also be in the frame. Once he posts the photo (aka tag) online, anyone who can figure out the location can ride there to take and post another picture to verify their pickup (and their bike must also be in the picture). Then it’s their turn to place the next new tag. For a fuller explanation, read the rules at the top of this thread.

I’ve watched the thread for four months, since before I moved to Pittsburgh in fact. As you might imagine, it’s not easy to figure out locations if you’re new to the area, but Google has helped me identify a couple spots. On top of that, the weather and my lack of experience cycling across the city always kept me from venturing out to actually pick up a tag on my own. Until last week…

Playground sculpture
Abandoned storefront

The thing that helps me most in finding a tag is something unique in the photo, like an Amish buggy or a blue church dome or something like that. On Friday someone posted a new tag: a playground slide made from a very distinctive metal sculpture. A little Googling and I figured out that it wasn’t too far away, on a road I’ve used a few times already.

Being up for an easy recovery ride, I figured this was a good opportunity. The only question was whether someone else would find it, ride there, and post their photo before I did. It was Friday noon, and 12 hours had elapsed since the photo was posted.

So I popped out, crossed the Highland Park bridge and rolled into Aspinwall Riverfront Park. I got a photo of my bike at the sculpture, and headed out. Hopeful that I’d be able to claim the tag, on the way home I detoured to take another photo at an abandoned storefront I’d passed several times before. I’d use that as my own new tag if no one else had claimed the playground one.

Returning home, I was delighted to see that no one else had claimed the tag. I posted and proudly claimed my first tag, the 1083rd to be claimed in the game. I was finally a legit participant!

After a moment to catch my breath, I also posted my new tag, number 1084. I figured it would be an easy find for anyone familiar with Centre Ave, one of Pittsburgh’s main streets, and so it was. Within three hours, two different people had posted pictures of their bikes in front of that abandoned shop!

While it’s not about riding hard, the game does get lots of people riding around and sharing unfamiliar but interesting parts of the city. It has proved a popular game here in Pittsburgh, and would be very easy to transplant in other cities, as well.

For me, it was on the list of things I wanted to do here in Pittsburgh. And now I can check that box off.

Though that won’t stop people from posting new tags nor stop me from cherry-picking ones to go after myself!

Frequent topics