Singularity

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Riding this week has been limited to commuting, sometimes alone and sometimes with the wife.

Me

Her

Us, sort of

In other news, I had my first session with the physical therapist yesterday to address the achilles tendon and calf issues. The prognosis is good, but I’ll be doing lots of exercises to increase strength, flexibility, and balance in my ankles for some time to come.

More importantly, I’ll be taking it easy in terms of cycling mileage and intensity. I’m allowed only to ramp up slowly, instead of making big leaps when I start to feel better (like last weekend, you might say).

But, I can still ride. So I’ve got that going for me.

Filed under: Commuting, Ruminations, Urban

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In the past month — during all of the Achilles/calf pain — I’ve spent most of my riding time, what little it is, on flat, non-clipless pedals of one sort or another: VP-001s, MKS Lambdas, and some old Wellgo rat-trap pedals with huge spikes.

MKS Lambda (via Velo Orange)

Since all of you have already read Just Ride, you know that flat pedals have a number of advantages. According to me, you can:

This last has proved most important for me — more important, in fact, than the other two put together. If I’m riding and my bum tendon starts to act up, I can often mitigate  the problem by either sliding my foot a little more forward so that the pedal is more in the middle of my foot or by turning my foot slightly inward or outward. Or both.

This has left me with a number of realizations.

And one more thing that I’ve noticed. My choices in cycling kit seem to correlate strongly with the shoes that I’m wearing (which are in turn determined by the pedals on the bike in question). That is, I only wear the lycra when I’m wearing the SIDIs and clipped in (though I sometimes wear the SIDIs with other stuff, but only because of the pedals on the bike that I want to ride).

And I don’t really like the lycra, which will come as a surprise to some of my riding companions who have seen me in nothing else.

No matter the reason, you’ll be much more likely to see me riding on flat pedals with regular shoes and not wearing lycra for the time being — at least until my tendonitis clears up.

After that, well…we’ll see. Some prejudices are hard to break.

Filed under: Ruminations

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After a week off the bike (two weeks ago), a week of just commuting (last week — though there’s really no just commuting during Bike to Work Week), and a Saturday of bike-nerdery (read: bike swap), I finally rejoined the Church of the Spoken Wheel for one of our regular Sunday rides.

Church of the Spoken Wheel (photo by Lemberger)

It was my first road ride since I don’t know when, and definitely the first since I bunged up my Achilles tendon a while back. It was a hot and windy day here in the Midwest, but we still managed 16.0mph over 42 miles. And I did so without any pain or stiffness in my Achilles and calf.

Until I got home, that is. Everything felt fine and dandy during the ride, during my usual post-ride stick-massage, as well as for a couple of hours afterward.

Then I took a short nap and a stroll with the wife. By the time that was all over, the tendon was tight and somewhat inflamed. It still is today.

Damn, damn, and DAMN. Also, damn.

Good thing I didn’t cancel my PT appointment when things were feeling good last week.

Filed under: Road, Touring

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Every year, it seems like Bike to Work Week (BTWW) is a bit different. And I always seem to learn a few things, such as:

Civia Halsted (photo by Lemberger)

There are also some things that I already knew, but which come to mind, again:

Rollin’ (photo by Lemberger)

Now, the only remaining question is whether most of the people riding this week are still riding next week.

Filed under: Commuting, Urban

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Lest you think that all European cities do things right when it comes to bicycle, pedestrian, and transit planning, there’s Brussels.

It’s the most congested city in Europe and it’s like that because like most American cities, it went all in for cars instead of a more rational modal mix.

This has been bouncing around for a little while now, but I finally got a chance to watch it all of the way through. If you haven’t seen it, take a 20-minute break and do so.

Filed under: Ruminations

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It’s the second day of Bike to Work Week (BTWW). Just like yesterday, we rode to work, stopping for coffee and pastry on the way.

Today we ran into Lemberger, who as usual took some photos.

Me and the wife, BTWW station in the background

Me and the wife, both riding our One-ways. Hers is nicer.

I am also reminded why I rarely wear the Bern helmet. Pretty obvious, really.

Shortly after this, Michael and I parted company with the wife and rode to the Capitol Square to visit one of the other BTWW stations.  Willy Bikes was there, pimping their wares.

I kinda want one of these:

Civia Halsted

After that, we reluctantly rode to work. The TW part of BTWW is nonsense, if you ask me.

Filed under: Commuting

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Now I really feel like selling off the sole Surly in the fleet — just so that I’m not accidentally associated with this:

  Filed under: Rants

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This year’s Bike to Work Week (BTWW for those of you into the whole brevity thing) is nearly upon us.

During BTWW, multiply by 10. Photo by Lemberger

In Madison, this means several things:

But what BTWW brings us more than anything else? A huge spike in bike commuter traffic, especially downtown and on the bike paths.

Bitter, grouchy curmudgeons like me are likely to see this as a mere annoyance. And it is an annoyance, to some degree, largely because many of the riders that make up the increased traffic are unskilled, mildly confused, and riding bicycles of questionable maintenance history. And most of them will evaporate like fog on a summer morning once the week is over.

But a few of them won’t — and that’s a fine thing.

So I’ll try to be a little more patient with the feckless morons clogging up my normal commuting route (and perhaps I’ll get out of my normal, deeply rutted route a bit too).

And let’s face it, given my recent bout of achilles-related pain and suffering, I’ll be happy to be riding at all.

Filed under: Commuting

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Last year was the year of the DNF. This year is shaping up to be the year of the DNS. Let’s review this tale of woe, shall we?

Ragnarok 105

About 8 weeks before the Ragnarok, everything was looking great. The winter weather was balmy and I was out on the then-singlespeed Albatross, putting in some miles on the road. Less than a week passed, and I was down with the flu. It was a bad upper-respiratory flu that put me off the bike for nearly two weeks and left me weakened. But that wasn’t the worst of it: the flu apparently knocked things out of whack enough that I ended up with GERD (that’s gastro-esophageal reflux disease, in case you’re not old enough to know that).

Between the two, I lost a good deal of my fitness (which was just starting to ramp up from an easy winter off-season, by design) and had no real way of getting it back. Try as I might, I had no power and no stamina, so not only could I not ride much, but I couldn’t train either.

Result: pulled the plug on the Ragnarok about 3 weeks before the race.

Dairy Roubaix

By the time the Dairy Roubaix was approaching, I’d been feeling quite a bit better and has started to regain some of my fitness. I was back to commuting daily, as well as getting in one or two long rides on the weekends. I even managed a couple of gravel rides (on the rail trails — but it’s all we’ve got here).

The GERD was under control. I’d tested positive for h. pylori and had just finished the treatment when I had to take off to Minneapolis for four days of work travel. Four days, by the way, that would return me home a little more than 12 hours before the start of the Dairy Roubaix. Even so, I felt like I was ready. Not ready for a great ride, but a decent one — and one that would be excellent preparation and testing for the Almanzo 100.

Apparently, the GERD wasn’t as under control as I thought. Or rather it was, as long as it wasn’t subjected to a few 12-hour work days, the wrong kind of food, not enough sleep, and a little too much beer. By the time Friday rolled around, I was strung out, over-tired, and suffering a GERD flare-up.

Result: pulled the plug on the Dairy Roubaix. Michael and Andy rode it without me.

Almanzo 100

The Almanzo 100 takes place in one week’s time, but I won’t be riding it either. I pulled the plug this afternoon.

Why you ask? Two weeks ago, we went north to visit the in-laws. I went riding and put in 140 miles in two days. There was only one problem: by the end of the ride, my achilles tendons and calves were more than usually tight — almost surely because I was riding on 175mm cranks, which are too long for me for anything but shorter rides.

At the time, they merely seemed tight and I figured they’d loosen up over the next couple of days as long as I took it easy, stretched a bit, and did some daily self-massage with the stick.

Turns out that I was wrong there too. After trying to return to commuting the following week, the pain and inflammation refused to go away. Last weekend, even a short ride left my left achilles and soleus tight, inflamed, and painful. Now, two full weeks afterward and after an entire week off the bike, I’m just starting to heal and recover. I can ride short distances at an easy pace without pain, but things are still tight and seem to be constantly threatening pain. Not something that I feel like I can subject to 100 hilly miles of Minnesota gravel.

And, in the immortal words of my (cyclist) doctor: “Don’t fuck with the achilles.”

Westside Dirty Benjamin

While I’m pretty sure that I should be back in shape to ride the WDB in June, the way things are going it doesn’t seem like I’m going to be that lucky.

Rather than wonder about it for another month, I’ve pulled the plug on that too. Now at least some other rider, someone on the waiting list, can get a spot on the start list and start preparing for it now.  It’s the least I can do.

Is there anything left?

Am I going to do anything this season? I certainly hope so, but my natural pessimism combined with some upcoming rehab and healing leads me to keep things to a minimum. Later this month, we’ll be riding reconnaissance for the Rockland Reckoning and riding the Powderhorn 24 in June. In September, I’m leading a group tour to Potosi, WI to visit the brewery and other things and later the same month is the Rockland Reckoning itself.

The rest of the time, I’ll just be riding. And that’s as it should be. Or at least the best I can do right now.

Filed under: Gravel, Ruminations

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And here’s some Rapha for your Friday.

Filed under: Road

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