- A 2016 Public bike, an upright urban bike with an eight speed hub.
- A 2010 Surly Cross Check, a cyclocross/gravel/do everything road bike.
- A 2007 Bianchi Volpe, a cyclocross/gravel/do everything road bike.
- A 1967 Hetchins. Originally a fast touring bike, now a road sport frankenbike.
- A 1960 Bianchi Specialissima. A vintage, top of the line road racing bike.
I have blogged about these bikes over the years so I won't say too much more about them here. Over the last year, I have been rotating them through my LBS, Veloro Bikes, to catch up on maintenance. Each time Veloro finishes with one bike, I ride the next one to be worked on into their shop and pick up the one they have just finished. A few weeks after the Golden Hills Metric Century last October, I took my Hetchins in and picked up my Volpe, and a stunning thing happened: my speed on my standard rides increased dramatically. One of the routes I have ridden the most often, over 130 times, is one which I call the Alpine ride. Until I picked up my Volpe, my speed on that ride varied between a low of 11.3 to a high of 13.2 mph. The first time I rode it on my newly overhauled Volpe, I rode it at 12.5 mph, a pretty average speed. However, the next time I rode it, I rode a new personal best, 13.4 mph. For a variety of reasons, I did not ride another Alpine ride for a while, but my speed on my similar 34 mile ride strongly supported the notion that this was not a fluke. Then in February, I did my Alpine ride at an astonishing (for me) 14.1 mph! I became a believer, Gebhard of Veloro Cycles must have done something magic to my Volpe to make it a full mph faster than any of my other bikes, though for the life of me I could not imagine what that might have been. As it happens, my subsequent training results have debunked that myth, my speed on that Volpe has returned to normal. I have always believed that my Volpe was my fastest bike (with the possible exception of my Specialissima) and Gebhard did put some pretty nice tires on it so it is possible that a small part of that November to February high was due to the bike, but the bulk of it must have been something I accidentally did right in my training. What might I have accidentally done right in my training and what accounts for the fall in my speed thereafter?
I have previously blogged about my training leading up to my last two Metric Centuries of 2019. I thought I might end the 2019 season on December 8 with a third-in-a-row metric century, another solo ride, but the week before I would have done that ride was rainy and I decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner that week so was unable to prepare and my season ended in November. What happened thereafter was not particularly planned except that I had a determination to maintain the 300 minutes a week of cycling needed for my health and a vague notion that if I could ride a 34 mile ride each week I could get ready for a future metric century relatively quickly. As a result, in December through February I usually did one 34 mile ride each week combined with a variable mixture of shorter rides to add up to something between 300 and 360 minutes. At that point, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. At first, the shelter in place orders used to control the pandemic meant that my rides had to be kept close to home so my 300 minutes of riding consisted of five to six short rides around my neighborhood and the 34 mile ride had to go. After about five weeks, the rules changed so I could do longer rides, including that 34 mile ride, so despite the absence of a season for which to prepare (as a consequence of the pandemic) I decided to ride as if I were preparing for one anyway. In the past, I have found that the 80:20 rule definitely applies to my training, very easy riding keeps me pretty fit. Also, I have recently made my short, neighborhood ride both longer and hillier, and when that was my only ride, I was riding it faster, so I had hoped that when I restarted Alpine rides, I would go back to riding them at 13+ mph. Nonetheless, I took things a bit slow at first and rode nothing longer than 23 miles for two weeks before resuming my 34 mile rides. My plan was to get back to my maintenance schedule of four rides a week of length 12, 12, 23, and 34 miles, maintain that for six weeks, and then up the difficulty. To my disappointment, all of my Alpine rides had speeds of less than 13 mph, and some of them fell below 12 mph. Further, after three weeks of my maintenance schedule, my body was complaining and my speeds were dropping, so I reduced my effort for the next four weeks in response. So, good performance on the last two metric centuries of 2019, outstanding performance on routine rides for the next three to four months of less challenging riding, and then after five weeks of short rides only, my performance fell back to average when I resumed longer rides, and further, I found what had in the past been an easy schedule to be exhausting.
I have a bad habit of over-analyzing my rides, but with that warning, here is how I am currently thinking about what happened. I think the training I did for my 2019 "metric century"* season, especially at the end, left me in very fit. That fitness persisted for a few months at the same time as an easier training schedule allowed me to eliminate virtually all my fatigue. That resulted in the fast rides I initially attributed to a "magic bike." However, by March, the extra fitness from 2019 was gone and then when the pandemic forced me to cut back even more, my fitness fell even further. This manifest itself by slower speeds once I was able to return to my Alpine (and longer) rides but also in a reduced ability of my body to take advantage of training, I need to "get in shape for getting in shape" as the coaches say.
As I look back on my 2019 season, I find myself amazed at how foolish some of my decisions seem in retrospect. That said, a recurring factor limiting my performance has been a feeling of being tired much of the time. What is the cause of that tiredness? One obvious candidate is overtraining, but there are others. The last three years of my life have been extremely stressful, beginning with the loss of my wife rapidly followed by a move to California with all the general disruption that caused as well as the impact of that move on the kind of riding I could do. The most recent stress is the COVID-19 pandemic.When I discussed my recent tiredness with my son, his immediate reaction was that my sense of being tired was most likely a response to the stress of the pandemic. Perhaps I should not think of my cycling career as having started in 1965 or even in 2008 but in 2017 when I moved to California and only then could starting figuring out how to train in the hills of California with a highly stressed 70 year old body. Perhaps I had a lot to learn in 2019, lessons that I had no choice but to learn from experience.
So what now? One overwhelming factor affecting what I do now is the virtual absence of a 2020 group cycling season. Due to the pandemic, the "metric centuries" I had planned to ride I will not be held this year. I could plan solo metric centuries or arrange rides with my son with whom I am sheltering. The huge difference in our abilities would be a factor, but he is very understanding and we could arrange it so that my challenge rides are his easy rides. That is what I had in mind when I restarted more serious training seven weeks ago, but once again, feeling tired impacted my plans. One big difference between group challenge rides and solo challenge rides is that the group rides are fixed date so ready or not, I have to ride them when scheduled (or not at all.) Does this force me to be disciplined, to stick to a schedule despite my subjective feelings? Or rather, are the solo rides better because they allow me to listen to my body to optimize my training plans? Only time will tell, stay tuned.
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* That season consisted of five rides, three of which were metric centuries (Art of Survival, Golden Hills, and a solo metric century.) The other two were Eroica California, an easy 35 mile ride, and my one pass version of The Death Ride, shorter than a 62 mile metric century but harder due to the amount of climbing.
