What Happened?

The Zombie, sitting in his office. Why isn't he out on a bike? Who knows?

I ended my last blog post with two questions:

1. Is this the end of my blogging?
2. Is this the end  my cycling?

The answer to both of these questions is the same: I hope not, but I worry it might be. I have not ridden 300+ minutes (my goal) during any week since that post, and during those 8 weeks, there have only been 4 where I have reached even the lesser-goal of 150 minutes a week. There was a stretch of 9 days where I did no riding at all, not even a trainer ride. It has been 28 days since I have been outdoors on a bike, any riding I have done has been on my trainer. I am not happy with this state of affairs and am thinking hard about how to get out of this slump. If not the end of my cycling, could this be the end of my blogging?

Do any of you really want to read about me not riding my bike? I don't think so. So, unless I can do something interesting on a bicycle, I don't really have anything to blog about. In 2017 I went from trying to post once a week and failing to trying to post once a month and succeeding. Since then, my posting had been remarkably consistent until two months ago when I missed a monthly post for the first time since moving to California in 2017. Having missed that one post, I may never post again, and if I do, I have no idea when that will be, but the one thing I will promise is that I will not post again until there is something I really am inspired to write about that has something to do with bicycles.

What Happened?

In my last post I said about sticking to a cycling schedule "Once I miss a week, the spell is broken, and I am more likely to miss future weeks". That's exactly what happened, but I think there is more to be said than that. One fact that I feel is relevant is that this lapse was preceded by my second longest run of rides that met the 300 minute goal since I restarted cycling. I think these two things might be related. Starting with the Art of Survival in May of 2024, I have been struggling to maintain my enthusiasm for cycling. My speed on that ride was so poor that I decided to stop riding metric centuries, the events that had been my most important source of motivation up until then. It is true that I did manage to complete my 75th birthday ride a few months later and that did give me immense satisfaction. The problem was that it was a one-off, I did not provide any motivation for the future. I tried a number of different things that I hoped would provide that motivation, developing a training program that I hoped would increase my speed, making an effort to ride and appreciate my entire collection of bicycles, seeking out new routes for rides, and these things did work for a while, but somewhere about the middle of that last long run of 300+ minute weeks, the motivation from of all these faded and the only thing keeping me going was the determination to stay above 300 minutes a week. The thing that actually ended that run was a week of rain. It is almost impossible for me to accumulate 300 minutes during a week where my riding is restricted to my trainer. Once my winning streak was broken, that last motivating factor was gone.

I want to mention one more interesting bit of news. I had my routine physical a few weeks ago. I talked to my doctor about my sciatica which comes from age-related deterioration of my spine and also talked to him about my frustration with the dropping speed of my bike rides. He surprised me by suggesting the two might be related. If the nerves leading to my leg muscles are being pinched as a result of my spinal deterioration, that might reduce the strength of those muscles. This is on top of my theory that the pain resulting from my sciatica contributes to a generalized fatigue which both reduces my enthusiasm and might also affect my speed. My aging back might be playing a larger role in this story than I have been giving it credit for.

This is Not the First Time

Well gosh, this all seems so hopeless. The good news is that I have been here before and in each case, I managed to start riding again. I have blogged many times about how my cycling restart in August of 2008 was something of a false start in that by February of the following year I had stopped riding and didn't start again for over a year. But even if I ignore that lapse and just scroll through entries in my cycling journal since then, there are plenty of multi-week lapses, my current slump is not all that unusual.

All that may be true of riding, but how about blogging? Back in 2017 I stopped blogging for four months but restarted thereafter. Why might this time be different? What is different is that I have been wondering for quite some time now why I was continuing to blog. More and more I have been feeling that I have had nothing new to say. Arguably, this is not even particularly connected to my current riding slump. There is one more blog post I do hope to write concerning a ride I hope to complete, the 60th birthday ride for my Hetchins which would happen in July of 2027, the 60th anniversary of the day I picked it up and began my European bicycle tour. Does that mean no more blog posts for a year and a half? Who knows. If I come up with an idea that I am excited about, I may resume blogging before then.

An Aside

Given that this might be my last blog post, I am going to stick in something that I have been working on as its own post which is somewhat relevant, and that is the context in which this is all happening. So far, my second cycling career has lasted over 17 years. (A generous estimate of the length of my first cycling career is 14 years.) 9 of those years were in Texas, 8 since my move back to California. Of those 8 years, more than 5 have been since my move into my current home in the middle of the Santa Cruz mountains. "The days are long but the years are short" as the saying goes. 17 years is a significant fraction of the lifetime of a person. 

Another point of reference: I am not certain of this, but it is my impression that there are groups on Facebook for cyclists in their 60s and for cyclists in their 70s, but no groups for cyclists in their 80s. Similarly, most (but not all) of my high school riding buddies have stopped cycling. The 70s seem to be the age when this happens.

As of the time of this post, the Social Security Administration expects me to live 11 more years, less than the length of my second cycling career and only twice the amount of time I have been in my current home. Maybe it is not surprising that I have to start letting go of some things. All that said, I haven't given up yet. Quitting cycling will happen when it happens and not before.

What can I Do to Regain my Enthusiasm?

For my first three years in California, I lived in a rented house in a fairly flat part of the Peninsula. Once I got there, I found that when I replaced and adjusted the height of the saddle on my wife's commuter bike, it fit me quite well and was very comfortable even on fairly long rides. The nice thing about that bike is that it was set up to be ridden in normal clothing and shoes. This was especially nice when the weather got cold. There was something very motivating about hopping on that bike with absolutely no preparation and going for a ride.

About five and a half years ago, my landlord dramatically increased my rent and I decided to purchase a house. That seemed like a golden opportunity to try to find something closer to my grandkids, which I managed to do, I am now just four doors down from them. The one thing I worried about, correctly in retrospect, is that this new neighborhood is much hillier than my old, making it harder to manage that same kind of easy, door to door rides I had been doing when I wasn't up for a hillier ride. One consequence of that is that I haven't ridden my wife's old commuter bike since that move. From my current house, I have a choice: I can either take a hilly ride leaving from my driveway or if I want to do an easier ride, I have to put one of my bikes on my car and drive to a flatter area. The only bikes with low enough gears to allow me to ride these hills pretty much demand special cycling clothes and shoes, just enough of a production as to create a bit of friction. Driving to a flatter route, giving me a greater choice of suitable bicycles, creates a different kind of friction. That said, I now have a new rack on the back of my car that would allow me to transport my wife's commuter bike. If I got it back into riding condition (it needs maintenance), might the joy of riding that bike help with my enthusiasm, even given that I would have to drive to ride it? That might be something to try. I could maybe combine that with the exploration of new routes, that bike is especially good for riding on the many stretches of the Bay Trail that are gravel, and there are some interesting parts of that trail that I would love to explore.

Last August, I got my granddaughter a very nice new bicycle for her birthday, allowing her younger brother to claim the very nice bike she had just outgrown. It has been a bit heartbreaking that since getting that bike four months ago, she has only managed to ride it once. There is nothing wrong with the bike and it is not that she doesn't like to cycle, it is just that their family has a very busy schedule. I have been wondering if I can do something about that, maybe getting the two grandkids to join me for a ride on the traffic-free Bay Trail. And of course, there is that birthday ride for my Hetchins. Maybe, given all these wonderful opportunities, the Zombie will ride again.

So is this "goodbye" or is it "see you later"? I wish I knew.