In my last Blog Post, which was four months ago, I asked this question:
"I am going to try to accomplish a 60 minute ride on any day between July 27 and August 1 2026, and if I can manage that, I will consider the Mountain Loop commemorated. ... But buying and riding [a] bike is not going to be easy, I can think of many reasons why I might decide it is too hard, why it doesn't make sense, so the challenge of this particular commemoration will be to actually purchase a bike and to actually get comfortable enough riding it so I can do more than ride around the block, to manage that hour long bike ride. Can I really do this? Stay tuned and find out."
The answer is that buying that bike was too hard. But what bike was I trying to buy? When I started talking to my family in Seattle about buying a bike, the first piece of advice they had was that because Seattle is so hilly, it should be an eBike. Once I got to Seattle, I realized they were 100% correct. They live very close to an REI store, REI is easy to do business with, and although they are not a dedicated bike shop, they do a pretty good job selling bikes, so my first step was to see what eBikes REI had to offer, and I found the perfect choice: a Salsa Confluence. When I first moved to California, I started riding my wife's commuting bike, a Public C7i and found I enjoyed it very much. Most of my bikes have dropped handlebars so I found the upright riding position and relatively flat handlebars of the Public bike a delightful alternative. When I moved from my first California house to my current one, the increased hilliness of my new neighborhood made that Public bike impractical and I missed being able to ride it. The Salsa Confluence combines the upright seating of that Public bike with much lower gears and eAssist making for a perfect combination. Unfortunately REI was out of that bike in my size. I looked around and could find neither another store offering that bike nor any other bike I liked nearly as well so I ended up not purchasing a bike.
All by itself, what I described above might have been a sufficient explanation for why I didn't complete the Mountain Loop Anniversary Ride but on top of that I found being in Seattle sufficiently disorienting that I might have not been able to either purchase nor ride a bike anyway. Without going through all the details (they have nothing to do with cycling) that trip became more challenging than I expected so I cut it short, promising to make that up to my family by returning as soon as possible; we decided more short visits might be preferable to fewer long visits. During the four weeks I was back in California I was moderately successful at restarting my cycling despite all the fitness I had lost during a slump which, by this point, had lasted 10 months, but then I kept my promise by flying back to Seattle. This time, in a test of our new plan, I only stayed a weekend so cycling when I got back should have been a simple continuation of that restart. Unfortunately, somewhere during that trip I picked up a pre-season case of Flu type A, and I cannot remember when I have been so sick. It took me five weeks to recover to the point where I could again resume cycling, starting from a level of fitness which was lower than ever. Now what?
Despite all the above, I am feeling fairly optimistic. It is true that I am at a low level of fitness, but I feel like I am handling that properly and that I am building up some momentum again. One of the lessons I learned as a result of my obsession with the fitness literature is that when coming back from a long period of not cycling, one should build back up in three steps. The first step is to establish a schedule, not worrying about how long rides last or how fast they are ridden. That is what I am doing now. Only after a schedule of riding has been firmly established does one begin thinking about how much to ride. And finally, only after an appropriate amount of riding has been reached should one think about how fast to ride. I actually plan to skip that third step, I feel like I have reached an age where speed is not something I should be striving for.
Here are my goals for the next 8 months. First, over the next several weeks, I plan to get back onto a weekly schedule. Besides my bicycling, I also need to do exercises for my back, and I have integrated the two. My plan is to do back exercises seven days a week and on three of those days, do training rides on my bike. On the other four days I will do 15 minute low intensity bike rides on my indoor trainer both as recovery rides for my cycling and warmups for my back exercises. Once I have reached that goal, I will move on to step 2, increasing the length of the three training rides so that they, plus the recovery rides, total at least 300 minutes a week. I will try to maintain that schedule through the rainy season, and then in February or March, when the rain tapers off, begin a training schedule designed to work up to the 60 mile ride I hope to do on my Hetchins on July 3 to celebrate its 60th birthday. If I can accomplish that, I will be very pleased.
