I should have done this weeks ago when everything first started, but I’ve been busy trying to adjust to being a student again and cramming as much knowledge as I can into my middle-aged brain.
So, yes, I went back to school! Why? Well, why not? My last contract role turned into a frustrating situation, and after four months of job hunting with no luck, I just threw in the towel. Interviewing in tech these days can be a demoralizing experience—often ending in ghosting or rejection without any real explanation. After a while, it felt like I was wasting my time and energy.
And honestly, I love feeling smart and learning complex topics. Learning and breaking out of ruts tends to get harder as you age, and I feel I only have a few more real attempts at shifting who I am and what I do with my life. Carpe diem or some such.
After researching different options, I landed on an online Intro to Neuroscience course at UPenn, which could lead to a certificate if I complete 3–5 more courses. Then, thanks to some eye-catching ads, I also explored Harvard Medical School’s HMX program, which offers a range of medical science courses. To brush up on knowledge I hadn’t touched since pre-med 13 years ago, I enrolled in Biochemistry, Immunology, and Physiology.
It’s been challenging. My brain feels properly stretched. The Neuroscience, in particular, has been fascinating—there’s been an explosion of new discoveries in the past two decades, and it’s incredible how much more we understand now.
Where is all this heading? Honestly, I don’t know. Financially, quitting your job to go back to school just for the sake of learning isn’t the smartest move. But I’ve given myself two months to set aside those concerns and simply enjoy the process.
That was a very warm, very dry, very fatiguing race. As an individual who has ancestry from Northern Europe, who can grow a beard in a week, and am continually told by his partner that he is “radiating heat”…I found the conditions absolutely LOVELY. /s
There is also a power-to-weight calculation that I love thinking about during races like this. As a rule of thumb, “climbers” tend to have 2 lbs of body weight per inch of height. I am 73 inches tall. That means a climbing weight of around 146 lbs. Dear readers, I weighed myself last Thursday at 187 lbs. ::cough:: Damn those Kodiak Brownie Cups. Perhaps I love them too much!
All that being said, I did rather well for being an athlete who prefers cooler temps and excels more on the flats. Once the overall podium was done, I got third in my age group. What kills me a bit is that I missed first in my age group by a mere 20 seconds. For a race that took 3h 20m, that is an incredibly short duration. And that rider passed me on the last climb.
Is that margin just a bit better training? Being closer to 175 lbs? Improving my technique? Better pacing? Better hydration or fueling before or during the race? A lighter bike setup? Not dropping my chain when I avoided a crash at 45mph? Hm. HMMMM!
This morning while perusing Strava, I re-discovered that I am 84 out of 25,938 riders on the Sa Calobra descent this year. That’s pretty darn good for an amateur. I am almost impressed by my results. Almost. I desperately want to be even better at cycling but also know how much more time and effort that will require, at the sacrifice of other interests.
Anyhoo. Fun but brutal race this year. Set many PRs. No idea what I am doing next. No other races or trips planned.
Tires. Tires tires tires. Tires!! Some thoughts about tire selection, specifically when it comes to NedGravel.
This was my very first take. While it is far from perfect and I wanted to clarify or reword a few things, I tried ten more times to get a better video but there is just too much noise around my house today.
Early evening riding at Marshall Mesa to test out a possible tire choice for Unbound XL before we rode into the night on the gravel roads to test our light setups.
First, the 125 mile course is still exceptionally hard and even with less sand and less bumps this year, I felt quite beat up by the time I reached the pavement.
Second, I really am pleased with a top 20 finish. The week preceding the race I failed my Tuesday intervals workout and completely skipped my Wednesday workout in lieu of a nap. The sinus infection and cold I got two days after returning from Mallorca completely exhausted my system, and I was pretty close to telling Tina to travel to Fruita without me. It was only on Thursday that I started having energy again and even Friday’s pre-race ride did not feel amazing.
But, I resisted the urge to switch distances and still lined up at 7am with Tina and all the others. I burned through quite a few matches in that first hour as I caught and lost the lead group while navigating around other riders. And because of my sickness, my matchbook was still very tiny. I lost the lead group, dropped a chain, had my shifting go to absolute shit, fixed my shifting, and then spent 3.5 hours riding solo.
By the mid-point, my system was pretty cracked. A headwind on the way back to Fruita just wore me down until two chaps finally caught me. Thankfully I latched on and was able to recover enough to do a nice paceline with them.
Eventually I lost them when I stopped at the last aid station to lubricate my chain, which was sounding like death. The last 25 miles felt like a death march as I limped the remaining way back to the finish. Tina, who I had not seen since mile 8, finished 30 seconds behind me with our friend Eric Jones.
But 19th Overall is not too shabby considering how I felt just three days earlier. And Tina got 2nd Place for women. Not too bad at all. Guess all that training is paying off. @desertgravel #co2ut
Many of the coaches arrived early and shared an AirBnB in Llubi so they could plan the camp, evaluate courses, and bond over good riding and food. I tagged along and tried to stay mostly out of the way.
Wandering around the island doing 45-90 miles a day and oodles of climbing with a lunch stop at a cafe nearly every day. It really is as great as they say. I would wish for a bit less traffic but once a place becomes “known” the people will come.
Old Man Winter Rally 2024. It may be a hard thing to believe, given how challenging the conditions actually were, but I actually expected it to be worse. As more and more wet, heavy snow fell on Saturday, I went from thinking cyclocross tires would be the right choice to thinking mountain bike tires were a reasonable option. I compromised and went with 45mm Maxxis Ramblers trying to split the difference between my optimism and pessimism.
But the roads were mostly snow free. I am kicking myself for not purchasing tires specifically for wet/muddy conditions. Would have been a faster choice overall. Oh well.
I think the two words that best describe the race was cold and blinding. We left Lyons in the sun but almost immediately the sun went away and a freezing cold fog descended. I dressed for conditions 20F warmer and was chilled during the neutral. And then we hit the gravel with the pace car still in front of us and my entire face was immediately sprayed with mud. My sunglasses got covered and I was peeking through little mudless gaps.
I lost the lead group by the second paved section. Got caught beyond a couple riders, could not find a way through, burned through matches trying to catch up, and then decided to settle down as surely I would catch people through consistent, safe racing rather than crashing by being reckless.
This is not the hardest race I have ever done, but it is probably the race where I thought about quitting the most. Descending in snow, ice, and mud while virtually blind. Freezing, muddy water spraying my entire body and causing my legs to go numb. Mud being sprayed into my mouth, water bottles virtually undrinkable. And then the normal pains and challenges of hard racing.
That being said, I wish I could try again. I’d wear warmer clothes, I’d use the right tires, I’d use a backpack instead of bottles, I’d have brought a second pair of glasses, and I’d have not made a tactical error that caused me to drop a wheel on the way back to Lyons that probably cost me 5 places.
Please enjoy the photos thanks to @ripanddrift and @tina_explores. The video is me on the podium thanks to Team François winning the Team Relay.
"A power meter allows riders who are serious about performance and training to monitor their workload, track progress, and pace efforts during important events or races." 1
If you are at the point in your cycling journey where you know what a power meter is and are considering whether you need one or not, the answer is yes. It is the most valuable thing–besides a bike computer–you can get for improving your bike training.
Will it magically make you a better cyclist? No. But it will allow you to do structured workouts and measure progress over time. I have heard it said repeatedly by many different people that you can train solely based on Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) and that athletes trained that way for decades. While that is somewhat true, I would never suggest training solely based off RPE to anyone, not even experienced cyclists. RPE is subjective and can be influenced by a number of factors unrelated to cycling. Power is objective and measurable externally from you. RPE is useful and worth tracking, but it is equivalent to saying a person is warm vs they are emitting electromagnetic radiation at 15 μm.
Which Power Meter Should I Get?
There are a number of power meter buying guides out there that you can find with a Google search (example). The three types of power meters I have personally tried are pedal, crank arm, and crank spider. My advice would be to get a crank arm one, if you can find one that works for your bike. They're one of the cheaper options, are as accurate as most cyclists need, and should last you a good long while.
If you cannot find a crank arm power meter, then power pedals are a perfectly acceptable backup option. Back during the COVID pandemic that is all I could find for my gravel bike and I still use them today. If you have never switched your pedals, then I would suggest going to your local bike shop and asking for a quick lesson. Once you do it a few times, it should be a super simple 5 minute project to switch between bikes, all you need is a pedal wrench and a small tube of grease. Do not be intimiated, you will get the hang of it in no time.
I have one bike that has a spider power meter and it is, with no exaggeration, amazing. Very accurate, measures both legs, and it zero-offsets automatically. Pretty much a worry free option. If they were not so darn expensive and a bit time consuming to change chainrings on, it would be my preferred option. If your bike happens to come with one, excellent, if not, I would likely only suggest this to cyclists who enjoy spending money.
Yes, I won the NedGravelSilver course this weekend. I will not allow a podium to change me though! (sorry?)
As a heavy and slightly dense individual, I am not a natural hill climber. But I came back from my Tour Divide attempt–I prefer the term “absolute and complete failure” but Tina says I am being too negative–with an itch to get my power back after spending many months working primarily on building endurance and resiliency.
So, I put together a three week plan of getting me ready for essentially a gravel sprint race. Those 20 Chapman laps I did my first weekend back? A brutish attempt to get my brain switched over from handling a 50lbs Tour Divide to handling a lightweight gravel bike again. And I did a Zwift race every single week to get my system primed for the level of effort and time that I expected the race to take.
Race day thankfully had lovely weather. Another system of thunderstorms hit Colorado the night before and the forecast suggested we might be riding though another storm, but we were fairly lucky: except for a bit of light mud, loose grit, and manageable ruts the course was in good riding condition. My warmup made me mildly concerned as my body and legs felt sluggish and stressed. A 4:30am wake up time and no coffee probably did not help with that. Foolish mortal.
However, once the race started, I moved quickly to the front of the group and powered hard up the first climb. My overall plan was to do threshold on the major climbs, recover in tempo/AP when I could, and not crash on the descents. As you can tell, I am a sophisticated racer with a well-researched and thought out plan.
Laurel and I at the Silver course start (photo credit to Laurel)
I kept on expecting another racer, lighter and faster up climbs than me, to appear and catch up, but they never did. For the first time in my life I was off the front of a race all by myself. Who was I supposed to tell jokes to and discuss German philosophers with? Myself? Booooring…
Anyhow, I got to the turn around point and the sheriff directing traffic shouted that I was going the wrong way as it seemed no one expected the Silver racers so soon. Even the aid station at the split was not set up when I passed by.
Halfway down the long gravel descent, I hit a deep rut that was hidden in the early morning shade and was astounded I did not crash. The Lauf fork probably saved me there. The final major climb was a bit brutal. It was steeper and looser, and I was feeling my previous hard efforts. Then the double track was sandy and a bit loose as well. I was doing 260W and only going 11 miles an hour. Nutty. The final descent was in great shape though; I took it fast but still controlled as the road was open and I saw three vehicles going uphill during my descent.
And then into Nederland. The route crosses the Boulder Canyon highway and the flaggers were still walking to the junction, so I paused for a hot second and then zoomed across towards the finish. When I crossed the timing mat, I noticed the finishing arch was not even inflated yet...but I had won! What a crazy weird feeling to be the very first finisher at NedGravel.
I waited for our friend Laurel to finish (3rd!) and then I went to clean up and get food + coffee from Salto Coffee while I waited for Tina to finish the longer, more rugged Tungsten course. A good and fun race. Given there was price money for those that podiumed, this technically means I am a pro? And now I am reconsidering all of my other races for the rest of this year and wondering if maybe I should stop focusing on 100+ mile ultra distances and focus on shorter efforts.
