I’ve been spending most of the daylight hours either on my knees or on a roof, so I haven’t had too much time to ride. I actually took two days straight off, which is pretty unusual for me. Yesterday I decided to go out for a ride at dusk. I’m still riding my cross bike with a gravel road tubleless setup. I was surprised how tired I was all day and how great I felt pedaling. I can tell when I’m going okay, mainly by how easily my legs go around. I know that sounds pretty basic. It is.

I was enjoying riding under the crescent moon. The sunsets this time of the year are surreal. Anyway, I was thinking a bunch and was trying to figure out, some, how I got to where I am. And how I’m still enjoying something so much after doing it for so long. I’m not sure that most people figure it out, bicycle racing, but it takes a long time to master. Not master, like win everything, but master like be the best you can and be able to ride up to your potential on a weekly basis. Cycling is a slowly progressive sport. You make micro, incremental improvements. And once you have made those improvements, they stay with you for a long time.

One of the things I enjoy most is when a new guy starts riding. The first couple months he can barely sit on, sometimes getting dropped on the hills, etc. Then towards the end of the season he is holding his own. You’d think that after taking some of the winter off, the guy would go back to square one, but no. It never happens. He got maybe 3 levels better one season and only regresses one level. And it keeps going like this season after season. I ridden with lots of guys that keep getting better decade after decade. It’s kind of strange. Once you get to a certain level, you never can regress back down to the bottom. It’s like when a retired Pro or Cat. 1 comes back after 10 years off. He starts out at such a high level that it is nearly impossible to tell he took a decade off the bike. It is one of the greatest parts of the sport. You might loose a lot of your physical ability, but all the knowledge and technique sticks with you forever.

I’ve always enjoyed riding at night. When I was a junior, I used to work at a local shop, Gran Sport, and I wouldn’t leave to ride until after 8 pm most nights. Most of the ride was when it was dark. I don’t do it much nowadays because I don’t think it’s so good for training, but it is super fun still. I know that the perception of speed is always exaggerated at night. But, like I said above, I can tell when my legs are going around freely. And they were yesterday.

Well that was just some of my thoughts while riding alone at night. I’d really like to find a race to ride to see if I’m feeling as good as it seems. Then ski some before it all starts all over again. In the meantime, I’m gonna try to finish up with this roofing project the next couple days. This hobby roofing is hard on my hands. And takes up way too much time. Today we’re adhering the rubber to the decking. It shouldn’t take too long, but in construction, in your mind, it all seems so simple and easy, but when you’re actually doing it, it’s way more complicated and time consuming than you’d imagined. Exactly opposite of just riding your bike.

There is no better time to be on your bike than sunset.

Perception is everything. It is key in many aspects of life, especially sports. If you perceive that you have prepared and have good form, you normally will have a pretty good race. If you miss a nights sleep or loose your bike for a few days traveling and you have a bad mindset, you tend to do worse that you might have done otherwise, even if you needed a couple days rest before the event. Mind over matter or something like that.

I’ve been sleeping pretty short the last week and a half. Probably because I have this roofing project on my plate and my mind keeps working through things subconsciously when I’m not up there working. I figure out perplexing problems when I’m not directly thinking of them. I’m not sure how that works, but it does for sure.

I think the same works for advertising. Advertising gets to you in a subconscious state and is just sitting there. Somewhere I was reading about aerodynamics in road frames and it got under my skin. I think the numbers probably come from a random number generator, but the frames are said to save you somewhere between 10-30 watts at 40kph in effort through their aerodynamic tubing. Cervelo is saying their S5 is saving around 10 watts. The guys at Scott are claiming closer to 20 watts for their Foil, depending where the wind is coming from. 20 watts is pretty substantial.

Honestly, intellectually, I think the numbers are not real and there isn’t much going on here. Tony Rominger rode 55.291 km during his hour record on a standard Colnago track bike. This was a different era, so the number is going to be inflated, but you can’t tell me he could have went that much faster on a aero frame. That being said, I can’t get it out of the back of my mind. And if, by chance, I happen to get an aerodynamic frame, I know that my perception is going to be that I am saving those 20 watts and going that much faster.

It’s the same with the tire width thing. How much difference is 1 mm. It’s hardly much more than the thickness of your fingernail. There are 25.4 mm in an inch. Volume is super important in cross, but that one millimeter isn’t going to do much. That being said, I want to be riding 33 mm tires and not 32. When I’m going through my mental checklist, tread is really important, but the width/tire volume is there too. It’s never going to be a check off the list unless it’s 33.

We won’t even go into wheel technology. Claimed weights and wheel speed advertising are insane. I have no idea what to believe there. But if you’re not racing on $2000 carbon fiber wheels, you’re definitely in the minority. I’d probably do just as well riding 32 spoke Mavic GP4’s from the ’80s in cross, but that’s not happening.

This all is one of the fun parts of the sport of cycling. I think it is one of the reasons that cyclo-x has become more popular here in the US. All real cyclists love to get a new bike. Especially a new bike that fills a void and does something substantially different than their other bikes. And a cross bike does that. So riders are always looking for an excuse to go out and get something new. No matter how silly those excuses are. And a lot of the advertising is pretty silly.

Tony Rominger on his Colnago track bike, adding over 2 kms to the current hour record of the time.