Gimme a Regular
It really wasn’t anything special, just the regular 25-mile “Team Decaf” Tuesday night group ride out of Highland Park.
At the same time, it was a rare and special event, for several reasons.
Beginning with the most mundane of those reasons: it was the first Team Decaf ride of the year. That’s normally a chance to catch up with riding buddies I haven’t seen all winter long, and perhaps test one’s legs to determine one’s current position in the hierarchy of speed. The first group ride always has a bit of a “reunion” feel to it.
First post-Covid Team Decaf group ride
Sunrise on the castle climb in Zwift's new Japan-themed world
But never mind this year, this was their first group ride in more than 1½ years, as they've been on hiatus since October 2019 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After such a long break, getting back together felt like an extremely special occasion.
For me, this also (hopefully) marks my return to outdoor riding. I actually did a couple outdoor rides back in March, but Zwift’s Tour of Watopia and my mission to reach Level 50 kept me on the indoor trainer through the end of April. With those out of the way and a new all-time record fitness level, I was all set to rediscover the hilly roads of Allegheny County as the calendar ticked over to May...
I started the month with a couple outdoor rides, only to be sidelined with a bad case of achilles tendonitis. Between my injury and additional downtime around my Covid-19 vaccinations, May was a near-complete write-off. The only things that got me on the bike (gingerly!) were the final PMC group rides of the season on Zwift, and Zwift’s release of a new Japan-themed virtual world (which I must admit is pretty cool). Meantime, my fitness absolutely plummeted. That’s what happens when you cut your training down from 200 miles per week to less than 50.
However, I’m now fully vaccinated, which means this was also my first time riding with any other people in more than 18 months. During the pandemic lockdown, I rode 7,700 miles; only 1,250 of them were outdoor, and all of those were solo.
So with all those milestones, yesterday’s group ride was memorable and even a little emotional. Enough so that I felt inclined to actually smile and photobomb. My ankle felt reasonably good, although there’s enough pain - both on and off the bike - to constantly remind me that I’m not 100 percent, or even 90 percent.
The next question is what will the summer of 2021 riding season look like?
The first order of business is getting my achilles fully healed and ramping my mileage back up. That might take quite a while, both because tendonitis is a long-term injury, and it is aggravated by overuse. So returning to long endurance rides is going to be a slow process.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to return to full century rides, which has implications for my goals for this year. I’d like to hit the Akron Bicycle Club’s century in July, do some kind of “reimagined” Pan-Mass Challenge ride in August, and either the Epic Tour in Toronto or the PMTCC’s three-state century in mid-September. And I’m eager to get my milestone 100th century ride under my belt, whatever that winds up being. But there’s no way to know when - or whether - any of that will happen.
In the short term, it’ll be a bunch of short rides, probably sprinkled amongst lots of recovery days. And putting some time into my PMC fundraising, as well. That’s really all I can do until I’m injury-free and back to full fitness.
It looks like my return to normalcy following the Covid-19 pandemic will be a very slow, gradual one.