In contrast with a miserable 2018, 2019 was a complete renewal: possibly my best remaining year on the bike, and arguably the best of my entire lifetime.

While it lacked crowning moments like the Pan-Mass Challenge or the Dirty Dozen, I set dramatic new high water marks for miles ridden, century rides completed, and level of fitness.

( Read more... )

From start to finish, 2018 was a disappointment.

After the extreme effort to conquer the 2017 Dirty Dozen ( blogpost) and my 250,000-foot climbing goal ( blogpost), I fell into an enduring malaise and lack of motivation that lasted all of 2018. On top of that, three long trips-smack in the middle of training season-ensured I couldn’t get back into ( Read more... )

Now that I’ve got three years of riding under my belt, I’ve become a lot more familiar with Pittsburgh’s sights, which in turn has made me a much more effective player in the local Tag-o-Rama game.

Last year I updated you by showing the 17 tags I picked up and 17 I placed in 2016 and 2017 combined. Here’s another annual update for 2018.

This year ( Read more... )

We’re halfway through August, and 2018 persistently continues to be a lackluster year. Even this “catch up on miscellaneous topics” post consists almost entirely of disappointments.

In one of my least exciting accomplishments, I’ve reached 16,800 miles on my 2013 Specialized Roubaix, surpassing the miles I put on my first bike, a steel 2000 ( Read more... )

So far, 2018 has been one of those years. Terrible weather that caused the cancellation of several events, lack of motivation following the effort demanded by the Dirty Dozen, a pulled calf muscle, and a two-week trip to Asia that blew a big gaping hole in my training. So there hasn’t been much progress to report thus far this year.

Last year, by ( Read more... )

I ha’ent writ much about the BikePGH forum’s Tag-o-Rama game since my first tag pickup two years ago. I’ve meant to get caught up and share the tags I’ve found and set, but figured I’d wait and post an end-of-year summary.

To review the rules: the person who is “It” sets a “tag” by biking somewhere interesting, taking a photo of the location with ( Read more... )

April and May is the time of year when you go out and suffer, laying down the miles and gaining the fitness which will serve as a base for your major summertime events in June, July, and August.

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It’s been seven weeks since my February post, which related my having ridden six days out of seven. After that, March was pretty much a write-off from a cycling standpoint, but April is coming together nicely.

I guess I can’t complain too loudly about being unable to ride in March. It was still winter, after all, and the weather was cold and rainy ( Read more... )

Aside from a couple ride reports, the last real update I posted was back in March, and a lot has happened in the intervening ten weeks.

Instead of going chronologically, I’ll organize this post along four major themes. I’ll start with some major repairs I faced, and the challenges presented by the woefully incompetent local bike shop. Then I’ll ( Read more... )

The most active cycling BBS in Pittsburgh appears to be that run by BikePGH, the local advocacy group.

One of the more interesting threads is called “Tag-o-Rama” and it’s your basic tag hiding and finding game, somewhat akin to geocaching only with bikes instead of hiking, and photos instead of GPS coordinates.

Whomever found the last tag goes ( Read more... )