2017: Year in Review

First, a few numbers:

 12,716 miles

 819 hours

 678,066 feet

 1 Everest

 66 centuries

 3 double centuries

Now let's look back at my goals (red = fail):

1. One century per week
2. One Everest
3. 12,000 total miles
4. 1,000 MTB miles
5. 2,500 commuting miles
6. Ride across the country (South to North)
7. Century in 6 new states
8. Ride across Nevada in 2 days
9. 3 bikepacking trips

As you can see, I failed most of them. 

4. I only did 420 MTB miles. This is mainly because, when it comes down to it, I don't like mountain biking as much as I think I should. It always sounds like fun. I love being in the woods and I love riding my bike. Shouldn't they both be even better together? For some reason at the end of most MTB rides I find myself wishing I had gone for a ride out on the road or a hike out in the woods. 

5. I'm not going to bother adding up the commuting miles because I know I wasn't even close. I have two excuses. First, this winter was very bad, so I fell behind early. Second, I decided to move to Alamogordo and thus spent a few months without a job to commute to. 

7. I only did a century in 3 new states, all of which were part of my ride across the country. I have to blame my move to Alamogordo again. I had planned on doing 3 new states in the Fall, but moving was a higher priority for me because it's going to give me the chance to achieve more goals in the long term.

8. I did not ride across Nevada, but I did do a ride to Las Vegas (a similar distance) in 2 days and a non-stop 400-mile ride, so I would give myself half credit for that goal if half credit was worth a damn.

9. I didn't get the bikepacking trips in. Again, this was something that I was planning on doing in the Fall until I decided to move to Alamogordo.

It wasn't a great year for my goals, but overall I was still happy with the year. I rode my century per week and I got in the big RASN ride from El Paso to the border of Canada. Riding a century in 6 new states is the one goal that I am upset to fail on because that was a high priority for me and I've failed in this category 2 years in a row. I hope to finally turn things around in 2018.

Week 52

Date
December 25, 2017

Distance
102 miles

Strava Link
Week 52

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
That's it for the year. I did a little recap of the year in the video, but I'll have my full yearly review post coming next week, along with my goals for 2018. Enjoy the rest of the year and I hope 2018 is even better for you.

I will be back again in 2018 to ride a century per week. I still love doing this and there's no reason to stop!

Week 51

Date
December 19, 2017

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 51

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
One week to go.

Week 50

Date
December 14, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 50

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
Not much going on this week. I did an easy ride out towards El Paso and back. It got windy out there, but otherwise it was a good day. Nothing to complain about when the temperature hits 60 in the middle of December.

2017 is coming to and end and I'll have my recap coming soon. Let's just say I was way too optimistic with my goals this year! I've been working on my goals for 2018 and will try to be more realistic. I'll still be making the weekly ride videos, but I'm also going to work on doing extra videos. Here's a warning ahead of time: some of them aren't necessarily going to be related to cycling except for the fact that I'll be riding my bike while talking. Cycling is my life, though, so everything I do is related in one way or another.

Week 49

Date
December 9, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 49

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
Good news this week: I signed up for the Trans Am Bike Race for 2018. This will be my #1 goal for 2018 and I'm going to put all of my time/energy/money into it. That means I won't be going to Australia or anywhere else in January like I was planning before.

The goal is simple: 20 days or less. That's a good number to shoot for because it's measureable and attainable. My real goal is less specific- to ride as much and sleep as little as I can. I'll shoot for 18 days, but I don't know how I'm going to respond to sleep deprivation.

I haven't been doing a ton of mileage lately because I've been spending more time weight training and doing yoga. I used to lift 2-3 times per week just to hopefully keep my bone density up, but now I'm lifting at least 5 days and going heavier than before. As far as yoga, I used to do 5-10 minutes a day mostly for my hamstrings, but now I'm doing at least 30 minutes. I'm trying to get healthier overall and be less one-dimensional. I also want to put on a little weight, which will help me in the Trans Am.

I'm going to focus on that stuff until probably mid February and then I'll step up the bike training. I'll shoot for back-to-back centuries 3 times per month and I'll start doing some dreaded intervals. I'll also do a test trip of 500-1000 miles in March or April so I can test out some equipment and do some mental training.

I'm excited for the Trans Am and I'm really looking forward to the racing environment. It's going to be something new for me and I know I'm going to learn a lot along the way.

Week 48

Date
December 1, 2017

Distance
106 miles

Strava Link
Week 48

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
Bad news: I was not selected to race the Indian Pacific Wheel Race. Like I said in my Strava description for this week's ride, I'm still mad and I don't want to say something that I'm going to regret later on. I will say that I'm annoyed that they put my little profile on their Facebook page. It's embarrassing now and it just makes me look like an idiot. Can't I make myself look like an idiot on my own platforms? Those have a much smaller following.

So, the original backup plan was to go to Australia on my own in January, which I mentioned in this week's video and have also mentioned in previous videos. However, I'm irrationally mad at Australia as a whole now and I'm looking into other places I might want to visit. I'm looking all over. I have a few places in mind, which I might talk about next week.

The more important thing to mention right now is that I am going to apply for the Trans Am Bike Race. I can do rides on my own and those are all well and good, but I really had my heart set on a race because I think the spirit of competition will make me push harder than I would on my own. Hopefully I have better luck this time.

Week 47

Date
November 24, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 47

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
This was a simple ride out towards Ruidoso and back. It seems like a pretty good spring or fall ride. There's not a whole lot of climbing, but just enough to keep things interesting. It's certainly more than the flat routes I do out towards Las Cruces and El Paso.

Here's a note about Ruidoso: I visited back in 2008 for the Tour de Ruidoso, which was my first ever century in New Mexico. Here's a link to that ride. (Sorry about the state of the other blog. I need to do some major updating over there and lots of pictures are missing now.) If my schedule allows, I should do the Tour de Ruidoso next year, which will be 10 years later. I'm getting old!

Week 46

Date
November 14, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 46

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
This week I did an out-and-back on 82. I've done the climb up to Cloudcroft (about 20 miles in), but the rest of the route was new to me. It's a good route. There's a long, gradual downhill from Cloudcroft. It's a scenic ride and not much traffic. There's no shoulder most of the way, but I never felt like I needed one. 

I'm not sure if I'm just picking bad days or if it tends to be windy up there. Today was pretty windy, and so was the ride I did in the higher elevations 2 weeks ago. It wouldn't surprise me if the wind is normally stronger up there. The good news is that it's usually a tailwind on the climb up to Cloudcroft.

Speaking of the climb to Cloudcroft, it has similar stats to Mt. Rose in Reno, but for whatever reason Mt. Rose feels like a much more difficult climb. Here are the Strava Links: Cloudcroft, Mt. Rose. Do 2 extra miles make that much more of a difference? Mt. Rose has a few ups and downs, while the climb to Cloudcroft is fairly steady, so that could be factor. Maybe it's the wind? There tends to be a tailwind for the Cloudcroft climb. Not so for Mt. Rose. However, I've ridden both on a calm day and Mt. Rose still feels more difficult than I would predict from looking at the stats alone. I'm not sure what else it could be. It's not the elevation. Both end above 8,500 feet.

Don't get me wrong. The climb to Cloudcroft isn't easy. I'm fortunate that I've been able to live close to such great climbs. I'll tell you what, though. I doubt I have ever done Mt. Rose as late in the year as November 14th. I did this descent today wearing just my normal base layer, a normal jersey, sun sleeves, and a thin jacket.

Week 45

Date
November 9, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 45

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
I did an easy ride this week. It was cloudy when I woke up and I really wasn't feeling it, but you know how that works. As soon as you get out there riding things start feeling better. The clouds also cleared up and it turned out to be a pretty nice day.

I rode 54 south towards El Paso. This is part of the route I used when I rode from El Paso to Canada earlier this year. It's a divided highway, but there's plenty of shoulder and it's easy to ride. I still remembered which gas station I stopped for when I was riding through back in June. It's funny how that was less than 6 months ago and I had no idea at the time that I would be living here in the future. It makes me wonder what will be happening 6 months from now. Truth is, I have no idea. I have plans until March and the future is a mystery after that.

Week 44

Date
November 1, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 44

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
My camera died this week, so the video isn't great. Today I did the climb to Cloudcroft and continued on to 244. The scenery was great out there and the road was nice and quiet. It was a little windy today, but pretty warm considering that it's November 1. I can't wait to do this ride in the summer when it's nice and hot.

I know it's still the honeymoon period, but so far I'm loving Alamogordo. There are flat roads, there's this long climb to Cloudcroft, and I was recently told about a climb in town that is 0.4 miles at 16%. I've done it twice now and it's a nice little lung burner. There's not a wide variety of climbs like I had in Reno, but I'm pretty sure the winter weather here is going to make up for that. And did I mention that my house was super cheap?

Week 43

Date
October 28, 2017

Distance
106 miles

Strava Link
Week 43

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
From now on you can call me Adamogordo. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Anyway, this is my first weekly ride from Alamogordo. One of the nice things about Alamogordo is that I can ride in all 4 directions. I can head south towards El Paso, north towards Carrizozo, east towards Cloudcroft (climbing), or west (ok, really southwest) towards Las Cruces. That's going to be nice because I will always have the option to plan my ride around the wind if I want.

I rode the north/south options earlier this year when I rode from El Paso to Canada and I've been to Cloudcroft via automobile, so it made sense to head out towards Las Cruces and see what that was like. It turned out a lot better than I thought. There is a very wide shoulder the whole way, which I love. Early on the route passes by White Sands National Monument. You can't see a whole lot from the highway, but a few sand dunes are visible. I don't know why, but it seems to add a little excitement to the ride.

The route is super flat, but there are mountains off in the distance and the views are nice. Then, about 44 miles into the ride, there's a little climb up to San Augustin Pass. It's 5.5 miles at 5%, which is nothing to write home about but is a welcome change from how flat the rest of the ride is. The views are pretty nice in that area, too. The road doesn't twist and turn very much, so I'm sure this is a tough climb when there's a headwind.

This is sure to become one of my regular routes, especially when the winds are W or SW.

Week 42

Date
October 22, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 42

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
This was my last weekly ride in Nevada. I went out to Carson Pass for a nice view of Red Lake. That's probably my favorite view (easily accessible by bike) in the area. I had to see it one last time. The foliage was a little bit past its peak, but beautiful nonetheless.

I'm going to miss living here. When the weather is good the riding is incredible. I've been lucky to live in northern NV for the past 7 years or so, but at a certain point you have to be able to give something up if you want to experience new things. I'm a little sad to leave, but more excited to see new places and ride new rides. Thanks for the memories, Nevada. It was fun while it lasted.

Week 41

Date
October 14, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 41

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report
My last few posts haven't had ride reports. Sorry about that. I've been super busy and I'll give you the short version of the story. A while back I went to Alamogordo to look at houses. I ended up putting in an offer on one of them, but was outbid by someone else. Well, time passed and I pretty much forgot about the whole thing, but I got a call saying that the other offer went through and my offer was now the highest. Did I want to keep my offer on the table? I did.

Well, my house here in NV wasn't quite ready to sell and I had been slacking a little since my offer was declined. All of the sudden I had a lot of work to do. That's what I've been doing recently. I've been working like crazy on the house and not doing much else. In some ways it has been fun. In other ways it has been super stressful. I've lost some fitness, but I'm still on pace to ride a century every week and I should hit my 12,000 mile goal for the year. I'm going to fail most of my other yearly goals, but as soon as this whole moving process is over, my life will be in a much better place and I will have a lot more time to ride and freedom to do whatever I want. More on that later.

Meanwhile, this was just a simple, flat ride that I squeezed in between all the house work.

Week 40

Date
October 8, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 40

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 39

Date
October 1, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 39

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 38

Date
September 24, 2017

Distance
105 miles

Strava Link
Week 38

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 37

Date
September 11, 2017

Distance
111 miles

Strava Link
Week 37

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 36

Date
September 5, 2017

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 36

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 35

Date
August 28, 2017

Distance
103 miles

Strava Link
Week 35

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Week 34

Date
August 21, 2017

Distance
104 miles

Strava Link
Week 34


Route Map/Profile

Weather

Note the temperature drop around 10:00 for the eclipse.

Ride Video

Ride Report 

Today was the eclipse, and I celebrated the only way I know how: with a ride. We didn't get the full eclipse here, and I didn't have time to drive 6 hours to Idaho, so I had to settle for a partial eclipse. It was still an interesting experience. It was morning, but it felt like the sun was setting. Things got a little darker and the biggest thing I noticed was that the sun wasn't shining brightly on the mountains like usual. The other thing that jumped out was the temperature drop. You can actually see it on the weather graph above.

None of that really shows well in the video, but it was a fun day out there. Another note about the videos- they are a little shaky because I broke the little square mount (100% my fault) and I'm waiting for the replacement. I bought the cheapest one I could find on Amazon, and it's coming all the way from China. I'm sure you're sad that my crappy videos are about 5% crappier.

Week 33

Date
August 14, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 33

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 

It looked like it might rain, so I did a flatter route down to Bridgeport and back. That ended up being a bad decision, because it didn't rain and it was pretty smoky down near Bridgeport. No big deal, though. As long as I can ride, life is good.

Week 32

Date
August 13, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 32

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 

Warning: Non-cylcling rambling ahead.

As mentioned last week, August is off to a slow start. I flew in to ABQ last week on Monday afternoon. The whole trip didn't quite go as planned. The plan was to fly to ABQ, get my rental car, then drive to Alamogordo to look at some houses the next morning. Well, there was a flight delay of about 1 hour. I had the car reserved with Budget, which closed at midnight. Unfortunately, the rental car center isn't inside the airport, so I had to catch a shuttle. I went outside and one was leaving right as I walked to the bus stop.

The next shuttle wasn't too far behind, but I saw the clock tick past 12:00 about halfway into the 5-minute ride. I thought Budget would still be open, because they had my flight number and I'm sure that last flight of the day is delayed fairly often. I was wrong. Nobody was around except the Hertz guy and some janitors. Hertz was going to cost about an extra $100, so I decided to just stay until 5:00 AM when Budget would open up again. I tried to sleep a little, but it wasn't happening. (This will become important later.)

When they did open (5 minutes late, I might add), the counter lady was saying my car wasn't ready and I would have to wait some more. I was pissed. I was less than nice to her (sorry), and she finally agreed to let me take a van. I hate to be a dick, but it seems like sometimes that's the only way to get things done in this world. If you're ever going to ABQ and coming in on the last flight, rent at Hertz.

I made it to Alamogordo and looked at a few houses Tuesday morning. There was one I really liked and 3 that seemed to be priced a little on the high side. Unfortunately, there were 2 others that I was most interested in that I couldn't actually look at because the realtor just quit his agency or something and we couldn't get the keys. I would have been mad, but I really liked the one house and made an offer on it.

I made my way back to ABQ, where I found out that there were multiple offers on the house already. I'm not sure if they priced it low to start a bidding war or what. Well, I'm not interested in bidding wars, so I just kept my offer the same and figured I would be 0-2 in my house offers this year. (I made an offer on a house in AZ a few weeks back, but didn't get that one.) Now it was starting to feel like a wasted trip. The other houses seemed overpriced compared to the house I made an offer on, but if that house was artificially low then my whole thought process was messed up. Now not being able to see those other houses was more of a problem. I kept telling my realtor to keep an eye on stuff since I was coming from so far away. Obviously she wasn't doing that. I could have found some other houses to look at if I had known. I suppose the bigger lesson is that I should leave more than one day to look at houses next time. That way I'll have more time to adjust.

Wouldn't you know, my flight to RNO ended up being late. That meant I got about zero sleep on both Monday and Tuesday night. I woke up Wednesday with a sore throat. What's funny is that I'm around sick people all the time at work and never get sick, but I ended up getting sick on my off days due to lack of sleep. I don't get sick very often, and when I do it usually only lasts a day or two. This time lasted a little longer than normal- 3 solid days plus a few lingering snotty days. Then I had a visitor coming to town, so I ended up taking 5 days off the bike in total.

Later on I was told that the house got an offer for $14,000 more than the list price. I don't know what the deal was and my realtor didn't offer any insight (surprise, surprise). At least I didn't miss out by $100 or something stupid like that. The new price put it solidly outside of my price range. I hate to spend money flying out there to come home empty handed, but I guess I'm learning lessons along the way. If something seems too good to be true it probably is. I shouldn't have let that house skew my opinion on the other houses I looked at, and I should have taken some time to find a few more houses to look at when I found out I couldn't look at the other 2 I wanted to see. This will be my 3rd time buying a house. You'd think I'd be better at it by now. But if you've read my blog for more than a few weeks you have probably learned to never underestimate my stupidity.

Week 31

Date
July 31, 2017

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 31

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 

I was flying out to New Mexico this afternoon, so I woke up early to squeeze in a flat ride. It was probably good to do a flat ride a week after Everesting, anyway. My legs actually recovered pretty well after last week's ride and I didn't feel super hungry the next day like usual. I must have been eating better during the ride. I won't lie, though. My motivation was way down for a few days. I didn't feel much like riding.

This is the last ride of July. It was a pretty good month. I got in over 1,200 miles and completed my Everesting attempt. Obviously June was a bigger month, but I can still feel happy about what I accomplished in July. August is already off to a rough start, but I'll talk more about that next week.

Everesting Monitor Pass (West)

Strava File: Everesting: Monitor Pass (West)

This is my 5th successful Everesting attempt. Here are links to the other 4: Geiger Grade, Monitor Pass, Nevada 844, and Under the Freeway Climb.

The Climb

Strava Segment

This side of Monitor Pass is 8.2 miles at 6%. It starts off easy, then there is a tough section that's 1.3 miles at 10%. This part is long and straight, so it doesn't look as steep as it is, which can be very demoralizing. It's also exposed to the elements and heat can be an issue. Luckily, if it's windy it's most likely a tailwind. (Don't worry, I had plenty of headwinds when I did the other side.) After the steep part the road levels off for a bit, followed by a short downhill. Then the road kicks up again. There are more curves and some trees, so this section doesn't seem as bad as the first steep part. Around mile 7.5 you'll reach what looks like the summit, but you have to go down a short hill and back up again to reach to true summit at mile 8.2.

Factoring in the downhills, it takes 11 repeats to cross over the 29,029 mark.

The Ride

Total time was 17:01:58. Ride time was 14:57:43. I was really hoping to cut down my off-bike time, but as you can see I failed at that goal. I did stop for 11 minutes to help a guy fix a flat tire, so let's just round off-bike time to 2 hours. I don't know what it is with the off-bike time. I always hit a bad patch (this time after climb #6) and take a long break to recover. Then on the later climbs I feel like I can't get enough food in me unless I stop to eat. I'm always battling not being able to eat enough. You'd think I would have learned my lesson by now. Every since my first Everest I've wanted to cut down my off-bike time. I've failed every time.

My other goal for today was to try to keep my climb times more consistent. In the past (and also on some failed attempts) I have tended to ride a little too hard early, which I pay for later. I made an effort to take it easier early on.

Did it work? I'm not so sure. Someone way smarter than me would have to go over all my old charts and compare them to this one. Here are the other ones I have.

NV 844

Under the Freeway

Geiger

Subjectively, I didn't feel like it really made a difference. It's not like I was feeling fresher than expected towards the end of the ride. It felt like a similar pattern. I started off well, then gradually got slower. Then I hit a bad stretch that made me want to quit, which was climb 6 this time. (Strangely enough, it doesn't really stand out so much on the chart like climb 6 from Geiger or climb 16 from NV 844.) I recovered and rode better for a while, then eventually fatigue set in towards the end.

I always have a bad climb somewhere in the middle. I'm convinced that this is mostly (perhaps completely) mental. I think my mind is trying to give me an excuse to quit. "Look, you're going slow. It can only get slower from here. How can you possibly continue for X more hours of this? You're already in your easiest gear."

I've quit at that point a few times before. If today was my first Everesting attempt, I wonder if I would have quit. I was fortunate that I had the experience to know that I would hit a rough patch, but if you just try one more climb you might be surprised at how quickly things can change for the better. That's Everesting's greatest lesson.

I like to think that cycling can teach life lessons, even though I'm not always the best at putting those lessons into practice. There are so many more lessons to learn. I'm eager to set new cycling goals and to learn from new challenges. I've had this feeling for the last few months that I need something new to focus on. I'm not sure yet what that something is.