I ended up riding 455 miles in December. That gave me 3,780 total miles ridden in 2023. That’s much closer to the 4,000 miles I had hoped to ride than I thought I would achieve. It came about because of an upswing in mileage that started the last week of September. That week, I rode 105 miles. It was the first time since I cratered with COVID in October 2020 that I had managed to ride 105 miles in a single week. But, the rest of 2023, I rode 105 miles every week. It signals a really nice improvement in my health that I’m hoping will last for a while.

Here is December 8th’s route. It was my only outdoor ride in the month of December.

COVID in October, 2020 was such a life changing event for me, I find myself comparing the before and after, especially when it comes to my performance on the bike, because it is there where the difference is so stark, even after most of the rest of the things I do started being mostly like the before. But there were definitely improvements in bike performance in September and October. First, in mid September, I decided to change my weekly three 30 mile rides to 35 mile rides. So, since that time, I’ve been getting in 105 miles a week on the bike, rather than the 90 miles I had been getting. I hadn’t gotten in that kind of mileage since before COVID. I seemed to be completely over the flu bout that hit me so hard in the summer, plus my surgically repaired knee finally seemed strong enough for more miles, so it seemed time to start doing it.

Before COVID, my average speed on the bike was around 15 mph. I would be faster on high effort days, and slower on days when it was windy, cold, etc, but my average was around 15 mph. But since COVID, I hadn’t averaged over 15 mph on an outdoor bike ride at all, not even once. That is, until October 20th. It was a nice day with fairly light winds, and on that day, I averaged 15.4 mph on the bike. I’ve had so many rides faster than that in previous years, but on this day, I had to do a little fist pump in my driveway when I got home. I know I’m never going to get completely back to the strength and fitness level I was at before, but at 72 years old now, I probably wouldn’t have been at that level still anyway. It’s all relative, and right now I’m feeling pretty good about where I am. I also made a slight increase in the amount of weight I’m lifting in my dumbbell work now too.

I ended up with 16 rides for 403 miles in September, and 17 rides for 490 miles in October. That October mileage is the best I’ve had in a month since that first COVID bout. It just turned much cooler, so all of this week’s rides have been indoors. Winters always seem to be more challenging for my lung health. We’ll see how I do this year.

October 20th’s route.

After only getting 120 miles on the bike in May because of my knee surgery at the beginning of the month, I had hoped to be getting my regular three rides a week all summer. It didn’t happen. I got the flu on July 11th, it quickly turned into pneumonia that caused two trips to the ER and a couple of days in the hospital, and left me with bronchitis so bad that I didn’t ride again until August 7th. So July ended up just like May had, with me only getting in 120 miles on the bike.

I haven’t been setting firm mileage goals these days, but I had hoped to manage 4,000 miles on the bike this year, just like I did last year. It’s not going to happen now. At the end of August, I only had 2,000 miles, so I’m likely to end up several hundred miles short of that 4,000. Nothing to do but ride when I can, and hope for a stretch of better health now.

Last week’s route.

I had my left knee scoped on May 2nd, to repair multible meniscus tears. Exactly three weeks later, Tuesday of last week, I had regained enough range of motion in the knee that I returned to riding. I just did a 10 mile ride on the trainer that day, a 20 mile ride two days later, and a 30 mile ride the day after that. I’ve been riding an extremely flat virtual ride on the trainer, and thought that route would be easier on my knee than actual road riding, plus when doing a virtual route on the trainer, I have the ability to stop at any time, if I need to.

Those rides went well, so this Tuesday, I was back on the road, doing a 30 mile ride there. I did another 30 miles today, and plan on another 30 tomorrow. I hope to eventually tackle some longer and more hilly routes, but for now, I’ll just stick to the easy 30 mile route to Mabank that I’ve been riding for the last couple of years, while I’ve struggled with all these health issues.

Just before my surgery, I bought a new Garmin cycling GPS unit. Up until then, I had been still using an old Garmin Edge 705. The heartrate sensor strap quit working, and when I got online to buy another, I found out that Garmin had stopped making it. I’d already been thinking bout upgrading to a new GPS, so this seemed like the time. Before the Edge 705, I was using an Edge 305 that I bought in 2007. And the data from all my rides since 2009 is on the Garmin Connect website. And, since I’ve started doing Rouvy virtual rides on my trainer, data is shared between the Rouvy and Garmin Connect websites, so the data from both my virtual and road rides is on both websites. So even though Garmin cycling GPS units are pricier than I really need with the simple close to home solo riding I do these days, I really wanted another Garmin, and not another brand.

I knew that I really didn’t want or need the mapping or many of the other bells and whistles the new units have. But, in the 16 years I’ve been riding since I bought that Edge 305, I’ve really become used to having my heartrate and pedaling cadence on the display in front of me while I ride. So even though I was willing to settle for a simpler unit now, I still wanted one with the capability to display those. I ended up buying the least expensive new cycling GPS that Garmin makes, an Edge 130 Plus. I found it on sale on Amazon for $199, and that included the new style heart rate sensor. It works with the cadence sensor I already had installed on my bike, so I didn’t need to buy anything else.

It’s tiny, but has the brightest, clearest display I’ve ever seen on a cycling GPS. Here it is next to my old Cateye cycling computer.

The sun was behind me in that photo, so it does a good job of showing how good that display is, even in bright sunlight. Even though it’s much smaller than my old Edge 705, the display isn’t that much smaller.

And once again, compare that display to the old one. Of course, there are other differences from my old unit, too. With it, I used a USB cable connected to my PC and the Windows Garmin Express app to upload my ride date to the Garmin Connect site. Now, all I have to do is have the android Connect app running on my phone, and when I click the button on the 130 Plus to save the ride, the phone automatically uploads it to the Garmin connect site. Such a powerful GPS in such a tiny package, I really like it.

Off the bike for most of May because of my surgery, I only ended up with 120 miles ridden for the month. Here’s the data from Tuesday’s ride.

I took off on the F5 yesterday morning and rode my 30 mile Mabank route. It was my first outdoor ride since early November last year. The weather this winter has been fairly mild, and there were days I could have ridden outdoors, but I wanted to make sure my vertigo issues were well enough under control before I tackled an outdoor ride again. But ever since I’ve been taking meclizine, my vertigo episodes have been infrequent, very mild, of very short duration, and never while I’m being active. I finally got to see a physical therapist for my vertigo. She did lots of testing, and thinks the source of my vertigo is my eyes. So I’m doing some eye exercises to see if that helps. If not, I’ll be seeing an ear nose and throat specialist for more testing.

So I think my only limitations right now are my left knee and my not-so-great fitness level, and I’m going to start doing mostly outdoor rides on the days the weather permits. As has been the case in recent years, I had my challenges getting my miles in this first quarter of 2023. Ongoing pain in my left knee has limited me, plus I had my usual January cold which turned into my usual January bronchitis, and I took a couple of weeks off the bike for that. I used to just ride through colds and bronchitis, but trying to do so these days seems to make getting well again take far too long.

I ended up with just 750 miles on the bike for the first quarter, much less than I would like and expect. My left knee surgery has been set for May 2nd, so I’m hoping for a better second half of this year on the bike. I’ve only made one fossil hunting hike this quarter, and didn’t find anything worthy of posting about. I’m hoping to be doing more of that as well after the surgery. The surgeon is just scoping my knee, so I’m hoping the recovery time won’t be too long. Yesterday’s Mabank route is more challenging than the very flat Cozumel virtual route I’ve been riding on the trainer, but it’s still a flat easy route. I don’t think I’m going to tackle anything longer or more challenging until after my knee gets fixed.

Yesterday’s 30 mile Mabank ride.

I ended up with a total of 4,014 miles ridden in 2022. That’s a whole lot less than I rode in my strongest years, but it’s a lot better than the 2,800 miles I had the year before. I got a shot in my left knee, and was pain free for a few weeks, but the pain and swelling has returned. I’m getting an MRI next week to determine what’s next for my knee. I’m still just doing flat routes at old man speed on the bike. I’d still like to try and get stronger when my knee is enough better to let me.

And my knee isn’t my only health issue these days. Thanksgiving week, I was at the ER twice with vertigo so bad I was completely incapacitated. I have patches and pills to help me with it, and I’m getting MRI’s next week to eliminate brain or inner ear tumors as a possible cause. I’ve been getting out for some fishing, but I’m not hiking creeks to fossil hunt, and I’m not riding anything other than my bike on the trainer, until I’m satisfied that I’m not going to crash and burn with the vertigo again at an inopportune or dangerous time. I’d had a better stretch of health since early in 2022, had been off my Wixela inhaler since June with no wheezing, and had no other major health issues, so these bouts of vertigo were a big setback for me, health wise.

The really flat virtual route I’ve been riding lately on the trainer.

I just realized I hadn’t posted riding miles since April. My left knee is still making riding tough, though it’s improved some recently. Here are my monthly mileages on the bike since April:

May – 382 miles
June – 330 miles
July – 315 miles
August – 247 miles
September – 415 miles

My mileage in August was down because of my 10 day trip to Scotland. The 415 miles in September is the best mileage month of the year, and more mileage than I did in any month last year. I’m taking that as a good sign. Physical therapy helped my knee some, but not enough to keep it from swelling and giving me pain when I ride. It looks like shots are next.

Monday’s ride route.

I ended up with 361 miles on the bike this month, 90 miles each week, which is my new norm. I’m still limited by left knee pain, but it’s been a bit better lately, so I’m trying to get stronger on the bike. More months like this one, where I had other medical issues, would be nice. I had six outdoor rides, and six rides on the trainer, this month.

Today’s route.

Tomorrow is my 71st birthday. Riding your age in miles on or near your birthday is a thing for many cyclists. I did it for quite a few years. With all the long rides I was doing, it wasn’t a particularly hard challenge. Of course, the older you get, the more of a challenge it becomes. I had written in this blog that I wasn’t so sure about 80 miles at 80, but that 70 miles at 70 would be easy. Of course I was wrong. 70 miles at 70 last year not only wasn’t easy, it was impossible. I had a severely cratered heart valve, and was waiting to get it replaced. The valve was so bad that my doctors had advised against exercise until I got it replaced, and I wasn’t riding at all. And I still had such severe shortness of breath from the severe COVID I’d had, that even without heart valve problems, I don’t think I could have managed 70 miles. So there was no birthday “Ride my age” ride last year.

And it’s been one health problem after another since. I’ve mostly recovered from the pneumonia I had in January, but the left knee problems that have limited me since December are still here. My knee has gotten a little better in the last few weeks, so I thought maybe it was time to start trying some longer rides. I had not done a ride over 40 miles since my severe COVID in October, 2020. I had built up to some 40 mile rides last fall, but limited myself to 30 mile rides or less ever since my knee problems in December. I decided I wanted to try a 50 mile ride last week, and that Tuesday, I took off and rode 50 miles. I was thinking about the possibility of riding my age this week, so wanted to see how my body handled a 50 mile ride. I had a lot of knee pain the last half of that ride, and decided there was no way I could ride my age this week.

But I reconsidered after I thought about it. That Tuesday, I rode my usual 50 mile route out to near Athens. It’s not a super hilly route, but it’s much hillier than my closer to home Mabank route. And the wind was terrible that day. I rode against it while it howled out of the southeast going out, then it changed to the southwest as I rode back, and I was still riding against it. I thought that if I rode a flatter route, on a less windy day, and took my time doing it, I might be able to ride the 71 miles. So that’s what I did today. I rode my Mabank route as a loop. It’s not completely flat by any means, but the inclines aren’t steep at all, more suited for a balky knee than my Athens route. I loaded the bike on the rack on my pickup and drove to a starting point near the loop. That way, I could start earlier than usual (I knew it was going to take me a bunch of hours to finish this ride at the easy pace my knee required), without fighting the bad morning traffic near my house, plus if I needed to bail out of the ride, my truck would be nearby.

I started right at 8:00 am, and did my ride. I hate riding at such a slow pace, but after soft pedaling for so many months, even if my knee suddenly improved, the rest of my body is now de-trained to the point that it wouldn’t be capable of much more speed than that anyway. So, I took my time, babied my knee, and finished the ride shortly before 2:00 in the afternoon. That’s a terrible time for a 71 mile ride, but considering that I wasn’t even able to ride my age last year, I’m just going to raise my clenched fist and celebrate completing today’s ride.

I ended up riding 390 miles in March. 250 miles of that was on the trainer indoors. Now that milder weather is here, I’d like to do most of my riding outdoors for the next few months. Next month is my annual checkup with my primary care doctor, and considering how long the pain in my left knee has lasted, I think that will be the time to get a referral and see what I can get done for it. Hopefully, I won’t lose too much time off the bike. I’d sure like to get stronger on it again.

Today’s route.

Yesterday afternoon, I took off on the F5, and rode 30 miles. It was my first outdoor ride since December 23rd. My left knee is still hurting, so I just did my closer to home flatter route. I got in nine online rides in February, for a total of just 200 miles. I ended up being off the bike for three weeks because of my pneumonia. I stuck with the nice flat Cozumel online route for all the virtual rides.

Pneumonia and my knee weren’t the only things that made it hard for me to get in my miles in February. On February 14th, one day before my 36th wedding anniversary, my wife passed away. She’d had more than her share of health issues the past few years, but this was still sudden and unexpected. I am now a widower, and there were so many things to handle the last half of the month. I’m hoping for a better mileage month in March. I’m planning on another outdoor ride this afternoon, but rain is coming, followed by colder weather, so I’ll likely be back on the Xstream, doing indoor rides, soon.

Yesterday’s 30 mile route.