seasons change—my 2022 cycling recap
a unique year—probably not the last, but maybe the last one racing
a little over a year go, when descending in the rain down redwood road in the east bay i hit a puddle-occluded pothole so hard that i dented my front rim beyond repair. the tubeless shwalbe held just enough air for me to limp back to my campsite where i threw my wet clothes in my truck and shivered down to the showers with a handful of quarters to try and get warm before heating up some leftover pasta and downing a nightcap recovery shake.
i didn’t get a look at the wheel until the next morning. thankfully, not only had i finally slept the whole night, but the weather had improved enough to momentarily distract me from the challenge of fixing my bike. with coffee and oatmeal in hand and my camera on my back, i wandered down the campground road to watch the sunrise over the lake. body-length strips of eucalyptus bark had come down in that night’s storm and were starting to steam in the morning sun. some fog—or a small cloud—was making its way out of the lake when i got down. my oatmeal was already cold, but i finished it. the coffee in my thermos stayed warm.
in 36 hours i would fly to idaho for christmas and shortly after, to italy for a new years training trip. either i would have to either find a replacement wheel in idaho (unlikely), source one online (temporally risky)—or, locate one in the bay area. i decided i’d check craigslist, and then tried to sign on to work from inside my truck where i’d turned on the heat to thaw my fingers enough to type. the t-mobile signal was 3g, so unworkable. i tethered to my phone’s at&t hotspot. that was good enough to shoot off some emails to buy me time for the trip down to a grocery store where the midband 5g was strong. i was working on m&a due diligence at the time, and thankfully the end of year is usually a quiet season for deal activity. the few morning meetings i had, i took on my tmobile hotspot while coordinating by text with a guy in san jose selling a pair of bontrager aeolous pro 5’s.
the guy didn’t seem to really know much about carbon wheels. “these are deep-dish aero, for serious buyers only” he bragged—about rims that were, at best, 50mm. he also didn’t have a car to meet me between castro valley and san jose, so i moved an afternoon meeting to try and get down there before the rush hour traffic started. the grocery store didn’t have any groceries, but it did have a noodle shop. i got a bento bowl and jumped in the truck to roll down to san jose.
turns out i’d misjudged him. the guy selling the wheels was jeff linder—host of the youtube channel norcal cycling, and as sound judge of aero wheels as any. we had a fun chat about the scene in ncnca and reminisced about the last time we had raced together—in the break with tyler williams and luke lamperti at snelling in february 2020 right before covid hit and races stopped. he handed over the wheels after we spent ten minutes trying to our zelle accounts to connect. i jumped back in the truck headed for the dumbarton quarry campground, where i could take the next day’s morning meetings with 300mbps without having to relocate. before packing up my stuff to drop truck with friends in danville until i got back from italy, i snapped a self portrait to mark the end of my first cycling sojourn with the go fast camper.
the 2022 season officially kicked off with a 5 day training block in frascati and riva del garda led by our host virgilio—the italian stallion. rome was colder than the last time i’d been, and garda had snow at higher elevations, but both were still fun as hell. the rides were amazing; the food was even better. poor sleep and jetlag meant the nights were tougher than i’d have liked, but i managed to hold on to my health, and we all passed our pcr covid tests so we could re-enter the u.s. in time for the coast ride.
the truck did fine work as team sag. sadly, i came down with a cold on day two, after alternating driving and riding on day one. my coach warned me it would happen when we forecasted my tsb in november. i drove with the team the rest of the way down to los angeles where i set up my camp for the next two weeks in malibu creek state park. in mid january, even los angeles is cold if you’re sleeping in the santa monica mountains. rest remained elusive. for the most part work still happened out of grocery store parking lots, although the erehwon in calabasas was less than ten minutes from camp, which made things easier than in norcal.
at dinner with some family friends in topanga, i learned the campground was also the site of recent serial murders, so i shifted down to malibu. groceries were further away, but the beach was close. in five months of living in los angeles, this was the only time i actually laid on the beach. i did however, ride on the boardwalk constantly—including the time a few weeks later when i broke my brand new trek emonda on a sandy off-camber turn climbing back up into santa monica.
getting the frame replaced and rebuilt took about a month, and the rim brake wheels i bought from jeff had started to delaminate after a few too many hot malibu canyon descents. ucla road race was supposed to be my season opener, and two teammates had flown down for it. my first actual race was the la verne stage race (formerly known as san dimas) in late march. the opening stage hill climb was on a friday afternoon. i didn’t want to take the day off, so two hours before my start time, i led a meeting on vc from a starbucks parking lot. this time i had the engine running to stay cool. the meeting went over, cutting into my warmup time. but it didn’t matter. when i made it back to the start, the race was shut down. state troopers told the organizers it was a permitting issue; we suspected the neighbors were just annoyed the road was blocked.
the road race the next day was tough. my fitness was fine, but it was hot and i didn’t have any feeds. after working in some early moves, i was on the backfoot when tyler williams attacked in the crosswinds through start-finish about halfway through the race. unsurprisingly, that move stuck. cramps set in for me at the end but i fought through them and finished with the pack. four pedialytes in a gas station parking lot set me straight. that was the end of march.
april and may were a slog. despite gorgeous surround, my mental health and sleep were getting worse. work was wearing me down, and my fitness had plateaued. 3 x 12 at 410w was a normal weekday interval in february or march. by late april i was struggling to hold a single effort at that wattage. with no races to speak of in socal and deteriorating motivation, my rides became mostly exploratory.
in may i made the difficult decision to stop structured training and coaching entirely. at the end of the month, i decided it was time to return to seattle. and within a few weeks, i was back with the premier racing squad preparing for the walla walla stage race.
the opening road race and time trial were good, not great. i attacked on the last lap coming over the climb through start/finish, but i went too hard and no one came with me. i knew a solo move wouldn’t stick, but i also wanted to make the other teams work to bring me back so i pedaled zone 3 watts for the next thirty minutes while the team from boise rotated turns to reel me in. by the time we got back to the final climb i was cramping and useless. we lost the stage. i kept it low-key in the merckx-style time trial, hoping i’d save energy for the crit the next day.
and energy i had. that crit course in downtown walla walla is one of my favorites. it’s fast, windy, rowdy, and lots of fun. i took a few of the early primes, then helped a team mate bridge up to the break. they stuck it, and he won. as a team we took every prime on the day along with the win. our winnings paid for dinner, and we made quick work of the growlers we won later that night after we learned that the next day’s queen stage was cancelled due to mudslides.
a few weeks later we had another stage race in baker city, oregon—an eight hour drive from seattle which this year proved to be a little too far for most local racers. we had less than 25 p12 men start the race, and less than 20 finish. my teammate ted and i were the only ones from premier but we gave a pretty good showing. the first stage is always tough. it’s got some kicker climbs, nasty headwinds, and a drag race sprint—all at elevation. ted and i were positioned well at the 1k to go sign, so i got to the front and started a hard leadout at about 500m to go. despite dropping ted off at the 200m to go sign with a 10m gap to third wheel, the actual finish line looked desperately far off. ted was sprinting well but the finish line looked like it was receding into the distance. at 20m to go he was caught and passed. we learned after the race that the 1k to go sign was at 3k to go, the 500m sign was at 1.5k and the 200m sign was at 600m. sigh.
the crit was similar to past years—i got in a break that lapped the field and ended up upsetting gc. since i wasn’t in the running for gc (didn’t bring a time trial bike), i had to position for the sprint. coming into the last lap i’m sitting on ted’s wheel probably in 6th position heading into the second to last corner. when the pace was about to let up, i sensed we would get swarmed—but instead of telling ted to ‘go!’ so he could lead me out, i jumped around him and everyone else. i came around the last corner at the head of the race with 100m to go but unfortunately was leading out max ritzow who came around me at the line—as he did the next day on the queen’s stage where we finished up at 5,500 feet after a 30 minute climb. i took second in both races, max took both wins.
the last usac race of the season was state crit champs in vancouver, wa. it was another fun race, a lot like the walla walla crit had been. i got to be active, and spent the last four laps on the front keeping it as close to 30mph as i could to set our sprinter up for the win. johan took it handily and i rolled in for third. like walla walla it was a bottomless effort—the kind of thing you dream about in bike racing.
that was effectively the end of my season. i had just started a new job and moved into a new place in seattle, so training was over. oddly, so were races. for whatever reason the usac racing season ends in washington around the beginning of august so we all just expend the rest of our summer fitness on the local city park crit and whatever sub-8 minute segments haven’t been claimed. my weekend rides shortened from four hours to two and my weekday rides were reduced to my fifteen minute commutes.
when the dark and cold set in for fall, i was beyond done. i started noticing more and more how each ride required at least an hour of “shoulder time” before and after. that’s the time required to kit up, get the bike ready, have a protein shake, clean the body and bike, stretch etc.. the difficulty fitting in trainer rides during the evenings without having to order takeout, or cooking until 9 also began to wear me down. it became impossible to ignore how much of my life i’d ceded to training and racing over the last three years. it is not uncommon for elite racers to only take 2 weeks off each year, and otherwise to train 8-15 hours a week, plus shoulder time. while i used to joke that cylcing was half-time job that reality was no longer amusing. into this little window of rest came tumbling all the things i’d put off over the last three years: work, relationships, skiing, travel, camping, writing, swimming, prayer, reading, play. all were pushed to the periphery of my life after i took an ftp and vo2 test in january 2019 and my coach told me just what the results could herald.
i’m finishing the 2022 season with about half the mileage i’d done in 2021 and deep uncertainty about whether and when i’d start training again. when i set off in my truck to train down the west coast in november ‘21 it was in the hope that i’d be able to string together destination rides while camping and working. i learned that it is effectively impossible to do all three at once—at most, i could pick two: either ride and camp, or camp and work, or ride and work. doing all at once for as long as i did wore me down. honestly, i felt foolish for dreaming. but in my quieter moments now there’s still tempered hope that i could do it better. it may not be with kom-ready fitness, or with a full time workload, but hopefully it will open up the space to remember what i love about cycling.