Drugged Afternoon Ride

GRVL DRMA VI 2025

Tornado Warning Break-in Ride

Afternoon Ride - Xert

Zwift - 5x30 second stomps #Tired

This is by far the most painful year I've ever done this ride. I normally have a regiment of various supplements I take... a key one being a Glucosamine+Chondroitin+MSM.  The importance for that one being that my knees aren't what they used to be and that one helps out quite a bit. The problem is that it's not like taking an aspirin to relieve the pain... it's something that needs to build up in your system over the course of a few weeks. Having been off the bike for so long, I stopped taking this and I paid dearly for it on this ride.  Like clockwork, starting at around mile 50, my left knee started hurting.  Being a 175 mile ride... that's a lot of miles to be riding with knee pain. The last 10 miles were by far the worst. At times it was so bad that I was riding with one foot and even though I was so close to the finish I was seriously pondering throwing in the towel. My only hope is that I didn't do any permanent damage to my knee due to my stubbornness.

Other fun facts... For those looking at my Strava history... You'll notice that I haven't been on the bike since my 72 hour indoor ride back in March. That's not because I forgot to upload any of my rides... I seriously haven't been on the bike since then! I was injured enough from that ride that it took me about a month to recover feeling in my toes, the blisters to heal and for the nerve pain in my hands to go away. About the time I recovered, my daughter came into this world and took over mine. Not that I'm complaining... but that took at least another 2-3 months away from getting back on the bike. The last few months... I've honestly been a bit lazy and came up with excuses to do other projects around the house and work on other things instead of spending time in the saddle. So... yeah... 5 months of no biking between these two rides! :p

Other than the extreme time off... which seems to have sapped away about 100W off my FTP, I also added on about 25 pounds to my weight. When you go from eating 4,000 calories a day to keep up with what you burn from exercise and then stop exercising... it's hard to shut down your tendency to snack and eat the same volume of food. That lasted for about 3 months before I reeled that in... the trick is I haven't done anything since then to drop any of the weight either. So, between the knee pain, the loss of power, and the extra weight... this was an amazingly slow ride this year.

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Craig Haydock

Ride Across Wisconsin - 2018 (4th year)

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Drugged Afternoon Ride

GRVL DRMA VI 2025

Tornado Warning Break-in Ride

Afternoon Ride - Xert

Zwift - 5x30 second stomps #Tired

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