It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to review my past year in cycling here, and it’s that time of year again. As usual, let me qualify things by noting that this is a review of my personal year in cycling. If you are looking for a review of the year for the cycling industry, sports, etc, you will need to look elsewhere (and I’m certain there are multiple options out there).

We all went into 2021 with great hopes that it would signal the end of the metaphorical train wreck that was 2020. The reality in that respect was underwhelming, to say the least, but it did see the return of some events and activities that had been taken off the board the year before. And the seeming continuation of 2020 into 2021 did mean that outdoor activities - like cycling - were still the best choice for exercise and entertainment. All of which reflects 2021 being another lemons-into-lemonade year.

Distance

While many things were decidedly not great about 2020, the decrease in travel and social engagement resulting from the pandemic did offer an increase in cycling opportunities. With that unusual benefit of an otherwise hateful year I’d managed to tip just over the 3000-mile line for the year. Usually my goal for the upcoming year is to increase miles ridden. In this case, however, I ended up deciding that I was going to try to match that distance again for 2021.

There were a couple of factors that went into that decision. First, for a person who continues to work full-time (and then some), there are practical limitations on how much time is available to be in the saddle. I felt like the riding I had managed the year before was bumping up against that limit. In fact, pushing myself up to that 3000 mile limit required a December riding push that was unusual for me and largely made possible by an unusually mild onset to our usual northern Illinois winters.

Second, at least early on it seemed like 2021 held the promise of the world opening up. If it had happened in earnest, it would have made the prospect of meeting that goal very challenging. It didn’t turn out that way, of course, but we didn’t know that at the end of last year.

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All of which is to say that I was able to hit that goal. In fact, I was able to pull it in a little early, hitting the mark on November 10th of 2021. This owes in part to setting up longer rides to build distance in preparation for multiple group events occurring in the late summer and early fall (see Trips, below) and, for better or worse, the unrelenting nature of the pandemic keeping the world somewhat closed down.

I’ve obviously continued to ride since that point, so I ultimately landed at 3239.37 for 2021.

So: goal met for 2021.

The other numbers surrounding it tell the rest of the tale:

Number of Rides: 201 - Up from 184 in 2021
Average distance per ride: 16.12 - down slightly from 16.33 in 2021
Total ride time: 240:31 - up from 226:07
Average time per ride: 1:11:48 - down from 1:13:44 last year

The decrease in average distance and average ride time may seem a little surprising. This owes in part to a reliance upon slightly shorter rides more frequently through much of the year. I had thought that the longer rides on the weekends while I was training for the group rides might balance that out - I had some of my longest rides ever this summer - but this turned out not to be the case. Given the overall picture, I’m happy with the results, and content with the trade-off this represents.

Machines

My Catrike Expedition was once again my primary machine for 2021.

She has been a reliable and faithful companion. Well, reliable for the most part. In the depths of winter this past January I did have one event where she stranded me on the roadside. This was due to a brake frozen in the locked position. And then over the thanksgiving holiday I had a similar issue, but this time due to a frozen shifter. In both cases this appears to have been due to moisture getting into a cable and freezing. In the first case, that may have been abetted by decreased fender clearance following a a repair. In both cases, the magic potion that is WD-40 (applied for its actual purpose) seems to have addressed the issue.

Aside from those minor, time-limited issues, the Expedition has been solid as a tank.

That said, the Catrike Pocket is still in the stable as well. It has been sized for My Lovely Wife, but she has, on occasion, let me borrow it when the need arises. To facilitate that this year I did, as planned, get a chain gobbler installed on the Pocket to better facilitate those opportunities. This removes the need to resize the chain each time I borrow it.

It works great - exactly as advertised - and means that, when the Expedition is down for repairs, or if there is a riding situation for which the Pocket is better suited, it’s just a matter of sliding that boom out, locking it down, and pedaling away.

I’ve had both of those examples occur since putting the gobbler on. In the fall I had a moment where I had to replace the star-spangled nut in the head-tube of the Expedition (those torque ratings aren’t just for looks, folks) and it took a couple of days for Amazon to get the parts to me. For that reason the Pocket is featured in my most recent I&M Canal ride, where I went to see if they’d really repaired the rustic creek crossing between Utica and Ottawa. I didn’t want to wait for a ride, and having the chain gobbler on the Pocket made putting the old girl back into play a simple task.

As for the other scenario, one might ask under which circumstances the Pocket is the better-suited machine. The answer, in my case, is any situation where a smaller trike is more convenient. And this is the other situation where the Pocket came in. I had to take our old Honda Fit in to the shop, and while I can stuff the Expedition into that car, it overtakes pretty much the entire vehicle except for the driver’s seat. The Pocket, on the other hand, fits nicely into the back, making it better suited for that purpose.

All told, however, those were the only rides I took on the old girl - two for the car (one to get home after dropping it off, and one back to pick it up), and one for the ride on the canal trail, for a total of three. Everything else was on the Expedition.

Of course, in years past my annual review also at least briefly touched on my use of my Cannondale SR400, my beloved road bike, lingering progressively more unused since the arrival of the trikes. With the addition of the chain gobbler that progression appears to be complete - the SR400 is still in the stable, but her tires did not touch road in 2021.

Trips

2021, for all its failings, was a better year for group rides than the year prior. Events that had been canceled or held virtually last year were up and running again this year in one form or another.

I am not someone who frequently seeks out group events, and in past years have really only participated in one or two. The one I most regularly have participated in is The Farmondo, a group event put on by Tempo Velo cycling club and Meads Bike Shop, both located in Sterling, Illinois. As noted, 2020 saw this event canceled. 2021 saw it re-emerge in a somewhat different form, as the Freemondo - a stripped down, smaller event that nonetheless still wound its way through some of the loveliest portions of northern Illinois river country. One of the key differences for the event this year was the distance. The prior versions have laid out 43 and 80 mile road routes, while this year offered one route that split the difference at about 63 miles.

Another event that I’ve taken up is TŌSOC (the Tour Of Scenic Ogle County). This event did happen, sort of, last year. The organizers addressed the limitations of 2020 by proclaiming it a virtual ride, and I did decide to tackle it then - the challenge of the 62-mile distance seeming a little less daunting without others around to compare myself with. But this year it was a full-fledged group event, so I found myself riding with the crowd. This ride moves through a slightly different area of the same river country as the Freemondo, above, and supports a very good cause.

I also decided, this year, to take on the Hilly Hundred, an event with two fifty-mile days of riding set in the hills of central Indiana.

In a way this was a bit of a whim at first - I’d seen it mentioned by someone in a Facebook group, having never heard of it before. But as time went on I began to see it as a challenge to really suss out the realities of hill climbing on a recumbent trike. Plus, it gave me an excuse to try out car camping in my Outback, which was a thing I’d always been interested in.

This year also offered an opportunity to complete a ride that I’d been trying to get done for some time: a complete ride from LaSalle to Ottawa along the I&M Canal Trail, with a little side-trip off the trail to stop at Tangled Roots Brewery. I’d made attempts at this in the past, but been stymied by trail conditions.

I also had an opportunity to briefly explore a section of the I&M trail a little further in to the suburbs, with a ride along the section starting at Brandon Road Lock & Dam. And the little bit of traveling I did do afforded an opportunity to pedal for a short period of time along the Rock Island Trail just a little north of Peoria, and on the Thorne Creek Trail in the southwestern Chicago suburbs. I also took a little spare time to reconsider a path in my old stomping grounds, and to my pleasure found the ride along the Perryville Bike Path from Rockford Bicycle Company to Rock Cut State Park much improved.

Outside of these sorts of events, as usual, most of my cycling started and ended at my driveway. The distinction this year was that multiple longer-distance events I signed up for - especially the Hilly Hundred - had me concerned about my conditioning being up to the task. This led me to spend a considerable amount of time with Google Maps laying out longer and longer routes to build distance in preparation. Most of these rides were in the ~50-60 mile range, trying to match the length and duration of the group rides. In the process of this I did manage one 75-mile ride, which mostly showed me that, despite all the training to that point, I wasn’t quite ready for a full century - somewhere in the last 5-8 miles of that route my legs turned into jelly. Fortunately, it turned out that a day of rest between rides made all the difference in the world for the Hilly Hundred.

Miscellaneous

All of the time riding did reveal the fact that the lumbar support built into my Expedition’s mesh seat does have a finite life span. This led me to briefly consider purchasing a new seat - a not-inexpensive task in an era fraught with supply chain delays - until some helpful folk in a Catrike group offered up an extremely low-cost alternative that worked perfectly.

It also afforded me the opportunity to determine how well the battery in my iPhone 12 Pro Max - which I use as my cycling computer, entertainment source, and safety lifeline - would handle extended distance rides without a battery assist. Specifically, I wanted to know how long it would last in its usual setup with the screen fully-lit and providing feedback, and how much time I would gain if I used the option of running with the screen dark and using my Apple Watch and the audio alerts for the feedback.

Next Year

A big part of the purpose of going through this annual exercise is to sort out what I want my goals to be for next year. The starting point for that, for me, is always to consider what I should target for mileage the coming year.

At the risk of being redundant, of repeating myself, of saying the same thing over and over again, I do think I’m up against the practical limit of mileage I can manage in a year with my work schedule. 2021 saw that come out to 3239, so I believe it is reasonable to look at a goal of hitting 3250 for 2022. In fact, I had hoped to bring things up to that number this year - ending on a round number being somewhat of a need for me - but the weather simply refused to cooperate over the last few days of the year.

In terms of rides and routes, I will plan to sign up for whatever version of The Farmondo occurs for 2022, and I think I will ride TŌSOC again. I’m on the fence for the Hilly Hundred. I enjoyed the ride, and the event was well organized - I can definitely recommend it if this type of event appeals to you - but the travel and overnight stay makes it a big commitment for me. Plus, in a lot of ways I feel like the questions I entered the event to resolve have been answered. I may, instead, look for something else more local if I feel like I want to add a third group event in 2022.

Outside of that I’m realizing that, while I managed at least three separate rides along the I&M Canal trail this past year, I never made it back to the Hennepin Canal. I’d like to rectify that, and maybe take a stab at an overnight ride, camping along the trail. In addition, I think I’d like to see if I can’t ride the open road section between the I&M and Hennepin trailheads in LaSalle and Bureau Junction respectively. These two trails are supposed to make up most of the Illinois portion of the Great American Rail-Trail (somewhat ironic, given that neither is a rail-trail, per se), so it would be good to see how challenging it is to connect the two.

In terms of machines, I’m pretty happy with my Catrike Expedition as my primary machine, but I have been thinking pretty hard about the idea of getting a fairing for contending with the chilly and windy seasons out here on the prairie. There’s a fair chance (no pun intended… ok, that’s not true) that I’ll find a way to make that happen this coming year. Hopefully that will come about sooner rather than later, since the year starts in the chilly season.

So - good riddance to 2021, and a happy new year to you!