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| On McCourtney road |
Looks like I won't be riding much this last week of the year, so I think it a good time to jot down some reflections on this strange year. Besides the usual Covid related issues, I had an unexpected physical problem develop by late summer; I was experiencing some sharp pain in my left knee. I mentioned it to my doctor at my annual physical so he ordered an x-ray. This revealed I had developed tendonitis in that knee, (along with a little arthritis which I think has probably been there for some time).
Therefore, I was forced off my bike for a good month while trying various remedies including rest, ice and topical ointments. I was able to gradually start biking again, but only for short rides. I built up to 20-30 mile rides at a pretty slow pace, even for me!
One other thing I did was reduce my gearing, I changed my big rings on my two main bikes, (the Mercian KOM and the Ritchey). I replaced the 46's with 44's and actually used my granny gears for almost all of my climbing, never standing up on the hills as that caused my knee a lot of discomfort. Another thing I changed was my seat height, I found that raising the saddle about 1.5 centimeters seemed to ease some pressure on that knee!
By the time of this writing, (just after Christmas), I'm happy to report that almost all of my knee pain seems to have disappeared!
Reflecting on this episode, I now suspect that one possible cause of my tendonitis may have been my lowering my saddle earlier this year while experimenting with my riding position and trying to resolve a problem I had with my right foot! When I raised my saddle back to it's original height I definitely felt better! Interesting!
Despite my knee problem, and only riding one century, I managed to again accumulate over 5,000 miles on the bikes in 2021, 5,220 miles to be exact! I was surprised to hit 5,000 with so much time off the bike.
Because of my injury my rides were not so noteworthy this year. Besides the century I did enjoy one long mixed gravel/pavement ride with the Ritchey that was about 100 kilometers. Most other rides ranged from 15 to 35 miles around the area. Here's a link to the ride report on my century: First century for 2021 and here's a link for the gravel ride: Ride around Camp Far West
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| Along the Feather River on this year's century. |
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| On the gravel north of Camp Far West. |
Another interesting, but short ride was from Cisco Grove along frontage roads to Donner Summit outside of Soda Springs. The road through Soda Springs was undergoing a rebuild and I would have been better served to have ridden my Ritchey through there! The Mercian managed quite well, though!
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| On Donner Pass Road at the Summit. |
As far as equipment news, there were two items I worked on this year. I built a set of tubeless wheels for the Ritchey which allowed me to try 48mm Gravel King tires. The lightness of this tubeless set up is pretty impressive and they performed pretty well although I think 48mm may be a bit of overkill for most of my riding!
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| The Ritchey with 48's! |
The other mod I performed was to change to triple chainrings. This turned out to be quite timely as I really needed the lower midrange when my knee went bad!
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| The Mercian's triple. |
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| ...and the Ritchey's. |
Here's a link to some photos from this year: 2021 Rides
Next year I hope to ride a couple of centuries and also try to get a camping trip in! I haven't decided where the camping will be done yet. I hope my knee holds up!
