On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 10/1/1999
Confessions of a cyclometer junkie
Lately, I’ve been thinking about cyclometers and their relationship to cycling quite a bit. I recently read a humorous piece in Adventure Cylist by columnist Willie Weir, recounting a lifetime entanglement with bicycle odometers (leading up to finally kicking the habit). Then last weekend, we held a ride to celebrate our friend Bert reaching the lofty milestone of 100,000 bike miles in the decade of the 90s. After the ride, at a little party at his house, Bert’s wife got out all the logbooks he had kept over that span, noting down all the rides and all the miles.
He allowed as how he might be embarrassed to have us pore over the entries too carefully...not because they might be inaccurate, but because of the obsessive attention to detail and the almost encyclopedic recording of items so trivial no one but a seriously compulsive biker could possibly appreciate them. I gave the ledgers a quick skim and recognized in Bert a kindred spirit. For I too, at times, have been there and done that.
Bert and I both figure we have accumulated something in the neighborhood of 125,000 miles of bike riding in our adult lives. (We’re not including childhood bike miles, which are of such a nebulous, never-never nature as to be utterly uncountable by any conventional reckoning.) In my case, about half of my total falls in the cyclometer era. Prior to that, I rode in an innocent state of ignorant bliss. I can only describe it as being like Adam in Eden, before tasting the cursed fruit of knowledge. I commuted and ran errands on my bike, and on weekends I ventured out into the country to explore. I don’t know how far I went or how fast I went. I just went.
I rode a series of racing/touring “ten-speeds”...Gitane, Bianchi, Motebecane, Peugeot, another Gitane...all of them decent but unspectacular steeds. It mattered little to me how light or fast or trick they were. As long as most of the components worked most of the time, the bikes did what was asked of them: get me from point A to point B, and let me enjoy the scenery along the way.
Then, at Christmas, 1987, someone slipped a cute little Paramount cyclometer into my stocking. Cool! A new toy! That afternoon, after getting the turkey in the oven, I hooked up the little gizmo and carefully calibrated its robot brain by rolling the wheel out the prescribed distance along the hardwood floor. (Get it right!) Shortly thereafter, as winter weather allowed, I began riding with my new copilot on the handlebars. And after each ride, I entered the newly harvested data in a ledger. Suddenly, there was a whole new dimension to my rides. Not only would I have the enjoyment of the ride, but afterward, I could validate the whole experience by quantifying it.
But oh, what a Pandora’s Box this turned out to be! In considering it a dozen years later, I’m convinced the cyclometer has done more to promote and expand the world of cycling than any other single technical innovation. Why? Because it allows us to measure our performance and compare it--usually unfavorably--with standards set by others (often professional cyclists, whose accomplishments are the most widely published). It sets up a scenario where we can judge ourselves by presumably objective yardsticks, and in doing so, it creates in us a desire to inch our way up those yardsticks of performance. Overnight, like poor Adam, we go from being happy, clueless fools--riding for the sheer joy of riding—to fussy, obsessed bookkeepers, stressing over our stats and looking for some elusive edge to boost the numbers. And how do you find an edge? You buy it: new bike; new grupo; new shoes; new rims; new titanium chainring bolts, for god’s sake, and new (depleted) bank balance.
For me, it couldn’t have been more abrupt or more defining, this fall from grace. Only six entries into that first logbook, there is a special notation: “New Bike!” Yep. For over a dozen years, my trusty old Gitane had carried me through thousands of miles and millions of smiles. Now, after just half a dozen rides with the cyclometer counting, somehow it wasn’t good enough anymore. The bike felt the same and presumably so did I, but the numbers were adamant and implacable: I was going too slow.
So out comes the checkbook and bye-bye clunky old Gitane. And now the cow patties really hit the fan. Now my logbook starts to look like something that would do a tax form proud. Date of ride and number of ride (beginning anew each Jan 1). Then the route, listed in detail, road by road, with special notes about adverse weather, etc. Then the miles, elapsed time, average speed, and totals (subtotaled after each ride, again for each month, and finally, in an orgy of paperwork, a grand summing up at the end of the year). I calculated the average length of all my rides and the average number of rides per month...per week. But wait! There’s more...
So far, that’s not too weird. You’re probably saying to yourself, “Heck, that’s what I put in my own logbook.” But I fell so deeply into the thrall of the numbers that I couldn’t stop there. I kept thinking up other subcategories of data to record: how many long rides (over 90 miles in my system of accounting); how many short rides (under 30 miles). How many club rides; how many club rides that I lead; how many special events (centuries, doubles, etc). On and on. Then I started breaking it out into days of the week: on which day did I ride the most (Saturday...duh! Like I needed a logbook to tell me this.). In one year, I even tracked my caloric burn, based on some tables another numbers junkie gave me. And all of this was before those diablolical fiends introduced altimeters. Oh lordy... don’t get me started on altimeters!.
Now...all the numbers crunching in the world shouldn’t matter one whit, as long as it doesn’t affect your riding, right? But that’s the whole point: now, with the cyclometer calling the tune, your only priority is to massage those numbers in the logbook. And the worst one of all--the tail that most wickedly wags the dog--is MPH. I became obsessed with upping my average speed, in spite of the fact that any cycling coach will tell you miles-per-hour doesn’t mean squat as a training yardstick, because some rides are hilly and some are flat, some have peppy pacelines, some have killer headwinds, and so on. All different. But try to tell that to my compulsively agitated, cyclometer fixated pea-brain.
By the early 90s, I had become so addled by my mph fetish that I was laying out all my rides to avoid hills--not an easy assignment in Sonoma County--just to keep my speed up. And I was absolutely hammering all of the time...life as one long time trial. My numbers did go up in a very gratifying way, but at what cost? I hated to ever slow down, even for a few seconds, fearing that a precious tenth might drop off the dial. I begrudged any sort of diversion that might scrub off momentum, such as slowing to admire a view or a waterfall, or riding at a slightly slower pace to chat with a friend. In short, I was sacrificing all the pleasures that had for so many years made cycling the central dharma of my life...all in service to a little plastic puck on my handlebars.
Over the course of the past few years, the absurdity of this situation has become plain to me. Like many another junkie, I finally woke up to see what a miserable stew I had got myself into. Some folks I know have taken their cyclometers off entirely and gone cold turkey. But I use mine as a legitimate aid in planning many of the tours I lead these days, so I want to keep it. I just want to be the one in charge from now on.
One by one, I have quit logging the various bits of semi-useless information the cyclometer is still cranking out. I still record my miles, but that’s it. Most importantly for me, this year, I finally quit logging my average speed. How liberating! Now I can slow for a civil conversation with a companion. I can ride at 5-mph along the bank of a lovely stream. Best of all, I can back off and just noodle along at whatever speed feels easy at the moment, and I don’t have to feel even remotely anxious about compromising my numbers. It sounds so simple...so obvious. But when you’ve been as far gone as I was, it shines with the clean, bright light of divine revelation. Hallelujah!
Now I can stand up as a recovered cyclometer junkie and testify to any of you out there who might be afflicted in the same manner: there is hope for you yet! There is life after logbooks, and it looks good.
By the way: I sold that old Gitane at a garage sale. I used to see it being ridden around Sebastopol by a boy of about twelve...happily, heedlessly cycling through his young world, with not a cyclometer in sight.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net