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2018: Not Good Enough

A wet, grim start to Escape to the Lake Day 2

From start to finish, 2018 was a disappointment.

After the extreme effort to conquer the 2017 Dirty Dozen (blogpost) and my 250,000-foot climbing goal (blogpost), I fell into an enduring malaise and lack of motivation that lasted all of 2018. On top of that, three long trips—smack in the middle of training season—ensured I couldn’t get back into proper form in the spring.

A wet, grim start to Escape to the Lake Day 2

As if that weren’t enough, 2018 was Pittsburgh’s wettest year in recorded history, washing out even more of my training. In July, when my travel was done, I struggled through my remaining four big events, eventually riding myself back into fitness just in time for the season to end.

If we only count outdoor road riding, I rode only 2,776 miles: my lowest total in five »more

Taco-Drama

Now that I’ve got three years of riding under my belt, I’ve become a lot more familiar with Pittsburgh’s sights, which in turn has made me a much more effective player in the local Tag-o-Rama game.

Last year I updated you by showing the 17 tags I picked up and 17 I placed in 2016 and 2017 combined. Here’s another annual update for 2018.

This year I picked up (and dropped off) no less than 25 tags. In fact, Tag-o-Rama was one of the only things that motivated me to get out and ride, between three long out-of-town trips, my malaise left over from 2017, and the horrid weather.

The coolest bit is that my 42 total tag pickups allowed me to break into the ranks of the top 10 players overall (out of 125). I was pretty proud of that, since I still consider myself a recent transplant.

That said »more