Cycling Outdoors – September 2026

Summer is over. Or is it? Our heat way that took up most of the month of August has backed off a few notches and the oppressive humidity is down twenty points. September will probably end up being a lower mileage consuming month as I begin to integrate more weight training into my life. I had built a nearly two hour lifting workout, but decided that was crazy to attempt, so I broke it up into two separate one hour sessions. The two sessions focus on my back and shoulder in one and arms and chest for the other. Both sessions, as usual include too many crunches. Every day is always abs day. Now, I just need to get going with that.

“A” Day will consist of, Hammer Curls, Triceps Extensions, Concentration Curls, Triceps Kickbacks, Cross Hammer Curls and of course Crunches.

“B” Day will be, Shrugs, Bench Press, Dumbbell Rows, Chest Fly, Seated Shoulder Press, Incline Bench Press and more Crunches.

I’ll use Strava weight lifting to track. Strava is easy enough to use for this with a number of standard lifts and machines available.

First week of two days of lifting went OK. I’m still working into how much weight for each exercise and figuring out the number of reps and sets. Crunches was easy, ten sets of twenty-five reps. My starting point for the rest was four sets of twelve or fifteen, but I’m leaning toward five sets of eight as better. Part of the idea is to get to an hour or slightly more. And I’d like to get to more than twice a week. I’m pretty sure once El Niño winter hits, I’ll be either home gym or smart trainer.

Anyway this all makes for lighter cycling distances. This week being very light at 142km. I might still ride on Sunday. While I am still riding outside, I plan this next week to do more hill routes. And when not riding hills, try to remember to ride on the drops to get my body used to that again. I noticed on my last ride, it was far easier to do. My legs didn’t hit my belly anymore. And I don’t feel crunched up in a ball. My neck doesn’t seem to be bothered either. Quite an interesting development. I think this is thanks to riding, losing weight, the slightly more open bike fit and being a little more flexible and maybe some muscle tone.

One thing that is very clear from my two days of lifting is my shoulder really needs work. I was never real strong with overhead lifts and waiting this long to get going I think did help ease things. When I first tried the left shoulder lifting a two pound dumbbell overhead was a single event, not something I could do repeats of, or imagine sets. My empty hand was allI could muster for quite a while.

Well, I managed two days of lifting and it checks pretty good. I’m still working on the right mix of sets and reps. I think I’ll be moving to five sets of eight next round. We had a heavy nearly two weeks of very hot and humid weather with almost no breezes. That kept me off the bike, out of the garage gym and all the fans in the house set to stun. Inland a couple of miles it was ten degrees hotter with not even a breath of a breeze. We had three I think power interruptions. Just enough to reset everything. Though one screwed up anything connected to the internet. And of course happened overnight. I had one incident of my phone getting so hot in my jersey pocket it locked up. That was the decider to pause riding. The last part of the week cooled off, so I got a couple of short rides in. Cooler and less humid, but still warm.

Another week of riding and lifting. The lifting is going quite well, though the injured shoulder is going to take a good while to come back to full strength. I figure by the end if the year it should be good. My strength in the rest of my upper body is about where it always has been. On Wednesday I did the Flat Earth ride to the coffee shop from ARTIC. Good fun.

C’est Si Bon is quite good.

Over the weekend my wife and I along with a lot of other folks volunteered and worked our clubs annual metric and century rides, “2026 AMTRAK Century“. We had a great time, as did the riders who all seemed happy, a bit exhausted and really enjoying being out on their bicycles. For volunteers it is mostly a very early start to a long day in the sun. Registration check-in opened at 6am making setup starting around 5:30 and waking up around 4am. Once check-in is complete, we tear down and head to set up our rest stops. My wife and I were at the Solana Beach rest stop at Epic Cycles. And I helped out loading bikes for the return of metric riders at the north end of the train station parking lot. I got my steps in.

Bicycles are packed into a truck, with padded blankets between at the finish of the metric and century rides.

Lunch for the metric riders was a long block south to Culture Brewing. We didn’t have time to sample lunch offerings there with finishing up with the last group of century riders through the rest stop we tore down and packed up, then headed north to Irvine Station to help unload the returning bikes. We made it with just enough time to spare for a much needed restroom visit. And then we were done. Home by around 5:30pm, quick clean up, swap shoes and socks for flip-flops and a short walk to the beach for a relaxing meal. I took Sunday off completely. I did almost nothing all day. Monday was a ride, Tuesday was lifting day. Wednesday was Flat Earth Homies ride to coffee and back day, but that was cancelled.

I ended up the month on a bit of a whimper. A phone OS update was enough of a change to apparently screw up the sensors and app settings for my old V2 Wahoo Elemnt Bolt. I’ve been lifting, but this week with schedule issues I skipped. My Wednesday ride being delayed to Thursday.

Totals for the month:

Distance: 737.4 km

Climbing: 3,912 m

Time: 29:56 hours