I had to get one last ride in during 2013, and finally got some free time today to go. I was out for a little over an hour, just 16 miles in the neighborhood. The temperature started falling, and I wasn’t as comfortable as I was when I started out.
When I got home, I added the day’s mileage to my spreadsheet, and discovered that I ended the year with 3,391 miles. That’s the lowest annual total since 2009.
So it’s time to do some reflecting on the past year, and where my biking has come. Perhaps, where it’s going.
One reason for the low mileage is that I haven’t been riding very far this year. As I look back over my stats, I see that my longest ride was a whopping 48 miles. When you ride only three days a week, as I generally do, the miles don’t mount up. I have always relied on longer weekend rides to keep my totals higher. For some reason, I’ve found it easy this year to ride 20 miles instead of 25, 15 instead of 20, and 25 instead of 30. Heck, in 2011, I was contemplating riding a metric a month. It worked for about three months, then stopped.
I know I’m something of a weather wimp. I don’t ride when it’s below 40 degrees (4C), but over the summer when I got home in the afternoon, I found it easy to skip rides when the temperature was past 100 (38C). I don’t ride in the rain, if I can at all help it. So, all that cuts into ride possibilities.
Then there are some health-related things. I wrote about my gout in September. Thought it had been handled, and I’m now on medicine to lower the uric acid levels in my blood. But I got another gout attack over the weekend. I rode, except for Monday. The attack has subsided, and I feel fine now. But I’m going to have to be more aggressive at combating this, because gout attacks are no fun.
One way to combat it is to lose weight. I was a bad boy during both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Lived high. Gained weight. Not good.
So, looking ahead to the coming year, what are my resolutions? I don’t make resolutions. But I am going to set some goals. One is to peel off the pounds (I won’t say how much, but I have a specific course of action I’ll be taking). One is to ride more, and farther, than I have this year. I’ll target some specific rides, which I haven’t done this year, in the hopes that preparing for them will help me reach those two other goals.
I’m looking at 2013 as something of a setback. I won’t lose my drive, however. Like a football team that has a bad year, I’ll just rebuild in the coming one. I hope the new year sees you reach your goals, too.
I have similar goals and I’m also a weather wimp 🙂 Best success for 2014!