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A milestone comes early

06.13.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 7 Comments

When the year began, I tried to predict how many miles I’d ride. Based on my numbers for the last five months of ’07, I guessed I would cover about 1,200 miles in ’08. Looks like that will be inaccurate.

After today’s ride, I found that I have already broken the 1,000 mile barrier. To be precise, 1,008 miles since the beginning of the year. I might be able to hit 1,200 by the end of the month.

So, how far upward should I revise my mileage goal for 2008? A reasonable figure would be 2,000 miles, which would give me six months to duplicate what I’ve already done in the first six months. Or should I set a mileage goal at all? Why not just plan on riding as regularly as possible, and let the chips fall.

I want to get some more long organized rides in this year, and have even been kicking around the idea of going after a century, perhaps in the fall. To do that, I will have to increase my weekly mileage as well as my long ride mileage. That seems a more sensible plan than just trying to hit a big number by year’s end. And by working on the training goals, the year-long mileage will just take care of itself.

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Categories // Records & stats, training Tags // mileage, Rides

A look at four months of riding

05.03.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 3 Comments

Just noticed we’ve entered a new month, so I thought I’d recap what my riding has been like over the past four months.

  • January – April: 35 rides
  • Total mileage: 645
  • Avg. speed: 14.68 mph
  • Highest avg. speed on a single ride: 17.15 mph
  • Highest maximum speed on a single ride: 37.4 mph
  • Longest single ride: 47.4 miles
  • Monthly mileage
    • January: 161
    • February: 96
    • March: 128
    • April: 270

Compared with many, many bikers — some from colder areas than Texas — this isn’t extraordinary. Compared with where I was a year ago at this time, well, a year ago I wasn’t even on a bike. I think I’ll be satisfied that I’ve come a reasonable way in a short amount of time.

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Categories // Records & stats, Rides, training

Logging mileage

03.19.2008 by Ray Niekamp // 8 Comments

How far did I go today?  After several longish rides last summer (longish meaning about six miles or so), the question became more important for me to answer.  Not for any pressing need, but just to satisfy my own curiosity.

In the course of mining the web for anything bike related, I came across Bike Journal.  It’s a place to log your rides online.  You can enter the ride date, distance, ride time, average speed, ride type (flat, hills, etc.), and bike.  Those are the six default columns for data.  If you buy a premium membership for $20 a year, you get many more columns, and the ability to customize the look of your journal.  You can also take a look at others’ journals and see what their riding is like.

Bike Journal has built up quite a biking community in the years it’s been in operation.  It was just this month that the owner of Bike Journal cut back the number of data columns you get for free, and pushed harder for premium memberships.

I had been logging my rides on an Excel spreadsheet as well, and customized it to match what my Bike Journal data looked like.   I added columns for maximum speed, my weight(!), and a  description of the ride.  I keep monthly totals and year to date totals.

So, how am I doing?  Well, that’s why I keep these stats — I’m trying to find out.  My average monthly mileage is somewhere between 100-125.  In the five months of 2007 for which I kept records, my total mileage was 567.2.  Average speed: 13.9.  It’s a baseline to build from.

If I keep to my current average, I’ll rack up about 1200 miles this year.  Not much, compared to an older friend of mine, who did 2200 miles last year.

However, I don’t feel compelled to pile on the miles to match his number.  I’ll try to build throughout the spring and summer, but mainly to get ready for organized rides.  And to try to get a handle on my weight, which is around 214 these days.  I’d love to get it below 200.

I can see a time when logging my rides will seem like a silly thing to do, but that’s probably a couple of years away.  In the meantime, I just realized by reviewing my stats that I’m behind my normal monthly pace.  I have to get out and ride some more.

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Categories // Records & stats

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