Reaching the 3,000 Mile Penultimate Summit

Early in the year, I had set a soft goal for myself of cycling about 4,000 miles in 2008.  It was a soft goal because I had never kept complete records on previous years’ rides and didn’t know where 4,000 miles fit into what I had done earlier.  Would it be too much or too little?

In August, having recorded detailed info on all the rides I had made to that point, I realized that 4,000 might be a tad ambitious and lowered my goal to 3,500.  3,000 of which needed to be completed before November 1st when the days started getting short and uncomfortably cold.

With this backdrop, I found myself out on Friday, October 31 – a cloudless, mid-50 degree day with the bright leaves of New England trees past their prime, but still beautiful.  It was a perfect day to knock off the last 30 miles needed to reach my goal.  It was a terrific ride, although I miscalculated sunset and found myself riding when it was a bit too dark as I wrapped up the ride.

This morning, I downloaded the last week of ride data from my trusty Garmin 705 and found that my total miles ridden through October 31, was 3,002.0.  Certainly not world class, but not too bad for a 49 year old guy living in a region of the world that has inclement whether a good percentage of the year.

I did some rough calculations on the ride data so far.  I don’t know what any of it means, but the numbers are interesting . . .

*Based on 600 calories/hour

Most of the next 500 miles needed to achieve the 3,500 mile goal for the full year will be on stationary cycles indoors.  Mind-numbingly boring at times, but actually much more time-efficient than riding on the road – no coasting and it’s easy to simulate hills and do interval training.

Being the anal-retentive data junkie that I am, I’m also going to do a lot more analysis on the data I have collected.  So, in the off-chance that you’re actually interested in learning more about this, I’ll post the data when I have it.

Related posts:

1. Falling Short of My Cycling Summit
2. Sucking Wind
3. Getting Lost in the Desert