2009 Review

A bit of a fizzle...but let's try to find the bright spots, OK?

Trio's Metric Century A Month Challenge...I did 10/12. Still, I think it was pretty good considering my New England environment, though I succumbed in the end to knee pain, not weather.

My knees have always been an issue for me, so it wasn't really a surprise that my right one started to become very sore in August. That pain, on top of generally feeling lousy in the hot weather, led both consciously and unconsciously to me putting energy into other things that were easier than getting on the bike and also kind of refreshing mentally (though I still love cycling!). Unfortunately, my knee continues to be sore despite all the rest with pedaling and stairs being the most problematic.

Here is my overview table of riding by month.

And, here are the graphs, just because they are fun and easy to make and what else am I to do with all the lists of numbers? This year's graph, with all the riding at the beginning is basically the opposite of 2008's graph with all the build up at the end! As pretty as it would be to have an even graph, I don't think it's something I can happily do. I think it's in my nature to have, er, cycles of cycling.

For the first time, I tracked the percentage of rides per bike/trainer as shown in the pie chart.

And the percentage of miles per bike/trainer as shown below.

I just wondered what I made the most use of and I like justification for a house full of bike stuff too ;)

So, thinking about 2010...After 10 (!) weeks off, I want to build up very slowly and see how it goes on the trainer. I would be happy with a much lower total mileage this year if my knees held up. I hope to spend some of the time I would have spent on the bike doing more walking.

Let's hope I keep on adding to my 'life' miles without too many huge gaps. Here is the updated table of my miles by year since I started recording them.

This last chart shows the distribution of the above miles by week. I know the font is too small to see, but you get the idea...the vertical axis is miles in increments of 50, the horizontal axis is weeks 1-52 repeated for each year. The color key is blue=outside, red=trainer.

Happy Riding in 2010, everyone!!!

2008 Wrap Up

This year was about making myself recover from a rough beginning. It's a little sad to look back at the first 6 months of '08 and see how little riding I did. There are such big holes in my graph. On the other hand, I'm proud of having pulled out of the slump!

The holes in the graph correlate to the death of my grandmother in January, a nasty flu and then basically moping for much of the summer over my loss of fitness. Finally, after a few false starts, I revved up for real at the end of July. 12 weeks later, I started feeling really good again!

Here's my table of mileage by month, showing 162 rides and a total of 4,236.81 miles.

This chart shows the distribution of my miles by week. You can see where I built up, peaking with a 265.16 mile week.

A Few More Stats
Road Bike Rides: 96
CX Bike Rides: 62
Mtn Bike Rides: 4
Solo Rides: 75
Rides with Jeff: 67
Group* Rides: 52
*at least one other person, not including Jeff

Looking ahead, I just have a couple very generalized goals. I want a more even distribution of miles throughout the year with two peaks, one in late spring/early summer and one in fall/early winter. I will ease up in the winter and in the hot, muggy part of summer. I want to do some trail rides on the mountain bike. We have to drive to get to trails, so that's been the drawback, but I miss the woods! I pretty much just want to keep having fun on the bike, enjoying the scenery, company of friends and feeling the benefits of exercising. My one specific goal is to complete a metric century a month!

Good luck on all your endeavors in the new year!

Edited to add:
The weather was dismal outside, but I had to start the new year with some pedaling. I set up the trainer and did an hour, 16.19 miles.

2007 Wrap Up

Things fizzled out in December due to weather and holiday commitments, but it was still a great year for me overall.

For a little background information, I really got into biking a lot in July of 2006 and started keeping records of my rides. Here's the summary for 2006, so you can see what I was starting from.

Almost all these rides were on my mountain bike. A few rides at the very end of December were on a borrowed road bike. We had a really mild winter in 2006 as you can tell from the number of rides I did in November and December.

My highlights of 2007 were getting my first road bike in February and my first cyclocross bike in September. Also, riding my first Century.

Here is the table for my 2007 outdoor rides:

And a chart of the above table, plus trainer miles:

Here is a chart of all my mileage by week:

A few interesting totals:
Solo rides: 51
Group rides: 46
Mountain bike rides: 4
Road bike rides: 140
'cross bike rides: 31