Posted On Monday, June 2nd, 2008 By David Veatch
Mileage Goals May wasn’t a bad month. I had 594.8 miles out of a goal of 437.16. That’s 136.06% of my goal. Not to shabby. It’s no 600, but it’s mine. Still, May was a good month for getting miles in, averaging somewhere in the rough neighborhood of 28.32 miles per day. Of those 594.8 miles, 356.35 were bike commutes to and from work, and 238.45 were training. May marked the month that I finally got ahead of the curve for my mileage goals. I’ve been playing a game of catch up since the steering wheel days of March, and on the 13th of May, I finally got back into the black. I closed the month at 36.11 months in the clear, with a 75.46 being the high point. Commuting Of the 21 work days in the month of May, I rode 17 of them, drove 3, and worked over VPN for 1. Not my best month (that would be March), but it’s tied for 2nd with both January and April, both of which had 17 days of riding as well. Training I went on training rides three of the four weekends, with the first weekend seeing back to back more »
Posted On Friday, May 2nd, 2008 By David Veatch
Commuting to Work Great month for commuting to work. I took three VPN days and two drive days, but other than that, I was steady. I rode my Kona even on the day I had to wear a suit and give an InfoSec presentation to the Board. To date, I’ve saved $165 by riding to work instead of driving. It’s not monumental, but it’s not bad, either. Training April was a much better month than either March or February, and slightly better than January, but I absolutely have no choice but to make May and June stellar. The highlight of April was tracing the Spring Classic ’08 route from my house. A good ride, that one, especially considering I did it the day after helping the GF’s parents move. I was tired, but I was determined. Errands None to speak of. Still sans chain, so we’ll see how May works out. Thing is, I don’t get out much for errand type things, and when I do, they’re typically pretty far away. Anymore, the GF has taken it upon herself to get a lot of errandy things done, and while she does like to ride, she’s not the dedicated masochist that more »
Posted On Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 By David Veatch
Commuting to Work March was a fantastic month for commuting to work by bicycle. The best so far, in fact. Since there are so many months in the running right now for Best Month, that’s saying a ton. Of the 21 work days, I rode 20, resorting to driving only once. The weather was much nicer. Though there were plenty of days below freezing, none got down to the tear-freezing negatives of January. It got misty a couple of times, and out and out rained on me once, but since I love that weather, it was a Good ThingTM. Training It was a terrible month for training rides. 28.07 on the first day of the month, and 56.2 the last weekend. The weather, oddly enough, was better for riding in January! I logged 147.39 miles on the weekends then. Not a fantastic number, but better than 84.27, certainly. Bah. Errands There were no errands run by bicycle for the month of March. This is probably the toughest part of cycling for me. Making a switch from recreational to utilitarian cyclist is difficult, and frankly, aside from commuting to work and back, I’m not sure I want to. I’m on the more »
Posted On Monday, March 3rd, 2008 By David Veatch
See, I have this spreadsheet. On it, there are rows and columns with numbers in them. There are words here and there too, to describe the numbers, and to make it a little prettier… easier to digest. Mainly, the words are there b/c I had a little extra time and wanted to put them there, but for the most part, they’re pretty useless. It’s the numbers that tell the real story. It’s a story of disappointment, aching joints, fevers, physical and mental fatigue, and missed goals. According to my spreadsheet, February sucked. What the spreadsheet says about February is this: I had a goal of 382.51 miles minimum to ride. I rode 113.55. There were 20 working days in February. I drove 10, VPN’d 2, was sick for 2, and rode 6. I had a goal of 324 training miles to ride. I rode 0. My mileage goal to date is 860.66. I have 598.36, a difference of 262.30. Those numbers are pathetic. Sad, even. I have a lot of miles to recover, and a lot of rungs to climb in the bikejournal.com rankings. Still, in spite of that, overall, life wasn’t too bad. I credit my GF for a more »
Posted On Friday, February 1st, 2008 By David Veatch
Ok, everyone else in the cycling blogosphere is doing it, so I may as well also… I guess technically, December 07 was my first *full* month, but I only rode to work 5 times the whole month. Compare that to 17 times out of 22 times for January 08, and December doesn’t count. It was warm up at best. A toe in the water. Given that January is the coldest month of the year by averages over the last 80 years, and it was my first bike to work month since college, I didn’t do too bad. It’ll only get better from here as the weather warms up, and instead of fighting the cold, we start fighting the heat. Doesn’t that sound grand? Some thoughts and observations on my first month. January is cold. Cold weather isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, until it gets down near zero. Drivers along my route are, by and large, very considerate, friendly and forgiving. I’ve never been waved at or given encouragement by a police officer until I started biking to work. It happened three times. My fingers and toes need extra attention during cold weather. My face is impenetrable. more »