Cycling personal goals

My goal is more naps. Other people are more foolish.

Not very goal oriented but a couple of riders have inspired me. In 2012 Mike Ross told me he rode 14,000 miles/year and I thought to myself “gee, I’d like to do that” so I did in 2013. Last year I heard Steve Eunpu say he rides 15,000 miles/year so I decided to try for that this year. I have an advantage over these guys because I use a bike at work but I ride a lot on the weekends too.

Long rides are sort of my thing. I’d like to get into randoneuring in 2015 or at least learn how to spell it. I’ve done double centuries so I guess the next milestone is a ride of 400K.

My friend needed motivation to tackle her goal of running 750 miles in 2014. I told her that I would try to ride 7500 miles and we could push each other. Well, she gave up by mid April… something about earning her doctorate in Genetic Neuropathy while also getting married….lame! I pretty much gave up as well as the winter had taken it’s tole on me. By April I had only ridden 500 miles. I made up mileage in the summer and suddenly the goal was reachable again (if I had REALLY long arms). If I keep up my pace of riding 40 miles a day 7 days a week until my last riding day (Dec 24th), I’ll come within 100 miles. Of course this will require hours of riding in the dark, cold, and most likely hung-over….missing holiday parties and quite possibly a divorce for Christmas…. and even then I would still be at 100 short. So be it, I am quite happy to let it go. I already passed last years mileage and will be happy with 7000+.

No goals next year, I’m gonna enjoy riding again.

I don’t really set yearly goals but I’ve had a number of cycling things I wanted to do for a couple of years, including

– learning to ride a fixed gear confidently
– ride a 200k
– actually buy a USA Cycling license and do a race season
– ride the C&O a decent distance
– do an endurance gravel grinder type ride
– improve bike handling (cornering, mostly)

Pleased to say I finally figured out the fixed gear thing this year, although I can’t skid stop and I run (and use) both brakes. Usually I use the front only but on some descents I use both. Also finally finished a 200k this year, and packed in a season of CX races – unfortunately my cornering is still terrible, and I had a bunch of flats last time I tried the C&O (admittedly, on a fixed gear with a wheel/rim not suited for it). Somewhat unrelated, I also finally started using road cleats this year (and got comfortable enough with them to use them on the fixed gear too), and I also bought my first pair of actual MTB shoes (not commuter/urban ones) since I first learned how to clip in (I still have those old shoes but the tread is gone, so I haven’t used them in years).

In the back of my mind I’d also like to clear 400k feet (122k metres) of elevation [as reported by Strava] for the year – definitely an arbitrary goal but a little more “fun” for me than distance/time goals, and it would be a “PR” (previous high of 395k feet). I haven’t ridden some of the more worthy climbs (Frederick/Catoctins/Skyline Drive/etc) around here for a couple years, so I’d like to re-visit those as well (probably next year though).

I have other fitness related “goals” that sort of sit in the back of my mind as well – other than being as injury-free as possible, I would like to be able to actually run, say, 5k without horrible leg soreness for the next 10 days, and generally have better strength/conditioning/flexibility/all that good stuff.

One thing I don’t set is commuting goals for speed. Just because so much of it is affected by traffic light timing and at this time of year, trail conditions, etc. (That doesn’t mean I won’t push on certain sections or hills – or take detours for a workout.) Making it all the year through the winter is a fun goal, as long as you have studded tires (imo).

@hozn 100547 wrote:

Lucky it is also the off-season.

But it’s also big miles in zone 2 time! podiums in June are won in January. or so they say.

http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?7744-Short-term-goals

That was almost a month ago – here is how I have been doing.

1. . Commuting – Now commuting 1x per week, and have commuted 2x in a week. Goal – Commute 2x per week on regular basis, and 3x in a week at least once

Not so good. If anything, last few weeks I have fallen back to about one half a commute per week. On the bright side, I am getting used to bike commuting in conditions of darkness and/or cold that are new to me. I hope to get back to 1X per week, and again try to move up to 2x per week, after Thanksgiving.

2. Speed – get the time for my commute to equal the transit commute on a bad (but not catastrophic) transit day – about 55 minutes. Best time so far was just short of 60 minutes, I think.

Pretty much stable on this.

3. Distance – I want to ride 50 miles in one day. Longest so far about 39 miles I think.

I have not done a long ride since that was posted.

4. Organized ride – ride a couple of the casual biking group beginner rides, or a bike shop beginner ride, or something similar. So far the only organized ride I did was part of the WABA city cycling class.

I did the WABA tour of the MBT.

5. Competitions etc – Get a smart phone (probably on black Friday), download Strava, and decide which competition or challenge makes sense for me.

This continues to be the plan.

6. Stuff – get some more bike related clothing/accessories – plenty on the list.

I got biking gloves, and they definitely help with the other goals.

7. Advocacy. I want to get to enough BPAC meetings to feel a good command for the issues in the City of Alexandria and work to support the work of the BPAC.

I attended a full BPAC meeting. I intend to go as a member of the public to next week’s meeting of the ad hoc comm on the bike ped plan update.

My 2014 goal is pretty simple – ride 1,000 miles before December 31st. If I can do at least seven miles a day here on out that shouldn’t be too hard to do. I just bought a fat bike so while it’s going to be twice the effort for half the distance, I’m excited to see my Strava annual mileage hit 1,000 this year.

Now 2015, on the hand, is a different story. I’ve started a blog to document this (Rolling Blubber) but here’s the quick list:

– Ride 3,000 miles
– Ride from the Twin Cities to Duluth and back over a week (this is around 300 miles roundtrip)
– Do at least two bike backpacking trips
– Ride part, if not all, of RAGBRAI
– Participate in the Powderhorn 24
– Do 30 Days of Biking again
– Do six loops in the Air Force Cycling Classic (I did four in 2013)

Cycling related but really more health related is to get down to at least 325lbs and be on the road to a full ED recovery. In 2016 I really want to either win a lottery ticket for RAMROD and ride it or just ride it by myself.