Thursday 31 January 2008

Mactually

My proper blog is at http://mactually.co.uk/

January Riding

Proper rides: 62 miles (metric century ride)
Commuting: 91 miles (16 days riding to work and back)
Business: 39 miles (3 trips to work via Hurworth)
Misc: 10 miles

Total: 202 miles

A metric century and riding to work and back every day (I must have had a week off riding last January) gets me 50% more miles in January this year than last year. If I keep that up, I should hit 2500 miles in 2008.

Not bad for a January, considering I only had one 200+ mile month last year and two in 2006.

Total so far for 2008: 202 miles
* average of 202 miles per month - on course for 2424 miles for the year

Monday 28 January 2008

Phew! Almost missed the 200 miles for the month!

I just got an email cancelling the work than normally means an extra 8 miles of riding tomorrow. With my normal commutes, that would put me 2 miles under 200 miles for the month!

Luckily, when it was really windy last week, I took the longer route to/from work, but still counted it as 5 miles. I just mapped it, and it's a mile and a half longer than my normal route. If I take that route home tonight, I can count today as 5.75 miles. Adding the extras on puts me on track for "exactly" 200 miles for this month.

More than anything, however, it shows just how shonky my mileage tracking is. It's a good job I didn't become an accountant...

Wednesday 23 January 2008

Undercounting?

I remapped my commute this morning, so someone could export it as a GPX file and tell me my height gain. It turns out that the round trip is 5.6 miles, not 5 miles like I assumed. Over 195 working days, that's an extra 117 miles per year!

I'm going to keep logging it as 5 miles for consistency, and because I'd rather underestimate how far I'm riding than over estimate.

Sunday 20 January 2008

A metric century

A metric century on the road, on an unsuitable bike. I found an 85km route on Bikely and added a little to it to get it up to a round 100km. Darlington - Shildon - Sadberge - Neasham - Girsby - North Cowton - Darlington.

Hard going on 32:16 with big tyres.

Distance: 62 miles (100 km)
Climbing: 2889 ft (see here)
Surface: On-road (plus a couple of off-road detours)
Time: 5 hours 50 minutes
Weather: Cold and wet under-tyre
Bike: Inbred Singlespeed (32:16, with 2.1″ tyres)

Update: Height gain added (23/01/08)

Wednesday 2 January 2008

An extra 3500 miles in 2008?

One hundred miles a week is 5200 miles per year. On the one hand, that's slightly more than three times what I did in 2007. On the other hand, it's only 14 miles a day.

Tuesday 1 January 2008

2007 Biking

Another year of commuting by bike all through the year, but otherwise a very patchy year for riding, with five months where I didn't ride at all, other than for getting to and from work.

1684 miles for the year, which is about the same as last year. Somehow, I did 14 non-work rides again too!

* In January I took the gears off my bike and went on a local windy ride (30 miles)
* In February I managed to do no rides, other than to/for work
* In March I also did no proper rides
* In April, guess what...
* In May, shock! Two proper rides, the Hamster 6 enduro (48 miles) and a two day road ride (44 miles)
* In June I attempted to ride every day for 30 days, but failed after a day. I also went to SSUK and broke my bike on the first lap
* In July I did several fixie rides (100 miles in total), having finally go my Solitude finished in June - ten miles round Barmpton, 50 miles to Hamsterley and back, a 24 mile ride to Egglestone and a 16 mile ride while I was up there
* August started well with a 24 mile ride home from Egglestone and continued with a 65 mile fixed ride up into Teesdale and a group ride at Hamsterley (55 miles)
* September was my best month of the year with a new PB for the Hell O' The North (100 miles) and a decent finish in the Great Milk Stout Ride (66 miles), despite being the only singlespeed rider and riding to and from the forest
* Illness and injury conspired to make October my worst month of the year, with a return of No Proper Rides (NPR) syndrome
* November saw a continuation of NPR syndrome
* December saw me round off the year with a short ride in Swaledale

Update (Jan 2008): I just found another ten miles in January's total, after re-adding them. So, 1694 miles for the year. If I'd know it was that close to a round 1700, I'd have gone out for an extra trip to town and back!