A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about a fitness challenge I had started with Emily. Well, April 30th has come and gone. The month is over. How did our results turn out? Let’s just say I’m pretty much focused on May right now. I didn’t get the amount of biking in that I wanted. My monthly total was 135,000 steps. It was…insufficient to beat Emily’s 235,000 steps.
So on to May. Actually, compared to last year’s longer winter, I’m already up 100 miles on my personal riding record. I know from experience that any time I can start riding in March, it’ll be a good season. Hopefully as we get some warmer mornings I’ll be able to start riding my bike into work. That’ll really help get my step count up! Watch out, Emily!
I started riding seriously in 2008. My parents moved, so when I went home from college for the summer, I wasn’t with any old friends and I needed something to do. I had fixed up an old mid-80s Raleigh in high school, so I started riding that. At first, I didn’t do anything to track my rides. It was just fun. I’d ride a few miles every day after work. Eventually I found an old mechanical odometer that I mounted to the Raleigh. I have no idea if it was even accurate, but I really enjoyed tracking my distance, so I went out and got a well-reviewed Sigma bike computer. That was accurate.
Once I graduated from college I decided to get a new, modern bike since I’d put so many miles on the heavy Raleigh. I ended up with a nice Cannondale aluminum-frame road bike. That’s still what I ride today, and I still use my Sigma bike computer. Sometimes people ask why I don’t just use my iPhone and GPS to track my rides. After all, there are cool social apps like Strava that let you compete with friends on challenges. I do track some rides, but I’ve found it’s a hassle to get my phone out, start the app, make sure it’s recording, then stuff it into my pocket and go. The bike computer just clips onto the handlebars and is done.
These days I track my rides in Numbers. It has a great template for tracking running that I modified to use for riding. I track date, ride time, distance, pace, average speed, max speed, miles-to-date, and whether or not any of my ride offset a trip I normally would’ve driven. So if I ride to and from work, that tends to be a 21-mile offset for the round trip. It’s nice because I can save the file in iCloud and access it on any device no matter where I am.
I like to take the winters off from riding and stay in shape with XC-skiing. I’ve found that when I start riding again, it takes about 100-150 miles before I feel confident to ride pretty much anywhere and any distance. I’ve pretty much already hit that distance earlier in April, so I’m optimistic that I’ll really be able to stack on some miles and maybe beat Emily in May!