Stupid Stats

I keep all my biking stats in an excel file on my computer. After each outing I take down all the numbers from the computer on my bike (distance, ave speed, time, max speed and cumulative miles) and enter them into a spreadsheet. At the end of the season I make up tables with relevant stats to see what I've done over the year. This year I pretty much blew away anything I've ever done before. I wasn't that far from tripling last years total mileage but I ran out of warm weather before I got that far. This chart shows my cumulative miles for each of the past 3 years.

There's a long flat, inactive period of about 2 weeks in August. I was out of town during the first week and when I got back it was raining for an entire week after that. I remember at the time I left for my trip thinking that I had already beaten my total 2005 mileage even though it was only the middle of August. After I got back and after the rain finally ended I made up for the downtime. According to my file I did about 275 miles in the 2 weeks that followed.

Additional stupid stats...

Out of 47 total outings my average ride was 26.32 miles. My shortest was 8.75 miles and my longest was 52.38 miles.

• 0-9 miles: 2
• 10-19 miles: 10
• 20-29 miles: 19
• 30-39 miles: 11
• 40-49 miles: 2
• 50+ miles: 3

My total riding time was 77 hours, 51 minutes, and 26 seconds. That's about 3.25 days. That only includes time I was actually in motion, not the time waiting at street lights or any rest stops.

Overall I think I did pretty good. I could've been in better shape to start the year. I was a bit on the heavy end of my range in the spring. I lost around 8-10 lbs over the summer but I could stand to loose another 5-10 before I'm in my ideal range. Maybe next year I'll finally get myself a new bike. My current bike is heavier and has much fatter tires than are necessary for the type of riding I'm doing. I can't remember how many times this year I thought about how much the charactaristics of my bike were holding me back.

Looking forward to next year it's hard to predict if I'll beat this or not. A lot will depend on what shape I'm in next spring, the weather, and if I get a new bike. It also turns out that 1200+ miles is a huge time commitment. I don't really have anything else planned. I enjoy the challenges and this keeps me in good shape. I don't have any regrets about having spent my time this way this year but on the other hand there are a few projects that I did not get at over the summer.