Two weeks in
January 8, 2017 § 17 Comments
This year, completely giving up in the face of age, declining mental faculties, physical weakness, and the recovery capacity of a worn out shoe, I resolved to whack my mileage and riding time even further. The idea is that by riding less I will not be riding as much.
The trajectory sort of looks like this:
- 2014: 12,000 miles
- 2015: 10,000 miles
- 2016: 8,000 miles
- 2017: 6,000 miles
Hopefully, if I am able to ride less, this will translate into less time on the bike. So far it has been a success. Last week I rode about thirteen hours, down from about fifteen. This week I rode twelve hours, cutting another hour out. If I keep this up I will be able to achieve my goal of ten hours per week, which is less than twelve, and which means that by doing less riding I won’t have ridden as much.
The other part to riding less is riding fewer days. Instead of riding five or six days a week, now I’m riding four. This is the other part of my stragetic goal: By riding fewer days, I will not be cycling as many days. Stragety has never been my strenthg, but I am working on it.
This week and last week I rode Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and one day on the weekend, which was less than riding Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and both days on the weekend. Stragetic goals of riding fewer miles through less cycling, and riding fewer days by eliminating certain days of riding have accrued stragetic results.
I’m already noticing some significant effects of riding fewer hours and fewer days.
- Less hours are being spent riding.
- Fewer days are being used for riding.
- Legs have a peppy feeling, like chocolate sprinkles.
- Less laundry.
- And etc.
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Cycling in the South Bay 
You forgot one important avenue for achievement: shorter rides. 90-mile epics can easily set you way back because 90 is a lot of miles and usually takes a lot of hours.
“Epic” is to my riding style as “clean” is to Beijing air.
The ultimate would be to give up cycling altogether and just make shit up about it, kinda like you do now. In the post fact age this could work out well for you. Expect I have an inkling that you would miss riding.
Yes, actually I quit riding altogether back in ’09. *Our secret*
Ha ha ha
6. Available for more family time.
That is a negative. Especially for the family.
When the negatives equal the positives you will neutral. Then you will be happy.
Right??
I failed high school chemistry.
Self-driving tech for cars is practically here now. Inevitably the tech will trickle up to bikes, then you can just send the bike out on its own.
Love it.
Pretty simple case to diagnose: are you also seeing dark hairy stuff sprouting from your leg skin? Find yourself browsing for baggy shorts and Camelbak at REI.com? Calling work associates , friends and family members “Bro!” ??
Nothing to be ashamed of – you’re simply transitioning in to what is known in medical parlance as a “recreational mountain biker.”
No need to despair bro! Because if the Bible has taught us anything (which it hasn’t) it’s that mountain bike KOMs are way easier to snag then Road KOMs (feel free to correct the mis-apostrophyization as needed.) Let me know if you wanna skip next CBR and go boost some extreme log jumps
🙂
I think I’m in the advanced stages of IDGAF.
Dang I must have got old, I had to look that one up.
IDGAF – I’ll tweet to that
This is what happens when a perfectly fine degenerate stops using massive quantities of grain alcohol and no longer has to ride five hundred a week to wipe out the icks (see Boys in the Band). A sad story too many told times told at meetings-which would otherwise be avoided.
Stragety? Huh?
Exactly.