In my last post about motivation for cycling, I talked about a cycling diary or spreadsheet where I would track how many miles I cycled. Since then, I’ve had a think on this and decided to set myself the challenge of cycling 1200 miles over the year.
The main reason for doing this is to keep myself motivated in those winter and autumn months when cycling is not as pleasurable as it might be (ahem).
- Why 1200? One of my regular cycling chums, who keeps a track of these things, cycled approx 900 miles in each of the last two years. I’m guessing I did the same so I’ve added a bit extra for this year.
- It’s difficult to be exact on this but my typical cycle ride is 1-2 hours so this challenge effectively increases that by an hour – or it means I have to do another ride every week.
I appreciate that 1200 miles is not a huge distance for any regular club or road cyclists but I’m not one of those. I ride a mountain bike for one thing (on good tracks or country lanes mostly) and although I do a few weekend cycle trips, most of my cycling is local to me in Horsham (West Sussex). Additionally, I don’t commute to work (I work from home) so I don’t have the opportunity to rack up the distance on a regular commute.
- My challenge is partly inspired by @daylightgambler who is is attempting a much harder challenge of walking 1000 miles. To be honest, my cycling challenge pales by comparison!
I don’t know if 1200 miles will be easy, tough – or something in between. It’s 100 miles/month which won’t be a problem in the summer. However, it’s the end of January now and I’ve done a paltry 44 miles. So, at the moment, I’d say that the 1200 target looks some way off!
I’ll let you know how I get on….
Good luck with the challenge Clive! 🙂