My mileage goal was to ride 100 miles/week.  I don’t think that’s too hard.  Most people can ride lots more than that in a given week.  And some people ride 100 miles/day.  The challenge really is to be consistent.  To ride that much every week.  Week after week.

Last year I didn’t really have a mileage goal other than to ride more than drive.  I did that but when I looked at my mileage last year it was 5,169.  And then I thought, I could have easily ridden 31 more miles to make it 5,200 miles which would be 100 miles/week.  So there was my goal for this year.  This year I got to 5200 miles but then I looked at my cyclometer.

 And I thought, I only need 48 more miles to round it up to 31,000 accumulated bike riding miles.  (When I got an adult bike in 2006.)  To give you an idea, in 2011, out of the 2673 miles, 1818 were on the Betty Foy from May through Dec.  The other 855 were on my old bike in the first 4 months of the year.  It took me 4 1/2 years to ride 5,855 miles on my first bike.  I almost ride that in a year now.

Based on purchase price, I’ve averaged my price on my Betty Foy down to about 10 cents a mile.  (Have you noticed that the cents symbol isn’t on a keyboard anymore?  Everything is in dollars because everything is that expensive.  But not my Betty Foy cost per mile.)

Below is the mileage since I’ve been riding my Rivendell Betty Foy:

2011  2,673

2012  3,756

2013  4,294

2014  4,669

2015  5,169

2016  5,439

I usually don’t like goals but they are useful to track progress.  My real goal is to just ride wherever I want to go.  But it needs to be quantifiable.  And so you actually have a way to measure how close or far away you are.

If you want to track your progress:

You can manually add miles to Strava which will be the connected to the National Bike Challenge.  You can join our team, Charlotte Spokes People.  Most people who do, are amazed at how tracking and seeing other people’s mileage encourages them to keep riding.  And join us on some rides.  Tues. at 10 am (when it’s hot) or 2 pm otherwise.   This ride leaves from Advent Coworking on corner of Louise/Otts one block from Central Coffee.  Tues at 8 pm is PMTNR (Plaza Midwood Tues Night Ride) from Common Market Plaza Midwood.  Sunday Slow Riders leaves from Legion Brewing at 2 pm or 8 pm when it’s hot.  All rides are on the calendar and each ride has a facebook page.

Bottom line:

• You’ll never reach your goal if you don’t have one.
• You’ll never reach your goal by sitting on the couch.
• You have to progress toward your goal every day – or you’re going backwards away from it.
• One step towards your goal is still progress.
• Progress seems slow.
• You’ll get there eventually.
• Sometimes it’s sunny.  Sometimes it’s rainy.  Sometimes it’s hot.  Sometimes it’s cold.  Sometimes it’s windy.  Sometimes it’s perfect.

Next year my goal will be 5,500 miles courtesy of the monkey on my back from Douglas Welton.  He planted the seed of the idea and now I’m so close.  Maybe I’ll need to ride a little faster so it won’t take me so long.  I’m the turtle that will get there at some point.

Thanks for everyone who has ridden with me.  You all helped me get to my goal.  There’s a saying that if you want to go fast, go alone but if you want to go far, go together.  We’ll get you to your first 1,000 miles then 3,000 then 5,000…

Come ride with us.