Mid-term Report This is a tale of three goals. The one is the obvious, ride every day in 2018. I made my criterion a minimum of one hour, and it must be on the bike/wattbike, but that is just for me - the 20-minute thing is just fine, as is the mowing the lawn/walking the dogs/buying the sunday papers thing. I haven't kept track, but with young kids I do a lot of that, too, so there is probably at least three or four hours a week on daddy duty, over and above the running total. Ek wou mos. The important thing in this challenge, though, is that each of us has different time pressures, and my criteria are different from everyone else's. An effort a day is all that is needed to stay in our game, however it is done. I have not included the odd trail run, either, for the purity of my personal challenge... The half-term report shows 195 rides, with not a day skipped. A+ The other two are tailored to my idiotic brain, which (I am told by those closest to me) is more idiotic than most. Goal two is to reach 10 000 miles in distance. 16 100km. For no reason other than it is a round number, and a lot. The half-term report shows 8 436km. A+ Goal three is to average two hours a day. IE 730 hours for the year. Again, no good reason, just because it is there. The half-term report shows 354 hours, 11 hours behind but with some lovely summer months looming in the distance that should be catchable. A- I have been quite good with recovery rides - there have only been two little episodes where overtraining seemed imminent - so it has actually been fairly easy to keep going. I structure my week days around getting in front of the computer by 7am so I can work in my hour, or whatever the day holds, and then get on the bike later in the morning - this is a blessing in winter. Warm and light is much easier to motivate for. Flexi-time is the bomb. Fitness has been interesting to track (just using Strava's built-in version). I have had a few years in the last ten where I have started well, similar hours by the end of March, and then got lazy. This is the first time in decades I have managed to carry on. The graph shows how lekker that is - I am flipping tired a lot of the time (but not drastically so), but my base 'fitness' level just rises and rises. Riding at threshold on my favourite test segments, I can see the progression downwards in time, and I am hitting w/kg values over 5-minute-plus efforts that I would be happy with rested and ready to race. And that is without any structure or goal setting, other than just getting out on the bike and riding to feel. SO. Would I do this again? I thought about that a lot riding in the pissing rain this afternoon, and I think probably not exactly like this. I do need this kind of motivation to keep from getting lazy, so I have another 180-something days to come up with Project B... weekly mileage, weekly altitude gain... who knows what idiotic idea will drop in next. Suggestions welcome. This is so much fun, thanks guys!
