I had a six week sabbatical from late August to early October. I decided I would 'ride a lot', and I decided to give structure to that goal by challenging myself to ride 200 miles on each of 10 bicycles over the 93 days of August, September and October. On Friday the 27th, day 89, I finished up my 200 miles on my Rosco Bubbe Road, which was bike number ten. I will probably be riding my new/old Univega Gran Premio for the remaining days of October, so the final tally for the ten looks like
1. 1973 Windsor Carrera Sport: 208.8 miles 2. 1985 Schwinn Tempo (650B): 201.5 miles 3. Rivendell Samueal Hillborne: 214.1 miles 4. Niner RLT9 (650B): 609.3 miles 5. Black Mountain Road (home): 206.8 miles 6. Black Mountain Road (mom's house): 205.1 miles 7. Rosco Bubbe Mixte Step Through: 245.5 miles 8. Gunnar Two-speed singlespeed: 204.1 miles 9. Niner Air 9 Carbon: 215.2 miles 10. Rosco Bubbe Road: 212.1 miles Include a few bonus miles for my HubbuHubbuH tandem and my Univega Gran Premio, I've got a running total of 2545.4 miles. Even though things fell into place nicely, some things turned out a little different from how I expected. I thought that with work I would end up doing roughly 500 miles in August, 1000 miles in September, and maybe 700 miles in October. Even though I only had two or three sabbatical days in August, that turned out to be my biggest month in mileage, with 1007 miles. September, which I had completely off from work, will turn out to be the month that I rode the fewest miles, at 772 miles. October is at 756 miles, with three days left to go. I only had two days where I rode over 100 miles, and only 11 over 50 miles. So, it's not like I was living on the bike. I could easily envision this kind of pace during retirement, provided I'm healthy (lob willing). When I posted a 'complete' post on Instagram, a coworker thanked me for earning him $10. He bet on my success and it paid off, which is cool. As you obviously will notice, I only went WAY over 200 miles on one bike, my Niner RLT9, aka the Niner Seven Fiver. I did a bunch of pre-rides for a very challenging 200k brevet, and then completed the actual brevet yesterday, so the mileage really added up. I had the rest of the 10x200 challenge under control, so I considered my extra Niner mileage almost independently. Setting a few achievable and measurable goals, months in the future, was a really enjoyable experience for me. The El Cerrito High School Mountain Bike Team has a pre-season Goals form that all the kids fill out for the upcoming season, so I went ahead and filled it out for myself, too. Having a plan and sticking to it can be a way to motivate oneself when inertia sets in. What I found was that having a set of goals that were on-schedule and on-target seemed to completely prevent the inertia ahead of time. I honestly never said "crap, I have to ride THIS stupid bike again?", or "gah, I really don't want to ride today". That intertia avoidance was definitely assisted by the fact that I drink a lot less alcohol now. I even took a month holiday from beer in September. I don't think I was a heavy boozer before, nor am I completely dry now, but there's no question I feel better in the mornings when I consume less. I was 180lbs on August 1, best-case. I set a much longer than 3 month goal to lose 20lbs. I've lost 12lbs so far and I've moved the target to 155. I expect that this continuing goal will help me keep my diet and other habits healthy, so I don't lose things that I've gained. I'm considering putting running back into the activities I do, partially because it takes a lot less time to get the work in, and partially out of envy that all my racers on the El Cerrito High Mountain Bike team are running on the cross country team for their off-season work. Thanks to the group for your kindness in letting me blather on about myself. It would have been very easy to be less generous. Some of you get these posts over email, and I'm sure some of you said to yourself "HIM, again!?" Hopefully it wasn't too tiresome. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
