I already recapped the 2019 “Race” season, but there is still an entire year’s worth of riding and activity that I never really talked about. I like to record data, at work, at home, wherever really, it’s the only way to really know what’s been going on. Sometimes nothing gets done with it, but I still enjoy having it. Other times I’ll try and take a few minutes to try and make heads or tails of it. This year I took my ride very general ride data and tried to break it down a little bit.

In quick summary, 239 days active, with about 4600 miles on the bike, 30 miles running, about 450k of elevation gain, and 351 hours. So all and all it’s pretty hard to complain about those kinds of numbers when you’ve got 2 kids, a family, a job you enjoy, and life in general. I think the number that I’m most proud of honestly is the 239 days active, I would really like that to be a little higher and be around 260 (average of 5 days a week) but I’ll take 239. It’s so hard to be consistent when you’re navigating real life so I’m pretty excited when I make it work.

This year I was kind of interested in the breakdown of my rides from a start time, distance, and which bike I was using. So I took a few minutes to figure it out. I confirmed a few things but also learned a few things.

First, I’ve always been kind of a morning person and since we started having kids that’s been exacerbated a little bit. In order to get the kind of riding in that I want to do I don’t shy away from starting early and in the dark. A lot of my slightly longer and harder training rides happen early in the morning. It was interesting to see that just over a 1/4 of my rides started before 8 am. Then over 65% of those were rides longer than 20 miles and over 50% of my rides that were longer than 20 miles started before 8 am.

The morning rides also tend to lead to some of the coolest light and sky colors you can see. It’s really a lot of fun to be out in the woods as the sun is coming up and things are coming alive. I won’t lie though, when its pitch dark and anything moves it can also be super creepy.

Second, In order to keep the consistency of getting out regularly I have to do a lot of shorter rides. The numbers proved that with over 70% of my rides being less than 20 miles long. While I do get out a lot, most of the time it’s not for all that long. I have a pretty amazing situation with where I live and some flexibility with work that affords me some great opportunities.

The last thing I found really interesting and I’m not sure how I feel about it, is that I spent more time on my geared full suspension bike this year than my single speed. I’ve kind of Identified as a singlespeeder for years now and this is the first year in a long time I’ve spent more time with gears. However, I’m having loads of fun and I’m still riding bikes happily and as much as I can. I guess I’m living up the part time single speed life and there are a handful of factors that go into which bike I ride right now. One of the biggest factors is that having those gears feels like it opens up a few ride options when I’m trying to keep the rides as short as I can while still squeezing in what I can.

There’s more to be had from all the “data” but these were kind of the things I thought anybody other than me might be interested in. It’s worth noting, it can be kind of tough sometimes when I see friends share their ride data for the year and most of them have at least 1 1/2 times the miles/time that I do. Generally as soon as I think about that one of the little ones comes running to me and I remember how much I’d miss if I spent much more time out away from the family.