I logged quite a bit of distance on my GPS in 2012. I had good intentions of doing a lot more riding with my club but family commitments and general laziness limited those rides. I started off well with a group ride on 31 March but I didn't keep it going. I finished with just one group ride over 100 km but also had one of 96 km and 99.94 km. I wish I had had a lot more that long or longer. In 2013, I really want to do a few Grand Fondos with Rich.
Commuting was my main mode of riding this year. There was little snow early in 2012 so I was able to cover over 500 km in the first two months. That's not bad for a commute of just 8 km each way. I was able to stay ahead of last year's pace for commuting and even kept things going during the very snowy November and December. I don't care about the cold but it's the snow and ice and really slow me down.
I wonder how many extra km I could have had since I don't wait around to get satellites at the start of a commute and I turn my GPS off a certain distance from home. I roughly estimate I have around 400 commute files so I'm 40 km short for every 100 m I didn't record on each commute. My total commuting distance was 3045 km, up about 250 km from 2011. I only had 646 km of training on my bike, up 370 km from 2011. My racing distance was almost exactly the same: 98 km in 2012 and 97 km in 2011. There was a huge difference in how I did that distance as I did fewer cyclocross races this year but one was an endurance event. A normal cyclocross race is a little over 10 km for me but I did 37 km at the endurance event. I also did some recreational riding which means pulling my girls around in the bike trailer.
In the end, I recorded 3855 km on my GPS. I classified 3836 km as cycling, 10 km as cross country skiing, 8 km as hiking, and 1 km as skating. I spent over 177 hours riding my bike. I could match my 2012 cycling distance by jumping on my bike and going to San Diego.
My goals for 2013 are to do a little more of everything. 3000 km of commuting is pretty good but exceeding 1000 km of riding with my club should easily be doable. Grand Fondos average around 150 km so a few of those would help and they'd break my current single ride maximum of 130 km. I'm considering doing the 31 km Birkie if I get a lot more skiing in and, if I can make my speed skates more comfortable, I should be able to beat the single kilometre I did in 2012. I also hope to motivate my friends to do a backpacking trip or two so I could even have a better year hiking.
