10,000 Miles

10,000 miles. This is what has finally pushed the needle to get me to write about my personal experiences with cycling. It's a big number, but not an entirely special number. Plenty of folks hit this milestone, year after year after year. I hemmed and hawed mainly due to insecurity. Why write about something that seems a big deal to me when in actuality it's not really that big of a deal as I see this on Strava daily?  

Look at the leaderboards of some of the bigger Strava clubs, even our own. You finish what you think was a big week. You're tired, you just need a break, whatever. But then for whatever reason, you look at your results on some random, whatever club, even ours and the people leading did 200-mile rides, or more, multiple times a week. What the fuck do they have going on in their lives to be able to do that. It can make you feel slightly insignificant, if not worse. Wow, I almost hit 400 miles and I'm still 25th down the list!

But really, who cares. This is about me damnit! 10,000 miles is huge for me. Now, I spent most of my formative training years before the days of Strava, before caring how many people scrolled over a ride for half a second and deciding I'm worthy of a kudo. Who knows, maybe I have hit that number? I mean, when I was really training, I just logged hours, not miles. And shit, I live in a really hilly area now. If I was in the flat lands, I'd easily have more miles! Damnit again!  

But to the point. I've been pretty lackluster in my miles accumulation the past few years (decade?). For some reason, during the Christmas holiday season at the end of 2023, I felt motivated for the first time in a while. Or at least motivated to see if I could do a proper (by Strava standards at least) year of padding on the miles. At first, I was like, "I'm going to ride every single day this year!" Well, that was out the window in about seven days. OK, what next? 12,000 miles sounds appropriate. Easy peasy, just 1,000 miles per month, super easy. Again, after the first month and a week off the bike, that passed as well. Thank you Strava, for pointing out that I was already 560 miles behind my goal.  

But then I got motivated again. I think that was during a good spell without drinking alcohol (weird how that helps make you feel better, but more on that in future episodes). I put together a string of weeks where I was getting good miles in, during shit weather, and was feeling like I had to do something with this.

So, 10,000 miles in 2024 became a thing. On the surface, not a huge deal.  Just over 200 miles a week on average. I was like 80 miles over (thanks again Strava for letting me know that) and was feeling pretty chuffed. Long story short, I've had my normal ups and downs—weeks of 300 miles plus, followed by weeks of barely getting one ride in. The excuses seemed trivial to me; my wife's father was ill, which was not helped by the fact that he lived in another country. Then having almost two months of being home alone, with a recently rescued and big Shilo Shepherd to care for, oh, and running a business, I still felt like a schmuck for not getting those all important 200 (now needing to be 240) mile weeks in to achieve the all important goal, to me and my Strava family I'm sure. It was starting to feel like the all too normal year of a 4,000 mile year. I mean, why even bother, right?

Fast forward to tonight. Taking a quick look at the all-important Strava profile of yours truly, I'm at 7,205.9 miles in for the year.  Shit!  Only 690.1 miles behind the pace of a 10,000-mile year. I've tried telling myself that this is stupid.  I'm tired, my legs are sore, I'm not stretching enough, and I'm selfishly putting aside other things that would help out those dear to me much more than some stupid yearly number goal.  But damn, only 690 behind pace???  There are 78 days left in the year which means I need to do 36 miles per day to hit 10,000 miles—just over 250 miles per week.  

Of course, I've left this work for the worst time of year. Rain and cold is coming.  But damn, I'm just two and a half months from hitting my goal.  Completing this means so many more Strava followers for sure! Can I keep the motivation?  Do I really care that much? Obviously, since I'm putting it out there, I do.  

What am I even going to do with this?  What have I learned, about myself, about bikes, about equipment etc that I can share? Not really sure about any of this, but I do know that I am going to bore you all, I mean share with you all, what I can. Stay tuned, for what I intend to be a weekly snapshot of the all mighty struggle with myself to hit at least one meaningless (not really) goal in my cycling life.  

Here's to the next 78 days. Buckle up buttercups, it's sure to be an exhilarating ride.  See you in 7 days, more or less.