But despite that abysmal showing, my mileage since then has been much lower. Last year I barely cleared 1000 miles. Strava reports about 1,150. This year I'd like to do better.
So I'm going to go on record with a handful of goals for the year.
5000 miles
This is a stretch. I'm a lot slower than in 2008, and that was a year with a lot of time spent on the bike. So 2015 will include more time on the bike. But then my riding has always been light in the winter and heavy in the summer, so if I can make myself get more early season miles, that will help both with the goal and with fitness.
100M in 5:00
200K in 8:00
300K in 12:30
400K in 16:30
1000K in 65:00
I think these are all do-able. None are terribly aggressive. But all will require me to put some strong miles in. Interestingly, the only time I've ever hit sub-5 hours for 100 miles has been on 1200s. So I'd like to do that just to make it official. The others are all well below my best times for those distances, but I won't fool myself about my condition either.
If I can hit all of these, I will consider 2015 to be very successful!
4 comments:
These are good goals. One has to consider the course, but at 20-15-15 for 400-300-300, you would have 15 hours to sleep over that 1000K.
Come to N24HC in June, find yourself a good draft group, and you can hammer out the 100m-400k goals in the same event. Last year, at least, one could sit about 10th wheel in the peloton and get pulled faster than 20 mph for 70 miles or so.
Can't speak for others, but for just the reason Damon states, IMO goals only count if completed solo and on long courses. Related problem with Rando distances: racing rules make them much easier than Randonneur rules.
In my opinion a 100-mile goal requires non-drafting. Short loop course is fine. Of course a hilly 100-miles is harder than a flat 100-miles, all else equal, but that's irrelevant for a goal. There's a nice 20 mile loop on an island in the columbia river that would be ideal for such a ride.
x00K goals are implicitly brevet goals, so follow rando rules with allowed drafting, but also required control stops.
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