Another New Year

Last year one of my goals was to ride more miles than the year before. For a cyclist this is sort of a given; we always want more miles.

I performed a Garmin dump for 2018 and found that I barely eclipsed 2017 by a mere eight miles. Considering that I have no formal schedule, and I don't pay much attention to mileage until the end of the year, this is interesting. On the one hand, it's somewhat amazing that two yearly mileage totals can be so close. On the other hand, I am sort of a creature of habit.

From a big picture perspective, life was much the same in both years. My son played tournament baseball for the same organization, played Babe Ruth, made All Stars both years, and then played fall ball for his high school. I filled in the gaps where I could with rides, so it stands to reason the riding time and mileage would be similar.

The one area that saw a mild reduction was elevation gain at 159,000 feet, which was 5,000 feet less than the year before. This is likely due to Jennifer riding with me more, a good thing of course, but we don't do as much climbing when riding together.

One variable that I obviously don't control is atmospheric conditions. We lost countless riding days this year to wildfire smoke. I often sat on the indoor trainer those days, in addition to doing it on rainy days in the winter. These indoor days are not captured by the GPS. I think without the effects of the Carr Fire I beat last year quite handily.

I hope this goes without saying, but let me add that I feel awful even putting the wildfire topic in writing. Thousands of people lost their homes. But this is a cycling blog, so I can't ignore factors that affect cycling.

The new year opens with much promise from a cycling perspective. My son will play baseball almost exclusively for the high school, which is right down the road. The decreased driving time should be significant. On the downside, we have a couple years of home projects that have been back burnered due to our busy schedule, and they will need to be completed. I also have a lingering shoulder issue that may require some downtime at some point. Still, I see no reason why 2019 can't be a great riding year.

Later.