Progress Report

Well, originally I wanted to ride 6,500 miles this year. It was ambitious, perhaps overly so, and I expected that events would likely prevent it.

I was right, but I still should rack up a respectable 4,200 miles for the year, and I have at least one formal century left in the year (and likely an informal one this weekend).

So far this year, I've ridden 2,250 miles at an average speed of 11.6 mph. In the 209 days since I started riding regularly, I've averaged 10.77 miles per day and spent a total of 194 hours in the saddle.

Before this year, I'd never ridden more than 50 miles. This year, I've ridden 50, 74, 85, 101, 107, and 204.5 miles (the last being over 2 days - Seattle to Portland). Unfortunately I missed the bridge pedal this year, since GenCon in Indianapolis was the same weekend.

This Sunday, I plan to ride to Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood and back, after being inspired by Aaron Tarfman's account here. It's going to be a LONG ride - probably 130 miles when all is said and done, since I'm starting from my house. I expect the best part will be the 40mph+ ride down Highway 26 from Government Camp to Welches. Hopefully I'll make it ok - there's 6,000' of climb from Milwaukie to Timbeline, not counting any ups and downs. Hell, there's 1,000' of climb just from Govenment Camp to Timberline. If I can do this, it's a MAJOR accomplishment.

So, that's about it. Aside from my riding, I've been looking at what I want to do with this blog. I'd like to have something here besides ride reports - some reason for people other than the 5 or so who actually care about what I write here to stop and look around. There are already so many good cycling sites and blogs out there (see the sidebar of this blog for the short list) and unless I fill a particular niche, I'll basically just be parroting bigger, better sites. So, we'll see.

-M