revelations

Yesterday was a day of revelations.

I managed to get out on my first real bike ride of the season. I won't often bore you with the metrics I track on my rides; basically, they are for my own consumption. I am dorky enough to track three things over the course of a season. What interests me is total accumulated km, maximum average and accumulated average speed, and total elevation gain measured in meters.

Today, however, I feel compelled to share some numbers and explain their significance.

Yesterday's ride stats:

Distance - 53.91km
Average Speed - 28.1 kmph
Elevation Gain - 471m

Those of you who race or ride much more strongly than I do may be thinking, "Yeah? So?" but let me put these numbers in some context.

For a typical road ride for me, the distance was quite short. I tend towards being happy when the ride total is nearer to 100km and is preferably over that mark. Last year, I think I had one ride which crested 100km. The year before, it was closer to one a week once the season got rolling properly. So managing over 50km on my first road ride is a good start. I know it only gets better from here. We are moving house soon and will be living in an area which is both better and worse for cycling. From an urban riding perspective, where we are moving to will be a bit of a challenge. It is a city made up of disparate communities linked by fast arterial roads made for cars. However, from a rural road riding or rail trail perspective, it is much better than were we are now. I call it a draw. But it should make for very good riding if distance in a pleasant rural environment is the goal. Which it is.

My average speed was a bit of an eye opener for it still being so early in the year. Since I started tracking average speeds last winter, this ride, my first real ride of the year, was the fastest on record. When I was younger, I used to clock rides faster than this all the time, but since really getting back into cycling in my early 40s, this marks a high water mark. I am very pleased with this as it bodes well for the rest of the season. I make no real predictions, but I think this might be a good year for speed on the bike for me based solely on how yesterday felt.

And lastly the elevation gain. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was a new record for me over one ride as well as being the fastest since I started tracking these things. Good stuff that. We live currently in an area with only a few climbs which would make a road cyclist notice they are there. The new location is much choppier and hilly and should see this particular metric soar, relatively speaking. Those of you in mountainous areas may snicker, and I don`t blame you, but in the context of riding where I live now, this is not a bad number for a ride that is not made up solely of hill intervals.

All of this tells me that I am doing something right. This past winter was a long one, and brutal for out door pursuits. Even skiers I know complained because while we had a lot of snow, we also had a lot of ice. I could not ride outside nearly as much as I wanted to. I was largely confined to the gym doing some running, minimal weights, and a lot of spin classes.

I am sick of spin classes. Really sick of them.

However, it is good to see that the work was not for nothing.