14 miles to go....

[Neilsmith]

I started off thinking I want to set a target and then keep upping it. The first year I cycled 4500 miles and set the same target for the first full calendar year ( I started middle of the summer ) thinking of upping it to 5200 the second year. Then one of the guys in work who has cycled for quite a few years longer than me made a good point that made me reconsider.
He said it's not the miles cycled that matter it's the quality of those miles. For me that made a lot of sense, riding just for the sake of adding more mileage was pointless, enjoying the miles made more sense.

Not that I didn't enjoy pushing the miles to meet the target, but I realised it was not always the best option. Now I'm putting in less mileage but picking my routes for the pleasure they will bring not the mileage I can clock up. Some days I'm off road which makes the miles harder so hence I'm doing less mileage, but the off road stuff is fantastic when you want to ride through some fantastic scenic views.

As long as you enjoy your miles do what makes you happy.

 

[ColinJ]

Congrats all, I always wonder though why targets are necessary, presumably it aids motivation in some way? Is it not enough to just enjoy riding then take a look at the end of the week / month / year to see what distance you ended up with? If we do a ride that shows on the speedo as 98 miles when we get home, there is no desire to go out and complete 100. Over the years I have discussed this with many cyclists and it seems to be the newer you are, the more you are likely to set targets [obviously there are exceptions like Steve Abrahams or racing a 12 hour]. I often wonder why, particularly after reading these type of threads. No criticism implied, just genuinely interested.

It does help my motivation. I think it is fairly obvious that I do like cycling, but I have all sorts of **** going on in my life and often cycling gets put off so it is helpful for me to have the extra incentive of targets to keep up with. Also - not all of us have partners who want to cycle with us.

There are days where the weather is pretty bad and nobody wants to ride with me and I feel tempted to put off riding until a nicer day, or when I have cycling company. We had awful summers from 2007 to 2012 and my usual cycling partner had emigrated so an awful lot of rides did get put off, which is how I got fat! (Strictly speaking, I was drinking too much beer but I wasn't doing the usual amount of cycling to burn off the beer belly.) That led to my health problems of 2012/13 and I decided that I couldn't let it happen again so I started making targets to get my riding head in a better place. I never used to go out on my bike unless I was going to ride at least 20 miles, but I now have the attitude that 'every mile counts' so sometimes I squeeze a short ride in when I wouldn't have bothered before.

It isn't doing the extra 2 miles to take a ride from 98 miles to 100 that would matter to me, it is that I would have set off to do that longer ride because I had a target of doing 'x' centuries that year. Otherwise, I might have gone out and done only 43 miles or 37 (whatever) ...

The other thing is that (as you know) I live in a very hilly area so I have only 2 choices for my rides - (1) Busy A-roads (2) Lots of climbing. It is difficult to find easy, relaxing routes round here. There are times when I fancy just going out and riding 100 flattish kms but I can't face doing them up and down the A646/A6033 all day. With my targets in mind, I will grit my teeth and go out and do something like the 'Season of Mists' audax route with 2,500 metres of climbing instead.

In an ideal world, I probably wouldn't set distance targets either; I would concentrate on speed targets (20 minute Cragg Vale climb, 1 hour Cragg Vale 20 mile loop, 5 hour imperial century etc.). I'll get the miles/kms in for a couple of years first though (with the encouragement of my targets) and then see what I can do.

PS You could make exactly the same point about speed as distance. Why not just go out and meander round on rides without ever thinking about how fast one is riding?

 

[martinclive]

Well done

I'm 465 off my 4000 target. Almost all commuting so really a function of how many days I do (average 3ish per week - holidays, meetings and weather all take their toll).

Started off with 3300 in 2012 and try to increase each year - just keeps the motivation going

 

[TheJDog]

Hit 8000 km the other day. A few more weeks and I'll be over the 5000 mile mark. By far the most I've done (twice last year's total). I wonder if I can keep the mileage up next year...

 

[youngoldbloke]

To be realistic, I'm not going to make the 5000 miles (again ) this year. Perhaps if I change it to 7000 km I might manage it

 

[fatjel]

I'm up to 8,066 from my target of 10,000 miles for the year.. 6 weeks at an average of 300+ a week seems a bit steep.
This is the first year I have kept track properly. I suspect I did over 10,000 last year.
In my defence I am a year older than last year

 

[derrick]

Going to make my target this weekend hopefully.

 

[cyberknight]

Good going! Mymtargets out the window what with all the overtime lately, I will be lucky to hit 5000 miles this year.

 

[biggs682]

no real target for me but have done over 3k so should get close to 3.5k for year end weather permitting

 

[Ben Reeve]

I'd set 5,000km for this year, which is my first full cycling year.

At 3,045km up to today it's clear I'm not going to make it!

Having wiped out nearly a whole month going through some tough redundancies at work followed my a bad illness I'm not unhappy though!

Next year will hopefully bring different opportunities

 

[MickeyBlueEyes]

Good work folks, lots of nice work in this thread.

My target was 12'000 miles which I hit last week, reckon I'll finish the year on around 13'300.