After quite some time pestering her, I convinced my friend and coworker Jessica to set a goal in 2018 to run 3,000 km (about 1,864 miles). And in a show of support, I was generous enough to offer up biking 5,000 (3,106 miles). Yeah, I got the better part of that deal, but hey, I’m old enough to be her father so that’s got to count for something I’m sure. The important thing was that they were goals, and goals are a good thing.
I’d always loosely set goals over the years of my cycling. When I picked it up again in earnest around 2010 (I really can’t be sure – I was on-again, off-again through the years here), I had a little Cateye bike computer that measured distance by taking the number of times a magnet on my front wheel passed a sensor on my fork, and multiplying it by the circumference of my wheel. Back then I was pretty impressed with myself when I hit 1,000 miles, and it was easy to hang it up for the rest of the year when I did. I’m sure there were whole weeks when I didn’t ride, and December through February were right out.
But that low number only lasted a year or so before I thought 1,500 was better. Unfortunately, I really have no record of those results, but when my son left behind a Garmin watch some years back, I got the thought that maybe I could take it with me on my rides, and in November of 2014 I recorded my first ride for posterity – a 25.27 mile jaunt down to Pyeongtaek and back up near the expressway.
It’s kind of funny though looking at those early days of recording my activities and seeing myself only doing a few rides a month. I only did 1,563 miles in 2015, and my first “big” month was in March of that year when I did 8 rides for about 180 miles. It wasn’t until a year after that that I topped 250 miles in a month, but maybe that was because 2016 was the first year I set a goal in Garmin – 2,000 miles. And I hit it by August, which was also the first time I topped 300 miles (370) in a month. I ended up doing 2,582 that year, so it seemed 2,500 was perfectly reasonable.
But for some reason I was into aiming low, which was 2,000 again in 2017. And the results were much the same – only one more month over 300 that year and 2,000 miles around August. I totaled 2,707.
So now we’re up to 2018, and, knowing that I can do over 2,700 as it is, I offer up 3,106 to support and “challenge” Jessica. But I had my own issues in 2018. I ended it unemployed in the states, arriving in Texas in December with about 100 miles to go. But I hit my goal by the 14th, on borrowed bicycles. And the next year I did it even earlier – by a week (and back in Korea) – on December 7th.
I ride regularly with someone who just gets out there and doesn’t care. But for me, telling myself that I’m going to do 100 km on a ride (a bit over 62 miles) commits me to power through when I’m ready to quit. It makes me plan for longer rides instead of doing everything close enough to home that I can pull the plug any time.
So, I think goals work – but that’s just me. It really comes down to what motivates you. I mean, I’m on my third year at 5,000 km, and maybe I’ve cracked this one now just like I cracked 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 miles before it. Because here we are on September 23rd and I hit 5,000 km at about 5:30 this morning on my last BCFB of the year (maybe). I’ve got over a quarter of the year left and I don’t know what to do with myself. Should I take a week and heal up? Should I change my goal to 3,500? At this rate, and considering October and November are absolutely prime months for riding here (I topped 900 miles between them last year), I’ll pass 3,500 by the end of October. So it seems perfectly reasonable to shoot for 4,000 miles now.
We’ll see. Maybe I can ask Jessica if she’ll do 3,500…
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Other points of interest:
I topped 400 miles in a month for the first time in June of 2019 (and again in October, November, and then May of this year. I’m 20 miles from it this month and will probably get there this weekend).
I topped 500 miles in a month for the first time in June of this year. The closest before was 497 miles in November 2019 and 492 in May of this year.
And yes, she did it. Despite a late-in-the-year discovery of a 60 mile race that was counted twice — meaning she thought she was 60 miles closer to her goal than she actually was — Jessica ran for 3,000 km in 2018. How cool is that?