I completed my monthly mileage challenge on Strava yesterday. The target was 600 km, and I finished with 1359 km (843 miles). Correcting for the riding that was done on my e-bike (see “” Note on e-bikes and recording mileage” here), which is about 20% of the total, this is equivalent to about 1305 km unassisted (810 miles). This put me at 17,530 out of 280,312 who completed the challenge, or 285 out of 17,533 in my 70-74 age group. It feels good to be in the top 10%. To put things in perspective, though, I rode less than a quarter of the total put in by the leader (6,633 km), or even of the total put in by the leader in my age group (5802 km). Nevertheless, this is a lifetime PR for me, I don’t think I’ve ridden much over 600 miles in a month previously. With that challenge over, I think I’ll cut back on mileage a bit and focus on getting a little faster on my cruising speed.
The last 3 days of the week went like this. Friday I did a recovery cruise because I had gone hard last Thursday. Saturday was a brisker and longer ride of 29 miles, keeping my average heart rate at 105. Yesterday was another hard day. After a warmup I attempted a new time trial route I’d ridden on last Thursday. I did better than Thursday, but only by 7 seconds over 45 minutes! After that I did some intervals and then a cooldown ride. I’ll take it easy for the next couple of days to recover.
Friday’s ride is posted on Strava here, Saturday’s here, Yesterday’s here.
