Doesn't everyone?
This show cumulative mileage since I started cycling again, in early 2018, annotated with key factors in explaining the trend.
I know literally no-one else cares about this kind of thing, but look! I even coloured the series line Strava orange...
Yesterday was the first day since 2nd April that I have not cycled, bringing to an end a run of 59 straight days in the saddle.
I'll be making up for it this weekend coming though, when I have my first century ride for nearly two years. Wish me luck.
I started cycling regularly again about this time three years ago, and look how things have moved on...
2018 started slowly, then picked up as I gained enthusiasm, logged into Strava and got a bit more competitive. 2019 carried on at a similar rate, with the addition of a couple of big days to elevate things further. 2020 started off like the clappers, mindful as I was of the plan to do LEJOG in September of that year... but the advent of lockdown, and the realisation that LEJOG would be postponed soon put me in a mileage tailspin. And 2021 began in those same doldrums until, mid-February, I suddenly realised that I need to be in some kind of shape by September of this year or LEJOG will be a disaster. Hence this year's graph line is arrowing up nicely.
Another way of looking at it (and because I like graphs) is this continuous progress over three years...
...which hopefully illustrates that my current rate of mileage is better than when I was training hard last year (and I've maintained the rate for longer). And I know the trendline angles are relatively meaningless without an x-axis scale, but they do allow comparison, and that's the point I'm trying to make, maths fans.
It also shows that I've cycled more than 7,000 miles in the last three years... which sounds a lot until you remember that LEJOG is very nearly 1,000 miles in nine days...
So, if I'm going on a long ride I won't take a bottle of water with me, but a bottle of electrolyte sports drink with a sugar-free caffeine hit (I like the caffeine as it makes up for the fact that I can't have a cup of tea on the ride). On especially long rides, I might stop and slurp an energy gel too, even though the specific benefits for me are probably negligible, and I'd much rather eat a flapjack.
Because I'm cycling pretty much every day, I don't have much recovery time between rides. You might be able to get away with this. I might have been able too, when I was younger. But I'm struggling now. Basic sports anatomy - muscles tear during exercise, and build back (stronger) during recovery time. No recovery time equals no building back and no getting stronger. So once more I've reached out a desperate hand to science, or commercialised sports "science" at least, in the hope that it can help. After a long of particularly arduous ride, I now have a surprisingly not-horrible vanilla-flavoured rapid recovery drink called Rego, because it can't hurt, right? And if my legs are particularly leaden, I'll spend my waking hours wearing a rather fetching pair of compression sleeves on my calves, exerting 20-30mmHg of pressure to stimulate blood-flow and aid recovery, apparently. I'm sceptical but, again, it can't hurt. If nothing else, they feel warm and supportive. And besides, a placebo effect is still an effect, right?
If I get to the point of having ice baths, you have my permission to give me a slap though, okay?
Working from home has sunk me. I started this blog in January 2020, as a way of tracking my training and bike development from then until I did LEJOG in September 2020. Except things didn't quite work out, with COVID scuppering that plan. LEJOG got deferred for a year and whilst this had benefits in theory (longer to train, longer to fundraise) the reality is that my cycling has tanked.
Here's an ugly graph to illustrate what I mean:
It's miles up the y-axis. The week numbers along the x-axis correspond to the week numbers I've used on this blog to report my metrics; as I type, we're in week 58, so everything else counts back from there. I've gone back to when I first started commuting to work by bike, week -81 (i.e. two years and eight months ago, near as damn it). So what does the graph tell us? Well, that prior to the enforced introduction of working from home (WFH), I was averaging 50 to 60 miles a week, without really trying, often hitting 80 miles a week, and with the occasional gran fondo spike thrown in to boot (see if you can guess when I rode 142 miles in one day). And that since WFH, I've progressively cycled less and less. Sure, the weather in this latest lockdown hasn't helped, and neither has home-schooling - when I'm not working, I want to be parenting - and that doesn't leave much cycling time. Oh, and let's not forget what this graph doesn't show: that I was cycling at least five days a week, and usually six or seven, every week prior to lockdown. I was conditioned to cycle. Right now I'm conditioned to sit on the sofa until the early hours of the morning, eating biscuits.
Anyway, the bottom line is ... well, it's the dotted red trend line. I'm cycling less and less, 20-25 miles per week currently. Clearly I need to get in shape, because I seem to be ignoring the fact that LEJOG is 980 miles in nine consecutive days. In current shape, I can't do that. And I have just 213 days to turn this around...
I went for a long bike ride at the weekend. Longish, anyway, a shade over 77 miles. And it trashed me. Yes, I had an off within the first ten miles; yes, I got soaking wet within the first ten miles; yes, there was a swirling, circling wind that only ever seemed to be against me; and yes, there was an unplanned route deviation that added ten miles to the route I'd planned. But still, it trashed me. After 60 miles, I was genuinely starting to wonder how, last September, I had cycled 142 miles in one day, without any real problems. Yes, I had been tired. But I hadn't hurt in the way I was at the weekend. Indeed, when I had arrived at my destination I had a quick shower, a bite to eat, and then headed off into the city for a few pints with my best friend. So, aside from being a year older and a bit creakier, what has changed?
This. This has changed.
This shows cumulative mileage. The orange trace represents 2018: you can see where I started cycling to work, mid-May. The green trace is 2019, the blue trace is 2020. By March 12th this year, I had clocked exactly 200 miles more than at the same time last year. As lockdown kicked in, that advantage was eaten away and, by April 23rd, had turned into a negative. As of this morning, I've clocked 343 miles less this year than last, so yes, that's a turnaround of nearly 550 miles.
And it's not just the distance, it's the regularity. The beauty of cycling to work every day was that I was cycling at least five days a week, every week, even if only ten miles a day. The side-effect of so-doing was that cycling became second nature, almost incidental - as natural as breathing. It was easy, in other words.
I've tried to keep the wheels turning during lockdown, and even now, less tightly locked but still working from home. But it's not the same, and its not easy at the moment. I need to remember this next year, if I'm still working from home, as I try to train myself up for the postponed LEJOG marathon. I will need to find a way to cycle most days, in 2021. You'll see, right here, whether I manage anything close to that.
The bottom line of all this is that my weekly stats have gone through the floor, which is not great. Motivation levels have followed suit, not least because I'm doing all this with the expectation of cycling from one end of the country to the other at the start of September, i.e. in five and a half short months. As things stand, I'm assuming/hoping the event will go ahead...but who knows?
Very few people are reading this blog, but if you're one of those few you'll have noticed the weekly metrics posts that list how much training I've done in the previous seven days - distance, elevation, longest ride, that sort of thing. I'm eight weeks into training now, so here's a self-explanatory graph:
I tell myself (and you) that I had an off-week last week - for reasons that I won't go into I could only cycle on four days out of seven, and adverse weather meant that outdoor rides were short. Yes, I still clocked over 60 miles in total, but that's not actually very much, especially when you factor in that 20 of those (the longest ride bit) was indoors, on the turbo trainer. Despite all that though, I could look at this and still feel that things are going okay. Except...
Except anyone with basic Excel skills can add trend lines to graphs. Here's what the same graph looks like with trend lines to the week before LEJOG...
So what's that, about 220 miles per week, with a longest ride of 85 miles, and a weekly elevation total of about 4,400 feet? I don't think that's enough. I'm behind where I should be and I need to up my game...
