The results are in for the 2006 bike mileage survey, and I see there are quite a few long-distance cyclists who voted. Nearly one in five responded that they had bicycled 8,000 or more miles this year.
I'll do the calculations for you: 8,000 miles is an average 154 miles per week. Wow. Even if the bulk of miles were tallied on long summer bike trips, you'd still have to put in a good weekly average to get your miles up there.
Think of it. A 10-week cross-country bicycle trip is 4,000 miles. That leaves 4,000 miles to rack up in the remaining 42 weeks of the year, a rate of 95 miles per week. I'm thinking there are some bike commuters in the over-8,000 crowd.
The late bicycle touring enthusiast Ken Kifer recommended on his website that 45 minutes a day, 6 days a week, is a good target to improve health and fitness. If you rode that at 13 mph, you'd complete 58 miles a week, and 3,042 miles in a year. Of the respondents, 57% bicycled 3,000 miles or more last year.
I found that one of the easiest ways to motivate myself out the door is to keep track of my miles. Something about filling the spreadsheet keeps me from slacking off.
You can download my version of a spreadsheet bicycle mileage log at Biking Bis. There's nothing fancy about this Excel file. Date, route, weather, comments, mileage, time. Average speed, total time and total miles are computed.
I'm told there's also an easy online mileage log over at Bike Link, as well as Bike Journal (Ride. Log. Repeat.)
If there are others you'd like to share, please leave a comment. And thanks to all 95 readers who took the poll. That's the most respondents ever to a poll here.
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