Although I guess 30,000 miles makes me "serious," the numbers confirm that I'm not really all that special when it comes to riding. Since June 1, 2004, I have bicycled on 855 days, and I've kept a far-too-detailed log of every ride. (On the rare occasions where I did two separate rides on the same day, I counted them as one ride.)
How long were my rides? Usually not all that long!
| Distance | # of rides | % of rides | Cumulative % |
| 1-10 miles | 17 | 2.0% | 2.0% |
| 11-20 miles | 258 | 30.2% | 32.2% |
| 21-30 miles | 191 | 22.3% | 54.5% |
| 31-40 miles | 151 | 17.7% | 72.2% |
| 41-50 miles | 74 | 8.7% | 80.8% |
| 51-60 miles | 39 | 4.6% | 85.4% |
| 61-70 miles | 53 | 6.2% | 91.6% |
| 71-80 miles | 25 | 2.9% | 94.5% |
| 81-90 miles | 15 | 1.8% | 96.3% |
| 91-100 miles | 13 | 1.5% | 97.8% |
| 101-110 miles | 16 | 1.9% | 99.6% |
| 111-120 miles | 1 | 0.1% | 99.8% |
| 121-130 miles | 1 | 0.1% | 99.9% |
| 131-140 miles | 1 | 0.1% | 100.0% |
Mean ride length: 34.8 miles
Median ride length: 28 miles
In fact, I think it's precisely those mid-length rides that are the best for me. They generally don't do crazy things to my metabolism afterwards, which is still quite the issue for me on the very long rides. (How else can one explain gaining so much weight while riding 30,000 miles? A new study released last week talked about such things.) In fact, a whole 7.1% of my total miles in the past five years have been during the weeks of AIDS/LifeCycle!
And although I've broken the magical 200-kilometer barrier exactly twice, I've still not had the opportunity or the motivation to even attempt the next step, a 300-km ride. That demands an entirely different level of commitment and training, not to mention really good lighting.
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