Winter Mileage Club

I’ve decided to start a winter mileage target plan. – 7,000 km by the end of February 2013. About 400km per week. That would be  a lot of miles. And unless the weather stays as nice as in the past two weeks, it’s quite unlikely. But, having a target is something nice to aim for. More than anything, I’ve just enjoyed riding my bike since end of racing season. The 7,000 km is definitely not based on any scientific training principles – but sounds a good number and would be far more than I’ve ever done in winter before. We’ll see how it goes. I won’t be using any power meter or heart rate on the training. I’ll just ride at a pace that I feel comfortable doing.

Every week I usually do 77 km commuting into town, which helps add a few more kms on to the longer rides.

Weekly Mileage Totals

So far:

• Week 1 – 349 km. Total 340 km
• Week 2 – 401 km. Total 750 km

Inspiration for Graphs

About 20 years ago, when I first got into cycling, I remember getting from Cycling Weekly a weekly mileage planner. You could colour in the boxes to fill in your weekly mileage. Those were those days before power meters and heart rate monitors. The prevailing training principle was – stack up the miles. The more the better.  Things have changed a little since then, but it’s still fun stacking up the miles – if you have the time and inclination.

It’s also that time of the year, when we might have just a little too much time on our hands.  I’ve become a weekly reader of a friends weight loss site – pudding boy. He plots his daily weight loss against a long-term target to lose 25 kgs. Marvellous graphs, though not so sure about the belly shots. Well, it wouldn’t exactly be desirable for me to plan a 25 kg weight loss program. But, I wanted a few graphs to inspire winter training mileage. His graphs are going down, mine are going up.

Grand Total vs Target of 7000 km

On target – 2 weeks down 16 to go.

So far, so good. Close to target, but it’s still a steep mountain to climb.

Do you have any winter training targets?

Related

• Training targets over winter