As the Year Ends...

As the year comes to a close, I have been able to complete one more century, and bring my December total mileage to my second highest month of the year! I traveled to Sebring, Florida – the home of the Highlands Bike Festival two weeks ago – to partake of the quiet, flat roads and the sixty-degree temperatures. On the week after Christmas, I packed in nearly another 200 miles.

So this makes 2011 my best bicycling year in decades – and probably the best of my entire life. It bests all the years since 2002, which is as far back as I’ve kept any records. I’m not sure how much bicycling I did in the decade after I left the Navy or in the 1990s. I think if I had done over a dozen centuries, I might have remembered it! (I remember doing one or two a year in the 1980s, but there may have been lots more long rides.)

A cyclist friend of mine mentioned that resting in winter time is a good way to avoid burnout. It’s always a balancing act, because one does not want to lose all the fitness that was gained in the previous season. As it turns out, our winter here on the East Coast is looking to be quite mild. There will be several weekends in which we can enjoy at least a short ride.

One of the nicest outcomes this season is the acquisition of a new bike. The crack in the frame of my Gary Fisher hybrid led to a replacement hybrid bike: a Trek Dual Sport 8.4. I like the hybrid arrangement because it allows me to ride the roads and the trails. The tires are a bit rougher, and one can’t really generate huge mileage on these bikes, but they take you places that are a lot more interesting.

Cold weather, I’ve discovered, also cuts down on speed and mileage. In the winter, even if you’re all bundled up, when you look down at the GPS you’ve gone slower and shorter than you expected. Add in a little chilling headwind and the pace drops even more.