2008 Riding Round-up

January got off to a good start, with 202 miles on the clock it was further than I'd ridden in all but one month of 2007, courtesy of a metric century ride and a slightly longer commuting route.

February saw another decent mileage for the month, with the longer commute continuing and an aborted attempt at the Hamsterley Hill Rush.

March was a commuting-only month.

InApril I rode a bit of a local Sustrans route, but being away for Easter knocked the distance down a bit.

In May I found some local bluebell-lined singletrack.

June saw me getting in a 50 mile road ride and a group ride at Hamsterley, plus some extra trips about town on the bike, netting me my first ever 300 mile month. By the end of June, I'd ridden about 37% further than the same time in 2007, but that was the high-point of the year, and it tailed off a bit from there.

July was by first proper MTB race at Hit the North, though I didn't do nearly as well as I'd have liked (I was crap, rather than just bad).

August: Darlington - Swaledale - Bowes - Barnard Castle - Darlington

In September I used car to get to the and from a ride for the only time in the year, riding High Street in the Lakes with HTB. I missed out on my 'usual' road century and the Great Milk Stout Ride this ear, because they were reorganised and so fell on the same day, which also clashed with a friends' kid's christening.

After riding in the Lakes, I seem to have given up riding bikes for anything other than getting about, which is a bit depressing. I also seem to have given up blogging for the last part of the year, so I don't even really now why. Illness over Christmas has also stopped me from hitting the 2000 mile mark for the year, getting a total of 1953.5 miles for the year, which is only 15% more than 2007 (5.3 miles per day average, compared to 4.6 for 2007).

Most depressingly, I only did eight proper rides in 2008! That's officially crap, especially when doing more proper rides was a target for the year after only doing 14 rides in each of the previous two years. 36 rides in three years!?!

Update after some more number-crunching: My eight proper rides totalled 376 miles, which is about half of what I did in both 2006 and 2007. That averages to 47 miles per ride, which is about the same as each of the last two years. I did just over 1500 miles for 'utility' purposes, which is 50% more than each of the last two years.