5000 miles on a bike

At the tail end of last year I read this blog post, On being (almost) a 1000 miler, about someone running 1000 miles in a year. It spurred me to wonder what the equivalent for a cyclist would be and I came up with the target of 4000 miles for myself during 2010 - about 11 miles per day on average.

As it happened, I did Land's End to John O'Groats in the summer, which added just over 1000 miles in two weeks, so I revised my target upwards to 5000 miles.

Today, I completed the 5000 miles, crossing a notional finishing line somewhere around the point that this shot was taken on the Bristol Bath Railway Path - appropriate really since that is where the vast majority of the miles have been undertaken.

Cycling highlights from the year were crossing Dartmoor and riding up Glencoe (both on the LE2JOG ride) and completing the Severn Bridge Sportive (100 miles in about 6 hours and 40 minutes).

There have been some low points as well!

I must admit that the last few hundred miles have been pretty dismal. Very hard work, undertaken with little enthusiasm on my part, in part because of the cold and miserable cycling conditions but also, I suspect, because I've just got bored with the whole thing. Still, it's nice to get it finished.

PS. I've hardly touched my camera since finishing the two years on blip. I've just added a couple of random back-blips from the couple of times that something has caught my eye.