First, let's get this out of the way: My mileage sucked. Like, to the point that I won't even admit the total in public. I can explain away some of that with the fact that I did lots of my commute (and therefore immediately post-work) miles on the folding bike that never quite seemed to get a cyclometer, and tandem miles were practically nil due to my stoker's knee injury, but even a generous estimate of those lost miles leaves me with a number that's hardly worth recording.
So with ought-twelve fast approaching, I find myself in a bit of a pickle. I've always been a compulsive mileage journaler, so much so that I've been spotted riding around the block to "top off" a ride that happened to end at something-point-nine miles. Sad, right? My thinking is that maybe it's time to break myself of that habit. Maybe it isn't healthy/necessary to measure the value of a year by the digits in a tiny journal. Maybe it's time to force myself to stop caring about the "how far?" and start focusing on the "how good?"
I'll still leave cyclometers on all the bikes (and might even finally get around to adding one to the folder), but those will be for tracking maintenance intervals and daily accomplishments, not accumulating incremental miles toward some arbitrary year-end goal. I don't know if that's going to result in more or less riding. I just hope that it will result in happier riding, riding that's focused on the ride rather than a tiny LCD screen.
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