Gearing Up for a Century on Saturday (Helps Keep the Resolution On Track)

As I left work on Friday, the bike riding vs. car commuting challenge was looking poor. I was running a cumulative 29.43 hour deficit for the year.

In my plans, I should be exiting April with a total of a 28 hour difference between bike riding and car commuting. When my office moves to a closer location in the late summer, my commute time should be reduced such that if I maintain my same bike riding efforts, I'll end up the year with the bike riding either equal or slightly ahead.

The next couple of weeks will, well should, help with things.

Yesterday and the day before, I managed two rides of over two hours each, so I'm entering this week with a 26.97 hour deficit. So my two long rides helped to eat away about 2.5 hours. This week is scheduled to be a 4-day workweek, and on Saturday I'm registered to ride a century ride around Lake Anna.

Probably this will take around five and a half or six hours. I hope to average about 17 miles per hour, but there will be rest stops for snacks that will add to my time. But there's also the prospect of riding in a group, which likely would help my average speed increase due to the advantages of drafting.

But it may also rain. The weather reporters are predicting 50% chance of significant rain on Saturday. But that's five days from now, and weather prediction accuracy falls of dramatically when you get three or more days out. So I won't worry about that until Wednesday or Thursday.

But rain will probably slow things down, which will help my bike riding time to be higher, so that'd be nice in a way.

Roughly estimating, I'll be adding about six more hours of commuting time this week to and from work. With my predicted six hours of riding on Saturday, plus a couple "healthy wellness" rides at/after work this week, my current 26.97 hour deficit may be reduced by another few hours this week, too.

Looking forward into May, June, and July, it's likely I'll take some vacation days in these months to avoid holiday weekend traffic and take some minor trips with the family as vacation-lite activities. So my commuting times will not be as large for those months, but at the same time my bike rides may be reduced if we go places that will prevent me from riding. We'll see about those things as they happen.