Topping Off A Great Month

Without a doubt, this May has been my most memorable month of cycling, with my first two bike races under my belt, 700+ miles accrued and over 42,000 vertical ft. climbed. What a whirlwind of activity and apprenticeship, as I have learned so much from the likes of Cookies Ernie Bayles and Bill Erickson, to name only a few. I've also learned quite a bit about mystery noises and have received great assistance from Keith Thompson, Glenn Swan, and the good folks at Cayuga Ski & Cyclery.

Today I topped off this memorable month with a ride up Ringwood via Lansing, an old favorite. The weather was once again perfect, and I had a time deadline that was excellent pressure to ramp up my average speed on the return trip. Above are the metrics for today's ride—this is a terrific feature provided by RidewithGPS that allows you to study how much time you ride at specific speeds, and how fast on average you ride at specific grades. I guess I have to gather up this data from the same loop over a period of time to see how my performance improves.

I believe that the explosion of web tools to help you analyze your rides can really make a difference in improving your training and adds to your cycling enjoyment. Without these tools, cycloblogging would be far less interesting.

Here is my log for the month of May. My goal is to exceed 2,000 miles before the end of June, but I'll likely be around 2,200 miles before July 1.