A quick rundown of my 2012 bike riding, by the numbers. Armed with a good dataset from RunMeter and my phone on nearly 900 rides of over 6,100 miles in the last year, and my tendency to totally geek out with numbers and visual analysis, here’s a look at how I spent in the saddle this year.
The year was a great one, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I really got into riding more than past years – joining group rides, exploring new paths and routes in Washington, taking the long way home on weekday evenings, and even a bike-themed vacation in June. But this post isn’t a reflection on the REAL reason I love to ride – the scenery, friends, adventures, mishaps, wine, or cups of coffee – it’s about the numbers. Every time I got on a bike this year, I hit stop and start on my phone’s GPS – mostly in hopes of creating a fun dataset to analyze and track my progress. So here goes.
I ride more in the summer, but still try to keep it going in the winter. Bikeshare is a small part of my riding these days. August is vacation time!
Most of my riding is short utilitarian transportation stuff. Average trip length was 7.0 miles on the year. I go on longer rides and commute less in the summer.
Commuting is a small part of my base mileage. I apparently don’t like riding on Mondays, and may have other things to do on Fridays. On Wednesdays and Fridays I sometimes double-commute.
P.S. Commutes are only where I go straight from home to work or vice versa. A commute plus errands or joy-riding isn’t a “commute.”
Every bar is a day, including zero days. September and October were really FUN! I rode 315 of 365 days of 2012.
Commuting straight to work gives me maybe 100 miles a month. Mainly though, commuting gives me an excuse to ride home the long way in the evenings!
I’m getting slower. Am I more cautious in my old age? Or choosing slower routes? Who knows. That 16+ mph day was the Seagull Century, and the 9 mph days were usually short errands on rainy days.
Bike commuting is still incredibly reliable for me. Out of nearly 600 commutes in 2011 and 2012, 88% of them took me between 13 and 16 minutes.
Although I had some long rides, biking is still primarily transportation for me. Most of the time I hop on my bike, I’m going short distances for utilitarian stuff. This chart excludes commutes, too.
[...] last post had some analysis on when, how far, and how often I rode a bike. Missing was one crucial question [...]
By: Maps: 2012 Biking « JDAntos on January 4, 2013
at 12:13 am
[...] inspiration. Tracking one’s bike rides is popular, as you can see with Strava and posts like this from a fellow rider in DC. People are measuring what they eat, where they travel, and how they spend their days. This piece [...]
By: Year 2012 in Drinks « Aesthetics of Everywhere on January 7, 2013
at 6:54 pm
[...] inspiration. Tracking one’s bike rides is popular, as you can see with Strava and posts like this from a fellow rider in DC. People are measuring what they eat, where they travel, and how they spend their days. This piece [...]
By: Year 2012 in Drinks at Aesthetics of Everywhere on February 27, 2013
at 8:43 pm