It was a good month

Ok, that’s it for January.  Brenda got in 40 more miles this morning and ended the month with 553 miles.  This puts her about on plan.  Of course, if you do the math, 5,000 miles works out to an average of about 417 miles each month.  If that’s all I look at, I might be tempted to think that she’s well ahead of the plan, but there are a couple of things I need to account for. 

Brenda teaches swimming during the summer which takes up her weekday mornings, and of course it’s those weekday morning rides that are going to be so essential in achieving this goal.  Also, we’ll be taking a vacation this summer, and then she’ll be taking another one after that.  On our vacation together we’ve talked about bringing the bikes with us so we’ll probably be able to get in some miles, but we may not get in as many as we usually would.  And then when Brenda goes out on her second trip (with one of her girlfriends) she won’t get in any riding at all.  So she needs these big months to make up for the skinny months to come.  And then I also have to take into account the fact that we had mostly very good weather in January and she was able to ride on 14 days.  February will also have about 14 potential riding days in it, but you never know how many of those will get weathered-out.

So if I take all that into account, I figure she’s about on plan, which I think is great!  And she’s still enjoying it, which is absolutely necessary in a project like this (she went out this morning with the temperature in the high-40s).  And she’s riding very well and very confidently, which also counts.  I’m absolutely tickled for her.  Her average ride in January was just under 40 miles.  The shortest was 22 miles, and the longest was 60.  Her slowest average speed (averaged over a whole ride) was 13.2 mph, her fastest was 16.1.  Let’s see how those compare with what she gets in December.  (or even April)