The following is just a comparison of some boring stats from my 2011 rides. Even I think the resulting stats and the short discussion boring. This is so boring that I might delete the post even after publication -- if I bother to publish. You have been warned.
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Cycling buddy Ricochet sometimes cracks me up.
Between Christmas and New Year's, he mentioned that he'd figured out that a 1200 km Grand Randonnee was essentially a four day ride, and since he wanted to complete at least one of those, maybe he neede to do some cycling on 4-consecutive-days as practice. Sounds like a good idea to me.
In another conversation he expressed ... I guess the word would be ... amazement ... that I was planning so much consecutive riding from just before Christmas through New Year's Day. I didn't think it was so much -- certainly it was less than at then end of 2009.
But that got me to wondering ... how much cycling do I do on consecutive days?
I know that the most days I've ridden consecutively was in 2010 when I did the Blue Ridge Parkway, north-to-south, with Lt. Dave and his family ... 7 days; but other than that ... ? I decided to do a little magic with my 2011 Excel cycling log, and see out what I had done.
All it took was a little jiggering things around to use existing auto-generated reports to generate the following, somewhat informative, although boring, summaries.
First, total cycling in 2011, sorted by day of the week. (Note that the 400-km brevet and the 600-km brevet are entirely included in Saturday stats -- not split between Saturday and Sunday.)
| All rides | # rides | miles | Hours | mph | m. / r. | |
| Saturday | 44 | 4,257.1 | 280.4 | 15.2 | 96.8 | |
| Sunday | 36 | 3,014.3 | 205.1 | 14.7 | 83.7 | |
| Monday | 3 | 308.4 | 20.9 | 14.8 | 102.8 | |
| Tuesday | 5 | 351.3 | 23.5 | 15.0 | 70.3 | |
| Wednesday | 6 | 492.9 | 33.5 | 14.7 | 82.2 | |
| Thursday | 7 | 469.3 | 30.7 | 15.3 | 67.0 | |
| Friday | 12 | 311.5 | 20.3 | 15.3 | 26.0 | |
| Total | 113 | 9,204.8 | 614.3 | 15.0 | 81.5 | |
That chart certainly indicates that I did the "lions share" of my cycling on the weekends. 71% of my total rides, 79% of my total miles and 79% of my total time in the saddle were done on Saturday or Sunday. Add in the (mostly) Friday afternoon short rides, and its 81% of the rides and 82% of the miles and time on the Friday to Sunday weekends.
Next, consecutive days, sorted by day of the week.
| consec rides | # rides | miles | Hours | mph | m. / r. | |
| Saturday | 31 | 2,881.8 | 188.9 | 15.3 | 93.0 | |
| Sunday | 28 | 2,128.4 | 146.5 | 14.5 | 76.0 | |
| Monday | 3 | 308.4 | 20.9 | 14.8 | 102.8 | |
| Tuesday | 1 | 65.2 | 4.3 | 15.0 | 65.2 | |
| Wednesday | 3 | 112.1 | 7.6 | 14.8 | 37.4 | |
| Thursday | 5 | 440.6 | 28.8 | 15.3 | 88.1 | |
| Friday | 10 | 283.5 | 18.6 | 15.3 | 28.4 | |
| Total | 81 | 6,220.0 | 415.6 | 15.0 | 76.8 | |
The above chart includes the data from 23 back-to-back "events", 9 "triple-events" and 2 "quads". There were no times last year that I rode more than four days consecutively -- and I only did that twice.
The "consecutive days" still add up to 72% of my rides and 68% of my miles and time-in-the-saddle. It is interesting to note that the avg pace of the consecutive-rides was the same as the avg pace of all rides. The avg distance of the consecutive days was within 6% of the avg distance for all rides -- close enough, I think, to think of them as "the same".
No chart is shown for this, but if one removes the Friday rides from all the ddata / charts, the avg pace remains at 15.0 mph (to the nearest tenth-of-a-mile), and although removing those "short" Fridays would bump-up the avg distance shown in each of the above charts (and also the following one), the relative relationships remain almost exactly the same.
Leaving the non-consecutive riding.
| non-consecutive | # rides | miles | Hours | mph | m. / r. | |
| Saturday | 13 | 1,375.3 | 91.5 | 15.0 | 105.8 | |
| Sunday | 8 | 885.9 | 58.5 | 15.1 | 110.7 | |
| Monday | 0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | |
| Tuesday | 4 | 286.1 | 19.2 | 14.9 | 71.5 | |
| Wednesday | 3 | 380.8 | 25.9 | 14.7 | 126.9 | |
| Thursday | 2 | 28.7 | 1.9 | 15.0 | 14.4 | |
| Friday | 2 | 28.0 | 1.7 | 16.1 | 14.0 | |
| Total | 32 | 2,984.8 | 198.7 | 15.0 | 93.3 | |
The above chart may be a bit skewed because I only did one 300-km, one 400-km and one 600-km ride last year, and those three rides are included immediately above. Removing those three rides would give:
| remove 3, 4 + 6 | # rides | miles | Hours | mph | m. / r. | |
| Saturday | 11 | 748.9 | 47.8 | 15.7 | 68.1 | |
| Sunday | 7 | 696.7 | 46.0 | 15.1 | 99.5 | |
| Monday | 0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | |
| Tuesday | 4 | 286.1 | 19.2 | 14.9 | 71.5 | |
| Wednesday | 3 | 380.8 | 25.9 | 14.7 | 126.9 | |
| Thursday | 2 | 28.7 | 1.9 | 15.0 | 14.4 | |
| Friday | 2 | 28.0 | 1.7 | 16.1 | 14.0 | |
| Total | 29 | 2,169.2 | 142.5 | 15.2 | 74.8 | |
Removing the three longer brevets brings the avg distance for the non-consecutive rides into alignment with the earlier two charts, and avg pace of those "stand-alone" rides does pop-up a bit -- a "whopping" 1.4% -- I think it safe to ignore the inclusion / exclusion of those 3 rides for comparison purposes.
Initial conclusion(s):
On average, I rode almost the same pace regardless of whether I had ridden the day before, or if I was going to ride the next day.
Of course, if I had actually done any intentionally short, fast rides targetting bettering my speed ... maybe the results would look considerably different.
Based on the above: What advice can I share with Robert regarding the value of riding multiple days in a row? Answer: I don't know; probably nothing; my results are probably only an indication of my riding style / ability.
Other thoughts?
I can segment the consecutive-rides data by "1st-day", "2nd-day", etc.. That may show something more interesting than what I got from looking at the above.
But I won't include those charts / discussion in this post.
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