Monday, January 16, 2012

Consecutive Riding Days

Spoiler alert / geek alert!

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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