80,000 Miles

Today I surpassed 80,000 lifetime miles. That’s not bad for someone who didn’t start counting his cycling miles until March 26, 2004. I was almost 39 years old. Now I’m 56, and I’m still hoping to hit 100,000 miles sometime around my 60th birthday. With a little effort, I might reach my goal on my birthday.

And here’s a neat coincidence (I swear to you that I didn’t plan this): it was exactly two years ago that I hit 70,000 miles.

As it was on that occasion, so it was today. Getting to the nice round number was my mileage goal for the season. I came into this year 3,316 miles short of 80,000. Now that these objectives are behind me, in a sense anything extra is just gravy. But in another sense it’s damned hard to ride 5,000 miles in 12 months in this climate. So, I will push on. And there are other little prizes to chase, starting tomorrow. With 477 miles so far in August and half of the month remaining, I’m only 358 miles away from 835, the personal record I set just last year. That’s doable.