horatio 

Everyone discusses miles ridden per year. Why not include total hours? Does anyone include a time metric in their performance measures? Just curious, as pilots only record flight data in terms of hours and conditions (i.e. IFR, VFR, etc.)

Machka 

My indoor cycling is often measured in time.
My outdoor cycling is usually measured in distance.

bpcyclist

I am far more interested in time than distance. Time riding, time working out, is what I really care about at my stage of the game.

shelbyfv

Strava will record your time for YTD. In my case it's just a reminder that I'm slow Apparently I have 540 hours for April thru present. Expect to get 3 or four more today.

Clipped_in

For much of what I do during the year, frequency, duration (time), and intensity are my primary metrics. Distance is largely incidental.
However, I do look at overall mileage and elevation gain at year's end simply for personal comparison. Annual TSS is interesting to look at too for TrainingPeaks users.

zjrog

Fresh off my Strava.
2019
Distance 581.2 mi
Time 45h 20m
Elev Gain 17,920 ft
Rides 64

All this is what I recorded. Indoors and out. But the last 220 miles, or 14 hours and 26 minutes, have been in the last 4 weeks, indoors. Wearing an Air Cast boot, and now an AFO brace on my left ankle. And I intend to push another 19 or more tonight. I had planned to do a short ride about town before the crazies take over. But a snowstorm seems to be moving in for tonight. I think I'll stay inside. Local club MAY do a New Years Day ride, depending on the weather. Maybe I'll go, maybe not...

Not included, specifically, many many hours in the gym, the time before that in cardiac rehab gym. I simply never thought to record it as I was simply in survival mode. I knew I need the bike, but wasn't sure I was going to get there. But once I did make it, the bike became my recovery... I never thought I could do 200 miles (equivalent) in a month and yet, I just did. 30 years ago I was 200 to 400 a week. I'm hoping to get 100 to 200 a month after this. If I can do more, great. But let me set sights lower for the time being.

Wildwood 

I'm out there to enjoy the PNW fresh air, smell the roses, get some cardio, enjoy the company of others or just my own thoughts.
I enjoy the experience of riding a lot of bikes made in different places.
Not really high mileage at ~3-4k per year, but big on enjoying the whole lifetime cycling thing and waking up feeling ready for another day which could include a ride.

Wrenching on them and wiping them down occasionally also brings me pleasure (and therefore health). Those hours count too, and in Winter months - there are lots of those hours.

Moishe

Hey! I already told you both time and distance.

PedalingWalrus

My Strava stats (no indoor riding)
Distance 3,589.3 mi
Time 390h 11m
Elev Gain 174,016 ft
Rides 197

TheDudeIsHere

I thought most of us did include mileage and time in our logs and journals. Along with elevation gain.

DiabloScott

I might say a particular ride was "3-hours" or something, but I don't keep track of saddle time. I remember distance and elevation when I'm talking performance. Flying airplanes and riding bikes just don't seem to share that parameter.

And I record metric, because I'm "that guy".

79pmooney

I've recorded distance only over the past half century, (No electronics required. No remembering to turn that thing on.)

Ben

davester

Miles, elevation climbed, fitness, time. The combo of any three of those gives you the other (though it's more difficult to quantify fitness). Citing any one or two of these variables doesn't tell you anything about the others.

I-Like-To-Bike

Some of us record neither, and in fact record nothing about the ride to paper or electrons. I do keep track of the titles of the numerous unabridged audiobooks I have listened to over the past 15 years or so, most of them while riding my bike, a relative handful while driving.

I've listened to so many (666 at last count) might forget which ones and add repeats to my mp3 player. List is attached.

Books I have read, usually those I couldn't get at the time in audio version from the library, are kept on a separate list but that activity is not part and parcel of my riding experience.

chainstay

Yawn...

I-Like-To-Bike

I guess listening to or reading books might seem very dull for some individuals. Obsessing over mileage is a thrill I never learned to appreciate.

caloso

401 hours this year. That is unlikely to change in the next 8 hours.

Moishe

Yawn? Chainstay, you are narcoleptic, oh my brother in geezer road biking.

Marylander

I'm thinking hours myself as I'm moving from just running to a mix of running (~330 hours in 2019) and cycling. I'm hoping to get more hours in 2020 through this combo.

Some people like metrics, some don't. I like metrics and gadgets myself.

spelger

I just went to check and for the year i have 0 miles and 0 hours. seems strava thinks it is 2020 for me. i have 7ish hours left remaining.

i cannot find my 2019 time, only miles. i rarely look at hours ridden, it is not an important metric for me.

-scott

Richard Cranium

The reason "mileage" is used as the primary experience indicator in cycling is because most people understand that the "act of cycling" involves moving from one point to another.

The unstated point involving the "mileage statistic" is that at least some amount of effort above "resting" in employed to accomplish the movement. So using mileage statistics affords respect to cyclists of differing ability regardless of the time spent cycling.

What's obvious in your questions - is that all cyclists seem to be somewhat analytical - and all the facts and descriptions above demonstrate just how many cyclists really get into the nitty-gritty of statistics. - and hence my signature.. :-)

Classtime 

For 2019: 539 hours and 6,872 miles. And very similar the last 3 years.
The 3 years before that, it was 6-700 hours and 8-9,000 miles when I went long and hard each winter preparing for a big spring event.
I should put one on my calendar again.

caloso

For my own purposes, I track time and effort (training stress score or TSS), but it’s fairly meaningless for most people, including most cyclists. Mileage doesn’t need any explanation.

Rollfast

My bikes are from 1946, '51, ~'57, ~'61 '62, '83 and 1995. Mileage have they, not I -Yoda

canklecat

Most of 2018 through early 2019 were mostly recovery from injury and illness. I began to regain some basic conditioning by March, so that's when I took a little more methodical approach. And I changed that approach by late summer.

An old neck injury usually hinders me from spending too many hours per session on an outdoor ride so I've modified my priorities a bit. I'm comfortable with 20-50 mile rides, the usual distances for the roadie club rides I occasionally participate in, so I mostly focus on getting stronger and faster. I tend to do mostly tempo pace or harder. That can be exhausting without rest days in between.

I'm not going to race or anything like that, but I didn't want to be the slowpoke always getting dropped or making other folks feel like they had to wait for me.

But for indoor trainer sessions I focus on time and effort rather than miles or speed. If I'm doing intervals, especially HIIT, my sessions are usually around 30 minutes so I only pay attention to heart rate. I do only one HIIT session a week at most, sometimes only every two weeks. And to prevent burnout and over-training I'll do long, very relaxed indoor spin sessions while watching a movie or two or more episodes of whatever TV series I'm binge watching. I usually aim for 90 minutes or longer, sometimes up to three hours.

By late summer I felt like I'd plateaued aerobically and wasn't making any progress. Spinning at 90-100 rpm tended to peg my heart rate beyond maximum sustainable limits. So I switched from my comfort zone of spinning at high cadence to mashing bigger gears at slower cadence, around 60 rpm. So I added cadence monitors to both road bikes and paid more attention to pushing the biggest gear I could mash at 60-70 rpm seated and 40-50 rpm standing. And I worked on standing to pedal farther.

Took a lot of work but that pushed me past that plateau. I got faster and stronger at a lower heart rate. And I hit my goal for the year on the very last ride of the year, Dec 31, 2019, a sustained effort for a familiar hilly 25 mile route at 17 mph without maxing out my HR or feeling completely exhausted afterward.

I finished the year with just over 6,200 miles and 475 hours, but those weren't major considerations for me all year. My focus was more methodical and aiming for certain results, however many or few miles and hours that took. And that was double 2018, which was mostly a recovery year after being hit by a car and coincidentally discovering I had thyroid cancer (fixed with surgery, no chemo or metastasis, just a whacked out metabolism for a year). So anything I did beyond that in 2019 could only be better.

Occasionally I consider putting in more hours or miles, especially more centuries (I did one full century and a few metric centuries in 2019), but realistically that ain't gonna happen. Neck pain from various injuries will always be a limiting factor. So I just try to enjoy what I can do on the bike.