Phamilton

volvostephen

Just have an age where you cut over to kph.... Being Canadian (and almost 50), I should be able to get another 15 years or so until I max out. 65 kph is pretty easy to hit fully loaded and weighing what I do.

RubeRad

That's true; I hit 41mph ~ 65kph just the other day

holytrousers

That's an interesting problem. There are "technical" benefits of having a computer and track distance or speed but i think they are more like excuses. Personally the main reason why i like to track my commutes is because it gives me a sense of achievement and worth. And that's a very addictive behaviour when i look at it now..
But what a liberating thing it must be to stop measuring. Just you and the road, like Phamilton said..

Phil_gretz

I turn 60 this year. I hope to never see that speed on my bike. Yikes.

Skipjacks

Not all addictions are bad. Like you say, tracking miles keeps you motivated.

If you have a busy life, kids, job, various other responsibilities, it's hard to always find the time to exercise.

I find that tracking miles and setting millage goals for the year keeps me motivated to get on the bike when its' a cold morning, or insanely hot, or a drizzle is in the forecast, or when I'm tired and just don't feel like it. It keeps me moving toward a goal. In my case the goal is an arbitrary number I picked that was higher than last year's goal. But that doesn't matter. This isn't science.

Just having a goal to reach and tracking my progress in reaching it helps keep me motivated to do it even when I may not feel like it. (And 9 out of 10 times when I force myself to ride on a day I wasn't really feeling like it....I'm glad I did within the first 100 feet of the ride)

Phamilton

It's one reason I have reservations about combining transportation and exercise. I don't believe anybody is in a mental state that's conducive to safe travel when in the middle of a workout. Got goals on your mind, got last workout's failures/victories on your mind, etc. Emotions can get pretty intense during a hard workout. I wouldn't take someone in the middle of an intense workout and throw them behind the wheel of a car, no way. Not once, and certainly not on every commute.

Setting goals and sticking to them is important, can't deny that. For a while, tracking my commutes did certainly enhance my sense of achievement (dunno about self-worth, I try to keep that one free from the ebb and flow of motivation and achievement). I suppose my sense of achievement adjusted after several consecutive months of commuting. If I still drove a car, I'd probably feel differently about it. I just can only make so many trips by bike in the course of a day including my 25 mile round trip commute. 40 miles a day is about what I can do on days that I'm also working, and it's pretty hard to feel like I need to be able to do better than that. It also happens that I don't really want to be on my bike much longer/farther than that. The fact that I'm married and still have a young child at home means that's about all the more time I can spend on the bike anyway without neglecting my loved ones.

I definitely need to set some fitness goals OFF THE BIKE.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

Phamilton

FYI a good reason to track mileage is for the C&V Clunker Challenge.

Phamilton

And I don't like the feeling of 40mph of wind in my face, ever. As we don't have any hills here to speak of, this usually happens with 10 mph forward speed and a 30 mph headwind.

RubeRad

Here in San Diego it's all hills. You're always either riding through a canyon or across a canyon. Flying downhill is the payoff for grunting uphill

noglider 

That sounds like a good plan. I suggest you do it. I've found the Sunding computers work fine, and some models are as cheap as $3. I've installed many for friends and family.

I have the paid version of ridewithgps, so it can keep track of which bike I used when I ride. I have a bike called "shoes" and a bike called "car" for when I walk or take a car, respectively, and I only log a few of those trips, for special reasons. I make sure they don't go into the overall tally of my bike miles. I've been meaning to track equipment changes like you mentioned, but I haven't started. This way, I can track how long tires etc. last. But this works for me. Your plan should work for you. It takes a lot less work and thought.

Skipjacks

When I went to boot camp back in the day I did it on the East Coast. All flat. We marched for 20 miles at a time...no problem. We'd run 5 miles...easy (and I hate running)

Then I went to Camp Pendelton north of San Diego later for additional training and OH MY GOD. Every direction from every starting point is UP! I wanted to die! My legs hurt so bad for the first month getting used to running and marching up hills....

I don't know how you ride a bike out there, but that's awesome that you keep it up! The weather sure has to help! Gorgeous out there!

RubeRad

lol Pendleton is crazy hilly! I did a couple race events there that my work paid for the entry fee because it benefitted soldiers.

I did the Devil Dog Duathlon twice (co-event with the Semper Tri), that was not too bad, 2k beach run at the hovercraft launch site, 30k bike North along stuart mesa and then turn inland up that gradual hill and back, then 5K run up the launch ramp and then totally flat around that compound.

Also did the 'Hellfire Fat Tire' mtb race once, that was a lot of fun. Pretty hilly, but not as bad as other parts of Pendleton where I can see running trails from the freeway.

Skipjacks

I know that beach where the hovercrafts land. Pretty area. That whole undeveloped beach front along the Pendelton coast is awesome, with the big cliffs set back from the beach (We don't have those on the East Coast. We got from flat to beach.

Back to Pendelton, go inland a little from the highway and it's just hills everywhere. Most of the training is hills hills and more hills.

And how is the weather so much different 5 miles inland? That's another thing that feels like being on another planet to us East Coast people. I was so confused how it could be raining in the hills 5 miles from the coast and a beautiful sunny day at the beach. Well that and just being in the mountains and drive 10 minutes and being at the beach....it's all very different from this side of the country where a bike ride at the beach means long flat stretched where speed bumps are the largest mountains.

I miss my time out there. Just a gorgeous area. The first time I spent 3 months there it took me 4 months to breath clearly again once I came back East. I got so used to breathing that low humidity air that coming back to the humid soup we call atmosphere here stuffed me up so bad I felt like I was underwater.

Phil_gretz

Yes. We're here. WE'RE HERE!!!

I pay attention to avatars, locations, names and thoughts. Sure, some of the folks who post are caught up with their tiny agendas, but many are just working joes who ride bikes regularly to and fro. That's me.

And I really, really like to ride my bike. Really.

PS: I still don't keep track of miles at all, but do have cyclometers on, I think, at least two of my bikes. Maybe three...

RubeRad

So not only do you not track how many miles you ride, you don't even track how many trackers you have to track miles...

phtomita

For me is more for motivation, setting a reasonable goal for the year .
I have a cheap computer on my bike but it is set to measure cadence, not speed...
For distance I use the distance that gugu maps provide when looking the different safe routes.

Phamilton

Jim from Boston

Benefits to tracking mileage?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phamilton

My gawd, this sub forum sometimes.

I generally regret telling people that I'm a bike commuter or that I live without a car. Sort of ironically, the people I regret telling the most often are other bike commuters or people who live without a car.

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT YOU'RE DOING WRONG

Everybody is an expert.

Nobody reads threads, nobody pays attention to post dates, nobody pays attention to the names or avatars or locations.

Why is anybody here?

Does anybody even ride a bike?

FWIW, regarding your OP, @Phamilton, I’m a mileage tracker, and I have posted, Regarding your above-quoted rant, as 10+ year subscriber to Bike Forums, I have also posted to a now-closed thread:

Phamilton

I re-converted my drop bar hybrid daily commuter back to straight bars today. In the process I was looking at my computer and the broken mount and realized that I could simply put a glob of hot glue between them, it would hold well enough but I’d still be able to sort of pry it out to change the battery when needed. I thought about just supergluing them at first.
I started running the wire (it’s a wired computer), paused to ask myself whether or not I really wanted to have it back on, and left it off.
I don’t want to know how fast I’m going, how far I’ve gone, or how long it’s been since I left. At least not when I’m commuting. Maybe not ever. But it did help to have the odometer thing on the front wheel of my new to me Voyageur for the C&V Clunker Challenge (that I accidentally completed today).

Phamilton

Realized today that Strava is a great way to track rides together with my daughter. As a novice to cycling, there’s a lot that she can learn about distances and times and she can set goals that are meaningful to her, and we can take pics and log our rides together. Perfect. She’s not a commuter. I’m not sure I’ll recommend it (commuting) to her. At 12, it’s probably for the better. I think she’ll be pretty good to get 500 miles this summer, maybe better if she really enjoys it. I don’t ever push her to ride. I was surprised she asked me to go ride today. 2 1/2 miles to and from the church parking lot for a few laps. She started to seem a little uncomfortable on the bike after about 15 minutes so I said let’s call it, it’s almost dark anyway and let’s end our first ride of the season on a positive note. She was a little disappointed, wanted to keep riding. Perfect ride for a kid.
I’m not going to log our rides here, just wanted to recognize the usefulness of a really great app for some folks/applications. Not even completely useless for me. I might put the computer on her bike eventually.

Phamilton

Fellow regulars here in commuting sub I guess take note that I have no objection to rambling on in my own threads. It was a 2019 resolution to not do so on anybody else’s thread. I believe I have been successful. But I can’t apologize for rambling anymore, it’s an affliction. When I feel provoked I seem to ramble slightly more than usual. If that makes me a bad forum user, I can be OK with that. I know I’m young at 37 but I’m as crabby as any 73 year old who spends too much time on a bike and the Internet. That’s not a shot fired at anybody, I don’t know any specific user here, but it seems logical. Likely even. Happy Easter to anybody who reads this or 4/20 or however you been floating your boat this weekend.

Phamilton

And for anybody still reading this awful thread, I rode at least 45 miles today, between my downtown fun ride this morning which was at the very least 30 miles because 12 miles is the shortest route downtown by bike but the weather inspired me to ramble - another later errand to a point I had previously measured at precisely 6 miles (there and back is the same distance as a one way trip to work) but on the way home did a few laps around the park (measured previously at 1 and some change miles, call it 1) and a little off-roading, and then the 2 1/2 mile dessert ride with my kid. But I don’t care the miles. It was time on the bike not going to and from work.

Darth Lefty 

I used Shoe Goo to hold the radio receiver in my r/c cars. I could always pry it up with a screwdriver, just going slowly, and it held much better than the two sided foam tape supplied for the purpose.

RubeRad

Wow. I don't even have a smartphone and I've known that for years