This page has a number of charts depicting my cycling since October 2000. The charts were last updated January 01 2010. Note that these charts DO NOT include wintertime indoor resistance trainer work, which I began this past season.
This high-level chart shows my total riding since 2000. The wave pattern reflects the low amount of riding I do during the winter months, and a gradual increase in mileage during the summer. While the overall trend appears pretty stable, mileage for individual years can vary quite a bit.
This chart shows total mileage in the same way as the previous one, but breaks it down further by how much I have ridden each of my bicycles.
This chart shows the variation in how much I have ridden each year. As you can see, on light years I typically ride around 2,000 miles, while doing twice that on a really good year. The only pattern that jumps out at me here is the way I seem to follow high-mileage years with rest years.
This chart plots each year according to how much I'd ridden throughout the year, so that comparisons can be made between years for any given date. For example, one can see that in April, I had biked fewer miles in the 2008/2009 season than in any other year; however, by mid-June, I had turned that around, bringing 2008/2009 up to my second highest mileage year. The other thing to note on this chart is how several years level off in August, after my Pan-Mass Challenge ride is complete.
Here's what each month of an average year looks like. As you might predict, most of my riding occurs between April and October.
The brown line here represents my average mileage each month, which was shown in the bar chart above. The orange lines above and below it show the largest and smallest distance I've ridden each month. As you can see, the variation between a good year and a poor one, at the monthly level, is very consistent, except for December, which never seems to vary much at all.
Things start getting a bit messy when you analyze my riding at the weekly level. It's still easy to identify the seasonal variance in my riding, but the more interesting aspect of this chart is its ability to show how consistent or inconsistent my riding is (compare 2009's smooth curve versus 2006's jagged one).
Whether you measure my riding by number of miles (above) or number of hours (below), the chart winds up looking pretty much the same. This shows purely riding time, so it doesn't include time spent at rest stops along the way.
There's not much value in tracking max speed (the orange line), but it's still fun to note the peaks, where I was able to ride in excess of 40 mph. My average speed (the brown line) stays in the 14-17 mph range, with the average showing a little bit of seasonal variation. It would be higher if I took fewer recovery rides, did fewer hill climbs, and stopped riding in city traffic. The breaks in the lines are times when I was unable to ride or when technical issues invalidated the measurement. More recently, they also indicate time periods when I used the indoor trainer, rather than ride outside.
