Looking back over some old training logs I was smugly congratulating myself on what I thought was a strong start to this, the Year of Our Lard 2026.
“366 miles for January,” sez I to myself, no one else being handy. “Wrapped it up with the first 100-mile week of the New Year. Not bad; not bad at all.”
And then I checked in with a couple old velo-newsie bros. No, not fellow refugees from that once-storied journal of competitive cycling — rather, fellow refugees from the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph. Like Your Humble Narrator, they also ride bicycles.
The Supervisor and the M-Dogg both live in Northern California now, and it’s been nearly 20 years since the three of us last saddled up together. I’m the only one who’s fully retired, in part because I’m the only one who has a wife with a job of work, which for an old slacker keen to skip his pulls into the wind is like drafting a UPS truck on a summer day.
Anyway, there we were, chatting away via text, and the M-Dogg mentions that he just wrapped a 49.6-mile ride with 2,020 feet of vertical.
Yow.
I mentioned having done a leisurely 3-mile trail run, explaining that I got a late start and didn’t feel like kitting up for a ride.
“And here the M-Dogg is already cranking out the half-centuries,” I added.
“Mo, tell him your January mileage,” says The Supe.
“760 in January,” replies the M-Dogg, “only possible in a very dry January.”
That’s 760 miles. Not kilometers, furlongs, cubits, rods, or whatever the hell it is that Californicators use to measure the distance between organic vineyards and fair-trade java shops. And here I was, cackling over the little 366-mile egg I laid last month, which was even drier here in the Duck! City desert.
“Comparisons are odious,” they say. Ho, ho. When When John Fortescue wrote that shit he was probably on the short end of a miles-gobbling contest with Henry VI, who covered a lot of ground during the Wars of the Roses.
“Better luck next year, Forty old chum! Oh, dear, here comes Edward, with that ‘Oo’ d’ye think is the bloody king around here, mate?’ look on his face. Right, I’m off. …”
Which brings us to this poem from James Crews, “Winter Morning,” from which our headline comes. Unwrap your gift and be grateful for whatever it is you find inside.
Mad Blog Media 
PO’G: Great start for you to the New Year! Congrats!
And as Teddy Roosevelt allegedly said “Comparison is the thief of joy.” 🙂
I’m going to try riding one of the regular road bikes today. See if my back is still happy afterwards.
How’d that work out for you, K? All well?
I kept it to an hour and right now, feel pretty good!
Excellent! Who says there’s no such thing as good news?
Miles are like tying cement blocks to pleasure’s feet and pushing it off the pier into 100 feet deep water. Fun and relaxation becomes work, training, goals and other joy killers. Ditch the cyclometers, computers, ear buds, smart watches, and cell phones. If you must take a phone to call for an unlikely medivac, turn it off until you need it. You know how strong you are. You know how far your favorite out and back or loops are. Just go for a ride, walk, or run. Don’t drag the digital fentanyl with you. Leave it in the garage. When we did the Santa Fe ride, that was the first time a computer was on that SOMA Double Cross disc. Damn, that was a nice bike.
Those DCs are sweet, unlike the DC where the feddle gummint hangs its graft.
I don’t pay much attention to the tech whilst cycling. I have the old iPhone 13 Mini in a jersey pocket for photo-snapping purposes; the Apple Watch SE for tracking heart rate and vertical gain; and various elderly Cateye cyclocomputers for elapsed time, distance, duration, etc.
I dutifully log all the data I collect so now and again I can look back over the years and go all like, “Huh! Wow! Manly!” or, as is more likely, “Jeez, what a wuss.”
What the hell, it gives me something else to yammer on about here at Ye Olde Pickle Barrel. But I don’t obsess over it, knowing as I do that sometimes a short, slow outing is preferable to one of them long, hard sumbitches that leaves you feeling like you’ve been dipped in shit and set afire.
I get it, and beg forgiveness for getting all preachy again. The logs are a good way to see trends. I did it for a long time, including heart rate and BP. I was determined to have a resting heart rate of 50. I did manage 52 for a time, then lost interest when I realized I was indeed obsessing over it, The discovery that my home BP device was 10 points off compared to the doctor’s office machine killed the obsession. Trashed the sumbitch and quit logging. Kept the computers on the bike. Then they came off the mountain bikes first, followed by the road bikes about a year later. Mileage logging stopped. Then came the Paseo del Bosque and Sante Fe rides with the crew, and they went back on the road bikes and the Niner mountain bike. After the Santa Fe ride the fear set in and guitars were demanding more attention. Like this post correctly pointed out, there just ain’t that many hours in my day. Forgive the passive voice, but priorities had to be made. And right or wrong, I made them. The constant truth through it all was that cycling got me to 77 in relatively excellent health. I have never regretted an hour on the saddle, especially off road. And I don’t regret racing that Amtrack train, slowing for the Williams Station, on the my Niner with passengers in the windows cheering me on.
No worries, Paddy me lad. I note all these deets out of habit, not obsession. I think it’s interesting to see how my riding habits have changed over the years since I bought that Centurion Le Mans 12 way back when.
I draw the line at Strava, though. “Are you on Strava?” people ask me. “Why on earth would I wanna be on Strava?” I reply. When I was still competing with other people I did it up close and personal, as Dog intended.
Now I enjoy a 90-minute spin on a 1998 Steelman Eurocross that takes in some foothills streets, graveled paths, and mildly challenging singletrack as much as I used to love the hourslong road rides we Mad Dogs did out of Boulder Park on Thursdays.
Yesterday I saw my first quail of the new year as I came off Trail 365 at the Embudito trailhead. That’s what I call winning these days.
AMEN to the digital detoxing. Less doom scrolling and life doesn’t stink so much. The wind must be diluting the foulness
Every mile is a gift. Embrace each one as if it is 10, or 30, or 100. Because every one is more than what we had yesterday.
See, this is why we call him the Supe. He brings the Wisdom. Miles = smiles.
If I compete with myself for logged miles, speed, or any other crap, I have to realize that I am competing with someone who was ten, twenty, or forty years younger. Like the day I finished working in my advisor’s lab on the Summer Solstice and took off on a seventy mile ride out east on Long Island after a full day in the laboratory. It was awesome, but it was Back Then.
That is a losing proposition. So I just enjoy riding regardless of whether it is a seven mile out and back on the River Trail or grunting it out to get in a long ride for whateverthefuck a long ride is these days. I think trying to compete with yourself, at least for me, makes fun turn into turds. Just enjoy the ride.