Closing the cycling season

Oct 24, 2023

šŸš“ šŸš“ šŸš“ My bicycle rides results 2023 šŸš“ šŸš“ šŸš“

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UPD. Originally I’ve published this post on October 14th, but it turned out that after that I continued to ride a bike for some time. So I decided just to update the post with more relevant information.

Last spring I bought a bike, and after a pretty long hiatus, I came back to riding!

In recent years I have had to live in different countries and cities, so my old bike stayed with my parents (where it is probably still waiting for me). This year I realized that I miss cycling and decided that I needed to fix it. And also I was probably motivated by the locals, who ride bicycles here all year round, even in 30-degree frosts! Iā€™m not so strong yet, so I waited for warm spring days and bought a used bike from an ad on the local website.

Previously I rode mostly on weekends, and it was more such a stress reliever and some form of exercise for me. But this year I also used the bike as my main transport to go to work, shops, and other errands. I live in Joensuu, a city with a pretty well-developed infrastructure for cyclists, so riding here is very comfortable (also it allows me to save money on public transport). And of course, I continued to ride in my free time over longer distances - in the outskirts of the city and to neighboring places.

My company took part in a cycling competition over the summer together with other local organizations and teams - Kilometrikisa. I also took part in it, so I collected some statistics from my rides:

  • date of first ride - April 22
  • date of last ride - October 24
  • total distance - 2523km
  • total time - 141h
  • # of rides - 257
  • common elevation gain - 10347m
  • # of broken tires - 1
  • # of falls - 1

Maybe this is not so significant result, but I had a good time anyway!

I collected data using the Strava mobile app. I’m not very happy with it, so probably I’ll look for something better in the future.

To sum it up, Iā€™m glad that the bicycle has returned to my life. These half a year of riding gave me many pleasant moments. For now, I’m ending my rides for this year due to cold weather, but in the future, I hope to learn how to be as strong and hardy as the Finns and ride a bike all year round!

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