As of this writing there are 35 days left in the year, and I have amassed a total of 9,088 miles in 2014. My goal for the year is to ride 10,000 miles, and simple math tells me that I need to average a little over 26 miles per day to achieve my goal. This goal, like many goals in cycling, is a mostly arbitrary number. If I were to ride say, 9,760 miles instead of 10,000, the effect on my body wouldn’t be much different, but it wouldn’t be 10,000, and anyone who’s skimmed a Malcom Gladwell (whom I once essentially called an e-idiot, a career highlight) book knows that 10,000 is a magic number and it should be pursued whenever possible.

My pursuit of the magical 10,000 has been temporarily waylaid by a cold, which took me off the bike for 2 days last week. But fear not, this temporary setback hasn’t dimmed my enthusiasm for maddening monotony—I have returned to my role as the grist in the grinder. I will admit to tiring of plodding over the same training routes day after day, but this cannot be helped, as my options are limited by both the volume of riding I am doing and the my desire to not become a piece of gristle caught in the grill of a mother’s minivan as she races to make up time lost waiting in line at Starbucks. I hone and develop my routes carefully and I try to optimize them according to traffic volume and lack of monotony, but this process has a tendency to limit my choices, as safe and non-boring routes are rare, and therefore have to be used over and over again.

I am also compiling ghost miles (these are miles done on the trainer that I add manually to my Strava account—don’t you dare judge me) in my basement chamber of athletic horrors, and this means that I am watching a lot of sweaty television. I prefer to delve into the escapism of “regular” television instead of watching cycling based content as watching bike stuff only serves to remind me of the horror of the activity of pedaling my bike in a basement. I do wish that I could get cyclocross races on my TV though, as watching all of those guys fall down really makes my day, because I am a bad person. Be sure to watch this space in the future as I pedal my sanity into a fine paste of delusion and folly.

Warmth porn.

This is the time of the year when I comb the internet for new and interesting ways to make my extremities toasty. I have gone on and on to almost everyone who knows me about how my fingers and toes are as sensitive as Alan Alda at an encounter group. So I am always on the lookout for warm stuff. Currently, I have my temperatures down to 35 degrees dialed in, but I am looking to fine tune the temperatures below 35. Body-wise, I am set to 15 degrees with my Craft undershirt and Castelli winter coat paired with my Garneau bib tights. At these temperatures I have to go with my Lake rain (not winter) boots, chemical warmers, wool socks and Gore shoes covers. For my hands I have a pair of mittens from Campmor, because mittens trap finger heat better than any of those lobster abominations, and are only slightly less risky when it comes to braking and other such matters of bike control. But feel free to share your winter gear suggestions, because there’s no way I can stop you—people just love to prattle on and on about cold weather equipment.

Weight

I have come to the grim realization that if I want to maintain any sort of semblance of a non-fat person, I will need to curb my intake of sweet delicious alcohol. This realization has not been a popular one.