← Blog/July 24, 2026 · 2 min read
Almost 50 Miles. Almost.
The goal this week was 50 miles of riding plus one long 75-mile day. Life had other plans. Here's what the week actually looked like, and why I'm still calling it a win.
The plan versus the week
The goal was straightforward: hit 50 miles across the week, then cap it with a single long 75-mile ride. That's the kind of volume that starts to build a real base for a 135-mile day in August.
The week had other ideas. Work, life, the usual — I got nothing in until Friday. Zero miles Monday through Thursday.
So Friday became everything.
The morning ride
I got out early and just rode. No intervals, no structure. The goal was simple: get miles in the bank. I ended up covering 46 miles in just over three hours of moving time, with about 1,350 feet of climbing.
Average watts were 110W, which is well below my FTP of 216W (FTP is the highest average power you can hold for roughly an hour — it's the number I use to gauge fitness). That means this was easy effort, conversational pace. Which is exactly what it needed to be after a week of nothing.
I picked up 5 PRs and 24 achievements on segments along the route. I'll be honest — that surprised me. I wasn't going hard. Sometimes fresh legs from a few days off do that.
The afternoon ride
A few hours later, I got back on the bike. My son and I rode over to meet the founder of Long Shot, a space company he's been following. Nine and a half miles, flat, slow — 8.4 mph average. More of an errand than a workout. But it counted.
The day in total
- Combined distance: 55.9 miles
- Elevation: ~1,373 feet
- Moving time: about 4 hours 18 minutes
I didn't hit the week's goal of 50 miles spread across multiple days. I crammed almost all of it into one Friday. The long 75-miler didn't happen at all. And yet I rode more than I planned in a single day, which is its own kind of progress.
What this actually builds
TheBayRide is 135 miles. August 29th. That's five weeks away.
A day like today doesn't feel heroic. It feels like survival. But this is what training for a 135-mile ride actually looks like most of the time. It's not perfect weeks with perfect execution. It's finding the hours when the week hands them to you, putting in what you can, and not letting a bad stretch turn into a longer one.
The morning ride was honest work. The afternoon ride was bonus miles with my kid, which is a different kind of good.
Five weeks out, every mile still counts. Next week I'll try again for that 75-miler.
Current numbers
- FTP: 216W
- Weight: 209.8 lbs
- W/kg: 2.27 (watts per kilogram, a power-to-weight ratio used to compare riders)
If you've been thinking about signing up for TheBayRide but wondering if you're fit enough to start training, I'll tell you what this week looked like: four days of nothing and then a Friday scramble. That's the actual process. Come do it with us.
From the ride
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The Bay Ride is a charity bike ride around the Bay Area. 135 miles all the way around, or a 35-mile option from SF to Oakland.
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