Day 30 of 30: 1% Better

...and so, we have reached the end of yet another 30 Days of Biking challenge. This is now the 6th time I've completed the challenge, and though not grand in fashion, a couple short rides around the neighbourhood today did the trick:

At the end of each April, I'm always struck with a bittersweet feeling. I know I did a lot of riding, and yet, I feel like I could have done more. For the moment, I'll focus on the former: I did a lot of riding.

How much? While I don't set mileage goals for myself during the month, I do keep track of them because it's always interesting to see how things play out and/or how far I can go. I logged 326.2 miles this month, a little over 3 miles more than I did during 30DoB last year. That might not sound like that much, but 3 miles is 1% of 300, so I did approximately 1% better than I did last year.

Interestingly enough, Strava ran a 1% better challenge that began on April 5th, with the basics being to do 15 minutes of activity per day for 5 days a week, adding up to about 1% of a month. Guess what I completed today:

And with 2 days to spare on that, to boot! Why I find this interesting is that I thought I had more than two days this month where I had resigned myself to taking a lap around the block as a means to complete the 30DoB challenge, and it appears that only occurred twice since April 5th. Perception is not always reality.

I'm not sure where the 1% better mantra came from, but my workplace has been using it as our theme for this year and it's continued to come up more and more frequently in the last couple months. 1% can be the easiest thing in the world, if you think about it. I mean, from last year's total, that would have been me riding an extra .1 mile per day, much less than a ride around the block. I'm not saying this month was easy, but it was at least 1% better.

So, on to May, and beyond? Thanks for riding along, and I hope you've had the opportunity to improve 1% somewhere along the way, even if it's NOT on a bicycle.

Here are some of my favourite photos of the month to lead out, no captions necessary.