A couple years ago I had a goal to ride 365 hours - averaging 1 hour/day. I just barely reached it, riding a few hours on New Years Eve, going only 5 minutes over. The next year I started commuting to work. Tracking that time, I crushed my previous goal with 417 hours. And while commuting is certainly better than nothing, it was a bit of a false sense of accomplishment. I don't think my fitness improved with that additional time and may have even declined. Thirty minutes twice a day while trying not to sweat too much just isn't going to provide much benefit. This year I stopped tracking my commuting time/miles unless I take the long way home. I also haven't had a time or mileage goal... and it shows. I'm on track to hit 3500 miles (and 230 hours), down from 5000-6000 miles in previous years. The lack of races this year certainly hasn't helped.
On one hand I feel like I shouldn't need a goal. I should just ride when I want to because I like riding. The problem is I also like being lazy on weekend mornings - sleeping in, cooking breakfast, having an extra cup of coffee. Weekend afternoons can get a bit trafficy, so I end up just going for a short ride around town. I think a well defined goal may just give me that extra nudge out of the door in the morning.
Time vs Mileage
Time goals are generally considered better as mileage varies with speed and terrain. An hour of hard effort on a mountain bike trail may only get you 10 miles, while an easy hour on a road bike will get you over 15 miles but less fitness gain. Time and the quality of that time will be the best indicators of training effort. (There are other ways to measure training effort with power, zones, heart rate, etc., but I like to keep things simple.) A time goal means no preference of road vs mountain. But having a goal that is only time gives you no incentive to ride hard.
Mileage goals give you an incentive to ride fast when your time is limited (after work). It's also more impressive to tell people you've ridden X,000 miles this year. The downside is that it incentivizes the road bike over the mountain bike.
Even though time goals are (probably) better (and an actual training plan would be best), I've decided to aim for mileage instead. 10,000 miles would be awesome, but I think that's a little ambitious while working full time. I've decided to shoot for 7500 miles next year, or about 150 miles/week. My trail rides are, sadly, infrequent these days, so that shouldn't be much of a problem. I can either go for longer trail rides or just make up the miles with a longer road ride. This goal also ensures that I ride at least 7.5 hours/week, so the time goal is just kind of built in.
I'm still not going to count my standard commutes, only the ones that are an hour or more, ideally 20+ miles. 60-80 miles during the week should be manageable with 70-90 on the weekends. That sounds like a lot even to me, but that's the point. Of course there's no reason to wait for the new year to shoot for a weekly goal. I managed to hit it last week, but a 70 mile ride on Sunday left me destroyed. This week I've been dealing with allergies and rain, so I'll fall quite short. But that's ok, it's a goal for most weeks.
