Spirituality and Biking

On Monday I took advantage of a little time off from work and some beautiful early fall weather to take a bike ride along the Paul Bunyan trail. The trail starts in Baxter and goes all the way up to Bemedji. Normally my biking is limited to trips to church or on the stationary bike in my apartment complex. This was quite a different experience, now I had a road to travel free from the distractions of traffic, surrounded by gorgeous scenery, and easily channeled to allow for an enjoyable ride with good exercise value. When I ride a stationary bike the challenge is setting a goal and continuing until that goal is met. If I just go until I am tired I stop after about six minutes, well, perhaps slightly longer than that, but I start to think about stopping pretty early on. In order to get a good work out I need a goal that can keep me going on the bike. My ride along the trial was nice because I had plenty to think about, plenty of time to think in, and also the nice fact that the entire time I was biking away from home, this meant that once I finally decided to to turn around I would still get more exercise getting back home, instead of just being able to stop when I got tired.
So how does this connect to spirituality. I think the struggle with my spiritual life right now is that it is too much like going on a stationary bike, I don't have a good destination or a goal, and so I go for a bit, get tired and stop. it would be a lot easier to maintain healthy habits and move towards spiritual growth if I had something to guide me, like a definite trail, and a clear goal or way of pushing me beyond my comfort level. I am not sure that spirituality ever be like that. I think that part of what makes spiritual growth hard is that it is not measured as easily as other things. These is not an easy test score to determine spirituality that you can check your growth against and see progress. We need to set some goals and motivate ourselves, not towards growth but just towards action. How do we make sure we are taking the time to do the work, pushing us not towards a concrete goal, but just towards a more concrete action of seeking. It is not a perfect metaphor, but it fits with the struggles I am having right now, how do I get my spiritual exercise when i so hard to track my progress. What struggles do others have in making progress spiritually? What are other ways of looking at this challenge? I am sure I will muse more later, but any thoughts are welcome