Well... it’s been a while... in fact, I'm not sure 20 months off the bike can be described as 'a while' even. It’s been an Eternity.
How much has changed since the summer of 2009 other than the growing amount of dust on my impulsively bought collection of bikes I wonder. For the Mitre, as far as I can gather from their excellent new blog http://www.mitreracing.co.uk, they have gone a long, long way since I departed after crashing out of racing, and cycling in general at Hove Park in July 2009. The membership has swelled, new seasoned riders have added to the depth of experience and the club has a new team racing focus. It’s this new approach detailed here http://www.mitreracing.co.uk/about/ that has been a contributing factor in getting me off my arse.
I made some errors in 2009. After all the hard work training in Feb/Mar/Apr and a huge amount of support from the club, I reached a period of peak fitness around mid-June, culminating in gaining my 3rd cat license. The biggest mistake of the year was trying to drag that peak out like an elastic band. The excitement and adrenaline of racing in one of those peak periods is like a drug, you can’t race enough, 2 races in the week and one at the weekend would be common.
After being committed and focused for the 4 months previous, all the hard work on the turbo intervals, fitness tests and early morning rides, when it came to the culmination of that I stopped thinking and just kept racing. As I started to lose the edge after many races instead of acknowledging this and easing into a transition period of recovery I just kept at it. Crashing at Thruxton in June should have been my signal to start a recovery period, but stupid bloody mindedness and the looming Devil Ride sportive a week later kept me going.
My usually uncommon egotistical competitiveness for this particular event got me a Gold time, but also resulted in another crash at the finish after a gruelling ride, still carrying the injuries from Thruxton. A week later the same ego saw me enter into the June edition of Hove Park, eager to race in front of my Mum and Meg. In the warm up I was barely able to get my heart rate up and losing concentration crashed taking the wrong line into a sharp corner thereby undoing all the healing progress from the Thruxton crash. Stupidly, I raced anyway in what’s a hard race on a good day, lapped and dejected eventually packed after another serious crash involving another rider from Southdown Velo (who made a full recovery and completed the season).
I didn’t get on my Trek again that year and didn’t even update my training log with the result of the Devil Ride, let alone the abortive attempt at Hove Park. Reading back through those entries the weeks after Thruxton its seems so obvious I needed a break. But why did I carry on to self-destruction and ultimately complete abandonment of cycling? Until this weekend the Trek has been sat in my room gathering dust, exactly as it was after the crash in 2009 with the brake levers bent and bar tape ripped up. In 2010 I rode twice, other than a pootle to the comic shop on the Masi, once in Berlin for the Velothon in May and once in June for the Naked Bike Ride. What a season!
Realistically I can’t get back into training, or even riding (I know that’s stupid) without trying to confront why this happened. I can’t turn up at the club again and expect the same support on and off the bike and then just bugger off again.
Anyway, looking forwards. Only Forward.
Goals for 2011: If I’m fit enough to race in support of others towards their goals then that will be a bonus. But for now no more talk, just Ride my Bike, get fit, eat and live well...
Goals for 2011: If I’m fit enough to race in support of others towards their goals then that will be a bonus. But for now no more talk, just Ride my Bike, get fit, eat and live well...
