2012 Ride Recap

Two-thousand and twelve was a very good year for me in terms of cycling. Many personal bests and many benchmarks were attained. Overall, greatly improved from 2011 results or 2010 results. I also went for the entire cycle of the year, pedaling a bicycle each and every day. I'd never been one for lots of time away from the bike anyhow so this wasn't a big stretch, though I will admit, it did take some getting used to before becoming just another normal part of the day, which it did.

In terms of racing and competition, I still didn't have much luck on the road, though I didn't really give it much of a go. I've also resigned myself to the fact that I'm just not a very good road racer. Bottom line is that I'm not smart enough, strategically. I've got this problem that when the race starts, I go into reaction mode and the reaction is usually aggression. That said, I was pleased with the performance at Battenkill though my own stupidity in the final corner cost me a few spots.

Although I was never able to get a PR at the local/weekly Charlie Baker time-trial, I spent a number of consecutive weeks literally within a few seconds of my best time ever, which was from back in 2009. I use this as a good benchmark of my performance given that we have been doing it consistently since 2006. My MTB racing was pretty consistent as well although I did multi-flat out of two different races this season, something that has almost never happened to me in the past. The cyclocross season was pretty unbelievable though and made up for all of it though. Of course I have some specific regrets but in general, no complaints here.

2012 Statistics

 

Ride Breakdown

• Days Ridden: 365
• Miles Ridden: 9,630
• 62,656 miles (logged since 04/2005)
• Road Hours: 281 (SS, geared, tandem and TT)
• MTB Hours: 209 (SS and geared)
• Cyclocross Hours: 129 (SS and geared)
• Trainer Hours: 39 (rollers)
• Total Pedaling Hours: 658
  
• 4,282 hours (logged since 04/2005)

 

Race Breakdown

• Road Races: 4
• MTB Races: 7
• Cyclocross Races: 33
• CBTT: 12
• Victories: 18
• First Non-Victor: 8
• Top-Tens: 35  

Clearly this was both my biggest and best year ever, at least in terms of performance. I recognize that moving up an age bracket in cyclocross made a big difference. I also recognize that I gave up racing the elite MTB race at the USA Cycling events a few years back and settled back into the Cat1 age bracket race. Still, a number of races saw the top Cat1 time overall so I don't think there is much of a performance degradation going on there.

That said, I certainly did a fair bit of cherry-picking, avoiding races that exposed my weaknesses and targeting those in line with my strengths. I also did more structured training, particularly for the cyclocross season as well as listening to what my body was telling me.

All in all, very pleased. Certainly I wish I'd have managed those 3 seconds at the CBTT, wish I'd have gotten those 400 odd miles I left out there in 2012, wish I'd have ridden smarter at those two MTB races and not flatted and wish I'd have done better at a few Verge races this fall and wish I'd have worked harder in a couple of the Zanc SS series events. Goals left for next time I guess.

Now it all starts over again from fresh.