Review of the Year 2015 and a Tentative Look Forward

As far as cycling goals are concerned then I have to admit that this last year has been somewhat of a failure.  Perhaps it is that age is finally beginning to take its toll.

I was aiming to cycle around Harrogate, visit Betty's Tea Shop, and enjoy the Yorkshire Hills....and though a friend offered to ride with me I did not follow through. He is much younger than me and I have painfully discovered that a young man's SLOW is an OAPs VERY FAST and I was worried that I would nit keep up and spoil his ride.

I was also aiming to ride Derby - Skegness ( 100 miles ) in a day. I had loaded the route onto my Garmin and even tested it out over the first 30 km outbound. Again a younger man had offered to accompany me and act as domestique. I trained for this in that I was comfortably cycling 100 km but was feeling a little tired at the end and thought I would never manage a further 60 km.

So, I chickened out on both.

But there were some highlights and here are the bare statistices

               Total distance cycled             6736.1km
                Total Ascent climbed           51985m
              Total hours in the saddle        350 hours

My ' Annuity Goal ' was to cycle 1932 km ( or 1200 miles ) so I comfortably exceeded this, and indeed, managed to cycle further in the year than I have ever done before.

( Annuity Goal. When I retired the annuity people based my pension on my life expectancy, which they assumed to be 73yo.  So I was determined to beat this and bought a bike and took up cycling, never having really ridden before. So I set a lifetime target of 80yo and determined that I would ride 2000 miles in my 60th year and then decrease the target by 100 miles per year to account for aging, hence the target of 1200 miles in 2015 )

Also this last year I joined a cycling club, Derby Mercury though I felt somewhat of a fraud wearing the jersey as their cycling abilities are in a different league to my own.   However I have been made to feel very welcome and have enjoyed helping out with Marshaling at Races and taking some photos of various events and training sessions.

                                                      



                                               




                                                


                                                

     
                                               


So what for 2016?

A Cycling distance target of  1771 km

and perhaps, for the rest................ just to have fun