Year Review

Wow, another year has passed. It flew by so quickly that it feels like only a few months ago that I was beginning my first whole year on here.

The year started amazingly well. It began with a cycling challenge that I completed quicker than anticipated and celebrated with a 'victory' ride of around 80 miles. Then came the snowy rides. Only a few of these happened as at the start of February was my big incident resulting with the fractured pelvis. I thought my year was ruined, as did my consultant - it was anticipated to take 6 months for the pelvis to be healed sufficiently for me to sit on a bike, with many more months graduating to actually riding it. It also meant a war between myself and NHS Direct as they fucked up big time (I had to haul my own ass into hospital) and after 3 months of fighting I won the battle with a a written apology from the NHS ombudsman and a review of how they deal with incidents.

As a result of the injury I hadn't planned any other challenges for the year as I knew it was going to be along haul back to even being able to sit on a bike never mind ride it. My chances at the Track Championships were in tatters as I'd not be able to ride the track at all for the whole year.
Somehow, and I'm still not sure how, I got the all clear to be discharged from my consultant in May after only 3 months with the advice that I should start riding the bike again as soon as I was able to sit on it, but to obviously take it very, very easy. So that meant Everest was liberated, I was happy and the challenge of getting fit again arose.

May was the easy month with only 138 miles ridden and 4500ft climbed, before the summer got better with the mileage and climbing stats pretty much doubling. This trend continued into Autumn until my knee began to play up again, which is plainly obvious with the lower mileage for November and the complete lack of anything really for December.

All in all. It's been an interesting year. Battles have been won - getting back on the bike and finally racing again just before Christmas, the apology; battles have been lost - mileage has been lower than I'd like and I've left my bike club as a full member. Weight has also been lost without even trying (sorry to all those who are working their butts off).

It's also been a strange year for many, many reasons. But I have my memories to relive, my new friendships and renewed friendships to take with me into 2010. And I have exciting things to build on - more about those another time.