2022 Year In Review

Holy hell, what a start to the year. Glad you’re on the mend.

Not a great year personally. Got in the groove last summer, lost some weight, did a few CX races, then work and home life stress blew up my commitment to riding, I binge ate and put all the weight back on. And here I am trying to get my groove back. Ugh.

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Well a bit mellow year here, needed to take some time for our old home house maintenance. Covid in the beginning of November, was quite shortish and no bad symptoms later on, but still that some three weeks hit. Soon after that ripped my left lower leg, tennis leg type of accident, prolly because not enough stretching and other maintenance work during that Covid…

About 469h, 292 activities right now. 11670 dist, 88865 alt (metric units). Outdoors riding 8930, indoors 2620, rest is running, swimming. Some 1500-2000 less outdoors, I think, because of things mentioned earlier. Kinda enough yet with full time work and late 50’s age.

haha nah I wish, I’d do more 25-30h weeks then if full time riding! Just wayyyy too wasted for me to do anything productive when I do those. Working 30-40h per week, but bike stuff so that’s fun

I just always aim for 20 total; sometimes it’s higher, sometimes lower (if travel or rest week obvi)

did 1098 and 1093 in 2020 and 2021 for first time. Should end around 1065 this year. I’ll take it!

maybe 1100 finally gets broken in 2023

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Bit of an up and down year

Sustained 5 w/kg for the first time ever - had been above but never for long previously - at age 40

Won a few races, lost more. Got hit by a car and lost a lot of memories, some fitness, and some knee functionality

Knee mostly recovered, but not completely six months later. Head (hopefully) fully recovered three months later. Fitness almost back as I’m sitting at 4.95 w/kg and waiting on a verdict from my ortho on whether further interventions on my knee will be necessary :crossed_fingers:

Bike time: 800 hours currently, 808 or so by end of year
Recovery walking time: 385 hours (lots of this as part of knee rehab)

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Gained 30 watts. Got a new bike. Broke a finger.

Not sure what goals to set for next year. 20 more watts (or more…) would sure be nice.

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The Good:
I competed in XC for the first time this year and managed to get through every race without any mechanicals or crashes. Sure I finished close to the bottom every race, but I survived.

I spent some time contemplating my wants and my needs. As a result, I’m going to sell two bikes this coming Spring.

Changed work locations, resulting in a significantly shorter commute, no expectation of overtime (much appreciated as a salary employee), and lighter work load. Since then, I’ve managed to hit nearly all my workouts and drastically increased the quantity and quality of time spent with my family.

WWDD. -2 this year, full workout next year?

The meh:
I did get a mechanical at the only other event I paid for… ended up blowing out a tire with 13 miles left on a non-competitive gravel event. TBF, I was riding with 26mm knobbies. Still got to spend 3 hours riding alongside a friend AND I got to cheer him on at the finish line.

Ending the year with a slight cold… oh well.

I weigh about the same right now as I did in January. And I can definitely stand to lose some pounds.

On the plus side, nothing bad to report.

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Great graph

370 hours
7251km

All of which is on my mtb. Mixture of road and mtb rides.

About 8 weeks worth of sickness and injury. Another 2-3 weeks of due to work or traveling.
3 weeks of a chest infection in april. Ending the year with 2 weeks off with covid now

Current ctl of 38. Average of 50. Season high ftp of 295 and sitting at 270 now. Weight has been the most consistent ever at 65kg. Still a good bit of fat on me.

Didnt gain any ftp as it was my first year doing mtb so focused on skills all year. Ended the year riding with some of the fastest xc guys on some gnarly local natural all mountain trails on my 100mm hardtail with outdated geometry. I just upgraded to a 120 full sus so hopefuly this will be a huge step up!

Goal for next year is to eat better and avoid being sick as much! Hopefully hit the big 300 ftp at 6 hours a week but more consistent training. Im busy balancing relationship, part time uni to get my chartered acreditation and full time work. So i cant increase volume but i can try to improve other parts of my life

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DNF my goal ride. 200 miles from sunrise to sunset. Got to halfway feeling really drained and made a hard decision to bail.

Training had gone well indoors but I found it really hard to get outside. Either the weather got in the way or family commitments or I just didn’t feel ready.

My adjustment this year is to commit to an outdoor ride each month (at minimum) to try and make sure I’m saddle fit.

I certainly find it demotivating when I see indoor ‘speeds’ of +20mph and then outside seeing 13mph. I appreciate that indoors doesn’t have stops for traffic or hills but I think I get too used to a continuous spin, rather than having to pull away etc.

I’m also very un aerodynamic, with rather wide shoulders, and there isn’t much I can do about that.

I could probably lose about a stone as well so that’s my current focus. Holiday times are bad for me because there’s always food in the cupboard. Going back to work really does limit what I can eat.

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Indoor speeds are usually nonsense

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Oh I agree, but it still gets in my head! I think I tried switching off distance completely?

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Yea, I never look at speed indoors. It doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t translate to outdoor speed very well.

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Hit my time goal:

image

Volume seems to work, peak FTP by year versus hours:

Trained harder in 2017, and a lot more injuries and unplanned time off. Going easier in 2022 delivered more consistency with a small tradeoff in hours to basically reach same fitness:

however I didn’t train threshold power in 2022 so peak 1-hour power PR is still 2017.

Climbing similar to hours:

I’ve sliced and diced my data a bunch of ways, those comparisons were the ones that stood out.

For 2023 my ‘WindWarrior: what works’ will see a focus on:

  • endurance and volume as first principle
  • add more intervals aimed at increasing power from 30-min to 2-hours
  • more climbing

Basically a repeat of what I did in 2016 and early 2017.

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Like most of those who’ve posted before me, this year has been a mixed bag. None of which I’m complaining about because I’m closing out this year in a far better place than I was when it started.

I’ve clocked up 6000 miles and took my first KOM :laughing:

Scored points in every race and placed top 5 in most of those. This will be the biggest change for me. With our first child expected in April 2023, I’m calling it day in terms of racing. I had a blast, met some great people and achieved more than my ‘numbers’. I’m happy that I threw my hat in the ring and had a go. My wife has already paid for my 2023 race license, ‘just in case…’, but I’m not bothered if it doesn’t see the light of day.

I managed to get through six years of racing relatively unscathed so I’m in the minority!

Next year will be TR trainer rides where I’m able (30 minute workouts, here I come :grin:) and trying to holding onto my previous teammates coattails on the Saturday Bash.

What I’m most looking forward to is the opportunity to teach a little person how to ride a bike and hope that they get enjoy from it, like I do.

Hope you all have a great 2023 season :+1::biking_man:

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I think 2022 can be summed up by saying it’ll be a year to forget, nothing bad happened but tbh nothing good happened either. It has, for reasons, been a non-entity.

I’ve made steps to alter it for 2023 even if it’s only a single thing: I’ve entered an Ultra so I’ll have to do more and get outside lots if I don’t want to get rescued!

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First complete year using structure training. Came back to the bike middle 2021 after I don’t even know may years. 2022 was good started the year with 2 Wkg finished with 3 Wkg that was my goal. Sick for a while in October and November but rest was good. Now I want to reach 4Wkg in the next year and half to two years let’s see.

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The only stat I really tracked this year was time. I wanted to increase on last years’ volume, even though I’m just about maxed out. I managed to do an extra 24 hours, so about an extra 2 weeks of ‘bonus’ training.

I did some early season races and got an 8th and 4th, and turned out I had Covid during the 2nd race, with symptoms starting a few hours after the race. That put paid to several races I had planned. I came back very flat, getting dropped on the first lap of an E, 1, 2, 3 curcuit race. I put in some VO2 work, which returned some top end, but it was too late for most target races. Overall I felt pretty strong aerobically through the year, comfortably able to knock out 3-4 hours of tempo. I was most proud of PR’ing a 100 mile solo ride at 303NP, which turned out to be at 0.89IF once I re-calibrated FTP on my Neo (-25w vs Flux2).

As a fairly new rider (2206 hours) I’m hoping 2 consecutive ~600 hour years is continuing to build my aerobic capabilities :crossed_fingers:I really need to do a few VO2 blocks to up the ceiling and vary the stimulus more, so that’s a goal for 2023.

and KOMs (the stats that really matter)…

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Just trying to work out whether you are the same Steve Rose that rides with London Phoenix occasionally, is the a Colagno I can spot in your profile pic…?

Nice work! There is a school of thought which posits a goal isn’t worth setting unless you have at least a 30% - 40% chance of failing to hit it :+1:

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