The Year of the Bike

There's not much to write about 2010 really (have a look back through my posts throughout the year if you want specifics!) But I have to say that hanging up my running shoes between February and October to focus completely on cycling was not a disappointment. So considering I only managed a total of 120km of running this year, all the stats and figures below are cycling-only.

One thing is for sure: 2010 was the Year of the Bike for me. And I certainly savoured it, as I knew I might never have another year like it! After the kid arrives, I might manage to regain my success in racing or improve my peak power, but somehow I doubt I'll be cycling 1250km a month ever again... well maybe in my 60s. There's hope I suppose.

The geek in me always likes stats and graphs and pictures so rather than a wordy summary, here's a visual and numeric roundup of my year.

Training
Overall very consistent and steady, which surprised me as I wondered if I'd get sick of doing nothing but riding my bike. I definitely took a much-needed year off from my TT bike (it did come out for a few races but nothing I took seriously), and discovered how wonderful my 650c deep section wheels rode (and looked) for road racing. Nonetheless, my trusty and travelled Soloist has now nearly 20,000kms on it, clearly marking its position as my #1 training bike.

By the numbers:
15,166km
562hrs
90,000m climbing
367,000 calories burned


Kms per month on the bike in 2010.


A notable improvement in mean maximal average power between 2009 (dotted line) and 2010 (solid line) -- especially at the top end.


Two peaks in my season, marked by heavy training weeks in March (Lanzarote) and July (Ras Cymru stage race). Also some troughs due to illness, holidays, bad weather, and a brutal plummet at the end of the year thanks to the wonders of the first trimester. Black bars indicate top 100 rides of the year in TSS.

Racing
This year I took part in 64 races (including 4 stage races) with at least one race in every month except December. They were split pretty evenly between men's/mixed and women's-only. And only one DNF.

By the numbers:
20 road races
20 crits
13 TTs
5 cyclocross races
6 hill climbs

9 wins! (4 crits, 5 hill climbs, 1 TT)
18 podiums
29 top 10s


Average power in watts per race type. Hill climbs are definitely the toughest! I have yet to give my powertap wheel a try on the cross bike.


Interestingly, cyclocross is slower than hill climbing, my TT speeds were pathetic this year, and road racing has a much lower HR than anything else.


Steady efforts in TTs, self-preservation (lots of L1!) in road and crit racing, and a whopping 70% of hill climbs spent above Vo2max power.


The red squares denote where I travelled for races in 2010.

And finally
Knowing next to nothing about pregnancy before, I naïvely thought that everything before the "getting fat" stage would be no different from my normal life. Ha ha! Little did I know how rapid my turn from confident cat 1 racer and hill-climbing dynamo to wind-sucking and wheel-sucking (and just sucking in general) rider would be. Literally within two weeks I went from winning hill climbs to barely being able to push my watts over threshold. Very sobering, but also quite amazing! I'm looking forward to a similar increase in power right around July of next year again....


July 2010 as the solid line, and November 2010 as the dotted. Somewhere around 15% of peak power gone in a few short weeks.