30 December 2012

Lucy's 2012 Year in Review

2012 has been a great year for my cycling. It's still hard to believe it was only my first full year  as an audaxer and that this time last year I had never been on a bike "tour" longer than two days. Looking back at my goals for the year, I have accomplished them all, though some to a greater degree than others. The one that will be remaining on my 2013 list of goals will be to improve my MTB skills - despite 1200km of Camino I'm still pretty skittish on the MTB.

MTBing 
We have been fortunate to take a few different cycling trips this year. Without a doubt cycling the Camino de Santiago is the highlight of the year, but our four-day tour of France and Belgium was lovely as well.

In the audax world, I didn't have any explicit goals apart from at least managing a 300. I accomplished that, and a 400, although I've since decided to concentrate on 200s and very special 300s for the time being. I did also acheive a Randonneur 1,000 award which felt good!

I'd have to say my favorite audax of the year was actually From Clee to Heaven, despite it not earning any points at 100km. I felt really strong on the hills and can still remember the feeling of not wanting the ride to end as we were approaching the last control. 

In April I participated in #30daysofbiking which turned out to be pretty miserable given that it literally rained every day in the month of April this year -- but it really helped me get into the habit of daily commuting and I have been commuting much more frequently ever since.

After a wet April ride!

I've also enjoyed more solo rides this year. I still have a long way to go, as I'm pretty wary of riding outside of London on my own, but it's been great sometimes to head to Regents Park for some laps on my own. 

I'll leave my goals for next year to a future blog post - suffice to say 2012 has been so enjoyable that it will be hard to beat!

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