A Year in Photos 2020

 I try to do this every year but think I probably missed last year.  

Here's my 2020 which, despite being a very weird year was pretty good for this introvert only child.

Elan valley - January

A fine "sunrise" to the year.  I'd just slept out in pouring rain then bumped into friends in the morning.  I rode further than anyone that weekend and felt it.

 

A shelter for Februarbivi

I woke up to snow in the morning for the ride into work.

The day before it all got weird - March

A chance meeting with my parents in the Peak before we all resigned ourselves to exercising from the back door.  I was OK - this loop is from my back door.  They, on the other hand, got pretty bored of walking around the airport.

Beauty, the beast - April

 We lost Ripley to cancer in August.  This is one of the prettiest photos I've taken of her from my April Bivi in my own back garden - emergency rules.

Back out of the garden for the May Bivi

This was one of my favourite nights out.  Usually we wouldn't consider stopping here due to traffic noise but the roads were still silent as the UK got up from the hangover of L1.0 (as it was never known).

It was so warm in June I actually took my swimming kit out with me.  It stayed in the bag

Tod in July

 My annual trip to Todmorden, refining the Northern Myth route.  I knew I was fit because roadies were drafting me on the fully loaded mountain bike.

Wild life

In August I returned to our June Bivi spot on an evening ride to scout for something better.  The birdsong in this woodland almost deafened me and there are at least three squirrels in this pic, plus a gazzillion invisible birds and insects.

That thing

I can't pick just one from the Welsh Ride Thing in August.  I made it hard for myself by riding there from Sheffield with the most wonderful sunrise in Sheffield, a temperature inversion, torrential rain all afternoon on Thursday resulting in a cheeky night in a travelodge then everything from rainbows to semi-naked lunches in woodland glens during the event.  The whole weekend was topped off by bumping into old workmate and good friends at the end in Machynlleth.

Boardwalk - September

Despite many beautiful pictures from my HT Northern Loop recce, this image of TSK traversing Boardwalk near Ardross sums up the best part of our out-of-lockdown holiday in Scotland.  We adventured hard this day, even though it was "just" an 18km walk into town for dinner.  We nearly fell in the water, scrambled, scrabbled our way up a steep valley side through trees and chest high bracken and climbed over fences.  It was the gateway to some Munro bagging later the next week.

but if I'm breaking the rules for the WRT, this camp spot definitely clears September up too.

Bear Bones 200 - October

The WRT was fun but I attempted the BB200 properly.  It's a good job because if I'd taken my time, I wouldn't have finished in time.  There are much better photos from this ride but this one encapsulates what made it great for me.  I rode through the night, only grabbing 30 minutes sleep in a bus stop before hiking the bike up to elevation to catch this sunrise.

November - a lucky bivi

In November, Landslide and I pursued a foolish bivi spot on the moors in freezing conditions.  Miraculously we survived the cold, were up in time to avoid our camp being soaked and brewed up by a stream out of the breeze in the morning.  

December - this Boy

At the end of last year, I had a new bike on my Christmas shopping list for the HT in 2020.  I started researching and while I liked the idea of a steel bike, I also wanted to try something C-Fibre to get the weight down and generally to see how I got on with it as an off road option, so by the end of February, I'd finally plumped for a bike to work special Off The Peg which joined the family just before lockdown.  It was satisfying accruing a load of pbs and enjoyable to ride with less weight but that steely bird just kept on pecking at me so I eventually decided to invest in Cotic and transfer over all the bits off my old Scott which I'd had renovated 2 years earlier.

I pimped up the forks and bought some new pedals and a rear wheel but otherwise used all pre-loved equipment.  After going a full circle trying different saddles, I've recently refitted my Selle Royal Diva's to every distance bike I own.

I'm now no wiser as to which bike I'll race the HT on but in building up my strength on the Cotic beastie, either one will be a delight to ride in TLS mode.

So what's the value to all this?  Well, I didn't do stats in December 2019 either because, well, I was still recovering from a work-related event in January which left me with a lot of mental healing to do.  I also realise, reading back, that I was doing a hell of a lot of riding and not a lot of anything else. I got very excited about training - if I'm honest, a little too early.  By March I was knackered and with lockdown, I slacked off until deciding to ride 125km loops around the block in April.

This week marks 21 weeks to go until HT, hopefully in May next year.  Except for last year's exuberance, I've never trained for anything longer than 20 weeks so today, I re-attack training with renewed vigour and look forward to the next 20 weeks.

January - 562km 10700m Further and hillier!

February - 460km 10599m Unsurprisingly slacking off

March - 636km13655m Unsurprisingly slacking off

April - 497km12534 Unsurprisingly slacking off

May - 782km 22613 Further and hillier! Even without the highland trail!

June - 628km14842m A bit more slacking off

July - 863km 13735 JUST further and hillier!

August - 946km 22084 Further and hillier!

September - 559km 13744m Not further but only by 30k but 2000m hillier!

October - 300km12958m Slacking on distance by 300km but slightly higher by 200m!

November - 373km 9513m Totally fucked off November

December - 472km 18221m (nice comeback!) Slacking on distance by 270km but higher by 6000m thanks to Alan for pushing me to attempt something stupid!

 

 Total Year stats

Time: 740hrs (2019:862h)(2018:869h)

Distance:6,542km (2019:8221km)(2018:11,887km road)

Elevation: 169,521m - 229m/hr (2019:174465m - 202m/hr)(2018:168,072m - 193m/hr)