The View From Here - a blog

15/01/2024 Things can only get better

Oh boy, this one is going to be hard to write. I haven’t written a post for a while because my year, that started really promisingly, became something of an annus horribilis. It became too painful to post about. Sorry.

Coming off the back of a successful Rapha Festive 500 (riding 500km over 8 days), I had a good launchpad for cycling in 2023. I even took New Year’s Day off riding and only touched my bike to clean it. I built a base of endurance, then grew my power, all the while doing regular weights sessions. I even tried my hand at salsa and hit spring feeling, well pretty good.

I enjoy a varied cycling life. Road and gravel events, a bit of touring plus I commute and also race. It feels almost too eccentric, too niche, too odd, but my preferred for of racing is time trials on a tandem in the vets category with +RichardM. This provides me with goals. I have always loved training, but I find it better to have a specific goal. This makes you focus your training and work on a particular kind of fitness. Time trials in my case. The first three races went well. A course record at the Welwyn Hilly 50km and a PB by almost a minute for 10 miles on the F11/10 course near Tring.

Then the wheels started to come off. Three races were cancelled for various reasons. For the next two, either I was ill or my tandem partner Richard was injured (can’t remember which way round it was), so we missed those two. Then bad weather at another. By then it was June. And I got a call one morning - my mother-in-law who lives in Oregon was dying. We duly flew to the West Coast and got to spend a few days with her before she passed.

Charlie - such a good boy

Then soon after we returned, we had to put our dog, Charlie, down. I rode the South Downs Way solo and tried to forget. Then my aunt died. Then my wife’s aunt died. This was all very hard. I stayed with the training. Stayed in shape. Stayed sane. Come September we had a shot at fast 25-mile course. Could we pull out another PB and save our season? Clearly no, you can read the story above (Two left feet) about how I managed to bring two left shoes to the race and we recorded a DNS rather than a PB.

Late September came and my father had a heart attack. It seemed "mild" at the time, but he developed pneumonia and then a bad UTI and got weaker and weaker. My mother is disabled, so we suddenly had two parents in need of 24hr care. (If you reach that stage with your folks, 24hr care is never enough. You will invariably need to do more to support that care).

I caught a cold which lasted the whole of December. Probably brought on by stress. Then, on 1 January my dad died putting a full stop on a dreadful 6 months. He was 94, but we all wanted more. The world seemed to freeze for two weeks while my brother, sister and I arranged funeral and wake and supported our mum. Then there’s all the paperwork and probate afterwards. Bereavement sucks.

My father, Barry

Today I’m back at work. Today my cold came back and my lungs are sore (it turns out I have a chest infection). Today sucks. In between all this, I’ve been trying to plan my 2024. I do have a calendar of races and events lined up. I’d like to actually ride a few of them, too! I know that I now have to be patient and build my fitness and health up. It feels like a bit of a mountain, to be honest. I really don’t want to lose any more of my dear ones this year. It has been an extraordinary period. I hope to be posting again soon about cycling.