The New Year's Day '10' 2025 - oh dear!

The New Years Day '10' is a regular event in the North Bucks Road Club calendar of events, and one that I am generally keen to turn out for. Unfortunately over the last few years, my attendance has been spotty to say the least. I ddn't ride in 2023 owing to a family emergency, and I didn't ride in 2024 owing to a hideous respiratory cold (not Covid, at least!).

One of the frequent problems with winter events it the likelihood of bad weather. This year was particularly bad, and while we were optimistic owing to the larger than usual number of entries (11, including a many from a local Triathlon club), as I was monitoring the forecast over the last week, as New Year's Day drew closer I was seeing rain, then sleet, then snow, then finally strong gusts of wind combined with heavy rain.

This was enough to cancel the event on the grounds of rider safety. I sent out communications to all entrants, so hopefully no-one going to turn up to find no-one there.

For my part this was particularly disappointing as I'd intended to use the event to get an idea of how my training via the Athletica.ai platform had gone - I've been using it for over three months now. The only indication I'm going in the right direction was a recent AI FTP detection on TrainerRoad which indicated a 2W increase from 249W to 251W. I guess for someone in their mid-60s any increase is good to see.

Looking forward to the 2025 season, I have two main open events plugged into the training programme, both of which are regular 2-up events. First up is the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25' in early March. This year the event returns to the 'cheaty course' which includes a lengthy descent shortly after the start - and you don't race back up it. While that does produce some fast times, my tem mate and I don't view it as an ideal 2-up course. The second event is the Duo Normand, which returns in 2025 after a lengthy absence after Covid struck in 2020.

Aside from those events, I'll start plugging in some local open events when the main entry system goes online in about a fortnight. I'm also eyeing up the possibility of another cycle tour in the early summer, and possibly a separate cycling holiday in France.