Even though we didn’t take the bikes to Sydney (I have yet to log my first ride for 2009), the short holiday had lots of bike flavour. Visits to bike shops as well as coffee shops (inextricably intertwined with cycling as coffee conversations inevitably turn into bike talk), studying road surface, width and traffic for cycling suitability, the brain subconsciously searching for bike routes through the urban street… I laughed at myself every time I caught myself doing this.

Claude, Alberto and I at Bar Bici, Bondi

It’s times like this when I realise how much cycling is part of my life and ingrained in my every day thinking. Almost everything revolves around it. However, I have been procrastinating making plans for 2009.

My first and foremost goal for 2009 is to train harder, not more!

In 2008 I spent way too much time on low intensity long rides and way too little time in the painful zone. I suspect I don’t even know how to really hurt. It feels like most of the year I have been in base training. Sure it has made me fit, probably the fittest I have been in 15 years, but 2008 will remain in my memory as the year I did well but always just fell short of my own racing expectations.

It started during the Sizzling Summer Series in February, where I never delivered on the finishing line and always finished just outside the points. During the Tour de Tablelands, whilst placing first woman, I missed the Top Ten finish overall (and finished 12th). I failed to get on the podium in the Sunshine Coast Tour (and got 6th). The Tour of Bright, where I finished 19th (my goal was a Top Ten finish), has left me feeling exhausted, drained and in need of a holiday. The championships (Club, Metropolitan and State) I didn’t even start for various reasons and the only result to show for was 1st Woman in the Rainbow Ride, a race I had entered with no goal and no expectations at all.

I started the year with a coach and swapped to self-coaching from July onwards.

All year I struggled with nutrition and reaching goal weight. My weight was always just those last two to three kilos off the ideal race weight. I continuously battled with eating before, during and after training and racing and will have to pay closer attention to this area and become more disciplined.

Gym time will have to increase as I truly believe that the weight training leading up to Bright has improved my cycling immensely. Being a female cyclist approaching Masters Age (as a matter of fact my license this year for the first time says Women Master 2), weight training needs to become a permanent feature of my training schedule year round.

I have been way too often two (or more) minutes late for training rides and I’m grateful my friends always wait for me. Last but not least even this post comes a few days late as we are well into 2009 and I’m still pondering 2008.

The last nine days I rode only when I felt like and I procrastinated putting my 2009 racing calendar to paper. Tomorrow is the last day of my holiday. It’s time to shake the lethargy and get moving.

I’m ready!