Epilogue

Cyclists love numbers, so here's a few. I've raced 31 times this year, in six cross country races, two road races, two time trials, ten cyclocross races and eleven criteriums. Five times I've raced more than once in a day. I've raced in every month of the year with the exception of April. I've won the grand total of one energy gel, one water bottle, three bottles of wine, and £10 in cash. Probably not enough income to turn pro on.

It's a relief to have reached the end of the year, and I'll be taking a complete break over Christmas. Compared to anything I've done before, this year has been a big step up in terms of commitment, particularly in the last few months, when motivation to get out of bed and train on cold dark mornings has not always been there. That said, there is not a shred of doubt in my mind that it was worth all the effort, and every hard training session makes embracing the pain of racing that bit more bearable.

I've learned a lot about bikes and bike racing this year. Having dabbled in cross country and cyclocross for years, this year I've learned how to do it all (a bit more) properly, such as the value of a proper warm up and a good look at the course beforehand, rather than just rolling up at the start line and hoping for the best. XC and CX are both require a lot of preparation, and sometimes assistance during a race. Thanks to everyone who has helped me out on occasions this year, when one pair of hands wasn't enough. I've also jumped two-footed into the deep end of road racing. To stretch that metaphor, I was initially the annoying one splashing around and making a mess while everyone else serenely swam lengths. Thanks to everyone who has had the patience to teach me all the unwritten rules.

One of the best parts of racing cyclocross week in and week out has been become part of the little community that turns up to each race. As well as building up little rivalries with other racers, and exchanging exhausted handshakes at the end, the whole atmosphere is great: the kids races, the mums and dads cheering them on (and the kids who enthusiastically cheer on the seniors), the folks selling home made cakes.... It's a bit like being at a village fete, albeit one with terrible weather.

As for 2015, will I do it all again? I'm sketching out plans in my mind already. I'll probably continue as jack of all trades and master of none again throughout the spring and summer, but cyclocross will be the priority again so the season won't begin for real until September. Before then I'll try and get a bit more cross-country racing done than last year. As for road racing, I'll just continue to be the idiot in the doomed early breakaway.

14 December: Welsh Cyclocross Leauge final: Mountain View Ranch, Caerphilly

The last race of the year, and the end of my cyclocross season. The Welsh League wraps up comparatively early (most cyclocross leagues run into January), which suits me fine as it means I get to take a break over Christmas and not have to resist all the temptations it brings. But first, there was the small matter of one more hour of pure sweet hell.

As this round is local to Cardiff, I took the opportunity to ride up and take a look at the course on Saturday. This turned into something of a cyclocross clinic, as I was joined by another David from Ajax. He was entering his first cyclocross race, and I'd promised to go through the basics with him. What I didn't realise until we were chatting on the short ride to the course is that he'd never ridden off road before! He coped admirably, with only a bit of falling off in practice (better then than in the race).

The course meandered slowly downhill across open ground, then briefly into some woods, returning to the finish gradually uphill across an old section of golf course, taking in some fun drops in and out of bunkers on the way. It was a hard slog in practice, and promised to get harder by race day. It was a dry and crisp morning on Saturday, and some of the ground was firm from a frost. However, it was clear that it was going to be very heavy going - parts of the ground were already very wet, and rain was forecast overnight and into Sunday. I didn't mind this, and part of me was even relishing it - we hadn't had a really wet race all season, and I didn't mind getting muddy one last time. In fact, I don't mind at all getting wet and muddy during a race, it's the trying to stay warm and dry beforehand, and then sorting out a nightmare of wet and filthy kit afterwards (and of course trying to get yourself warm and dry). All very well if you are a pro with a motorhome waiting for you; somewhat different when you are getting changed in a car park and have to clean your own bikes and kit.

Race day indeed dawned wet; not chucking it down, but on-and-off rain blown along on a brisk breeze. Compounding this was the fact that the course was on top of hill and a bit more windswept. As I expected, I arrived to see that the course hardly resembled what I had ridden yesterday: everywhere that had been green was now brown! A quick recce revealed that the bottom, wetter half of the course had cut up about as much as I expected - it was all still rideable, but parts would become quicker to run during the race - whilst everything else, on better draining ground, was muddier than yesterday but holding up comparatively well. It was still muddy enough to mean changing every scrap of kit, and washing the bike after practice. I decided to forgo my usual last-minute ride of the course before the race in the interests of keeping the bike clean, and headed off for a long road warm up.

It was soon time to head to the line - a 100m charge across grass and straight into the boggiest section of the course. I got an OK start across the grass and then the next few hundred metres were chaos. Everyone bogged down in the mud, some trying to continue to ride while most ran; I stayed stubbornly on the bike a little too long before cutting my losses, shouldering the bike and sprinting through the mud for all I was worth. Another short stint back on the bike and then off again for a corner that was quicker to run, nearly ending up on the floor as one of my mud-clogged cleats refused to release smoothly as I swung myself off the bike. Another rider then slipped in front of me on a short rooty climb, forcing me to dab. All in all it took half a lap before I felt like I had any breathing space at all, as opposed to being shoulder to shoulder with someone. Nevertheless, I felt like I was moving forward rather than backwards, and was pleasantly surprised to have Claire count me through as 18th at the end of lap one.

Quintessential cyclocross. Photo by Howard Goldberg.

The race settled down remarkably quickly. By the end of the third lap I wasn't really in touch with any other riders but seemed to be alone. However, I couldn't relax, and knew I had to work hard to maintain my position in the top 20. The course was now in such a state that lines were changing every lap, and two sections that had been rideable earlier now forced me to shoulder the bike and run. As happens in bad conditions the race was also becoming one of attrition; I made up a few spots as riders pulled over with mechanicals from mud-packed drivetrains. The mud didn't seem to be affecting my bike too badly (I've finished races on bikes where the wheels would barely turn anymore), but I had the luxury of a pit crew today, so I made use of them and took a clean bike about two thirds of the way through the race.

It was then just a case of grinding on until the bell. In fact I never heard the bell, as I got lapped by the race leader on my final lap, cutting my race one lap short. Fine by me.

Across the line and straight into a waiting warm jacket, then into one almighty clear-up operation. The weather was getting wetter and windier, and by the time the car was packed my hand were numb. The cafe next to the course was a godsend; everyone piled in there for end of season presentations and some well-earned hot food.

Just the small matter of the results then. I was pretty sure I'd made the top 20, but was very happy to find I'd equalled my best rest of the season with 14th. In terms of the overall standing in the league, this was enough to mean I hung on to a place in the top 20 (20th, to be precise!).

30 November: Welsh Cyclocross league round 9: Gilwern

The end of the season is in sight, and in a way I am quite glad. It's been a long year of racing, and I felt completely wiped out after the race at Pembrey. Training also gets more and more difficult to fit in as the days get shorter. Just two rounds to go, both of which are quite close to Cardiff, meaning a little more time in bed on Sunday morning.

Gilwern is another new venue to me, as it only held a race for the first time last season. Practice revealed it be quite interesting - narrow, bumpy, twisty and greasy at the start of the lap, quite a long woodland descent to an open field section with literally a spiral of tape to negotiate, then a blast across the field and up a gravel climb to finish the lap. In complete contrast to Pembrey last week, it was only really the final third of the lap where it was possible to go full gas for more than a few seconds.

The race started half way round the lap, so that the climb could spread the field out. I got off the line well, but got squeezed hard at the first bottleneck and lost out pretty badly. It was a pretty hectic first lap, with plenty of leaning on people and being leaned on into corners! The race then soon settled down for me, into a familiar pattern of damage limitation on the slippery technical first half of the lap, and trying to claw back time on the open sections and up the climb. These are the sort of conditions where everyone is going to make mistakes and I had my fair share of two wheel slides, some of which ended up sending me pretty wide and into the bushes or through the tape. I managed to stay upright for the whole race though.

It was a bit of a frustrating race; I was going as quick as I could through the slippery corners, and the front end broke away from me from time to time to confirm that I was right on the limit of grip/my technical ability. Nonetheless, plenty of people around me were making it look a lot easier (and faster), and so I was losing time and seemingly powerless to do anything about it. The slippery sections also deteriorated as the race went on; I seemed to try a different line through some sections every lap, none of which seemed any better than each other. So, that's yet another weakness identified and something to try and work on for next year. In spite of this, a relatively thin field meant I came home in 24th place, securing an unspectacular but respectable haul of points towards the overall league standings.

23 November: Welsh Cyclocross League Round 8, Pembrey Country Park

Good old Pembrey. Butting up almost to the beach on firm, sandy and well-draining ground, this course always makes a change from mud. It's also pretty flat and open, so is usually a bit of criterium on dirt, favouring those with the biggest legs.

I arrived to good weather - sunny and mild for the time of year. Mind you I suppose some people would argue that's not good weather for cyclocross! The course was a bit more twisty and technical than previous years, but still very fast.

Practice and warm up done, I overheard one of the marshals remarking on the size of the field - 165 riders had signed on, smashing the previous record for the league, itself set only a few rounds ago. As we rolled to the start it was obvious that this was going to mean some stiff competition: as well as all the usual suspects, I was gridded next to Steve James, a rider who is up the pointy end of National Trophy races (and due to ride the World Cup at Milton Keynes the following week). Probably not someone I was going to beat into the first corner, or at all.

Remedial cyclocross tip 101: if you forget to start your Garmin and only realise this after the commissaire has said "I'll start you in the next ten seconds", this is not the right time to start fiddling with it. Consequently not the best start of my life, down in 40th place or so into the first bend. But who should I see leading the field as I look ahead? Yep, the man who started next to me on the third row, Steve James (who went on to win the race).

I picked a few riders off in the first half lap or so, but after that each position gained, or defended, was a struggle. By the nature of the course, there is a lot of time spent pedalling flat out, and aware I had not made the best start I was trying to wring out every bit of speed I could and accelerate as hard as possible out of each bend. I found myself in a fight for position with one rider or another for most of the race; wheel-to-wheel racing like this is great, but I seemed to be the one getting gapped more often than creating a gap! It also meant I'd been riding at 100% pretty much continuously since the start, as there was very little rest anywhere on the course. Therefore when I found myself alone with about three laps to go, I did seem to back off a bit, and even thought that I might blow up completely, something that has never happened to me in a 'cross race before.

As I started my bell lap I had another rider in sight up ahead, so it was back to full throttle for one more lap. I managed to close the gap, and create a small gap of a handful of seconds, but I had to work hard all the way to the line to stay ahead.

Apart from a less-than-perfect start I had ridden hard and mistake-free all race, but I had a feeling I was further down the field than normal, especially given the large turnout. Indeed, the results revealed that I'd only placed 33rd. Somewhat disheartening when you know you couldn't have tried any harder.

2 November: Welsh Cyclocross League round 6 - Melin Mynach, Gorseinon

More mud.

After the surprise of a dry-ish round at Brecon, normal service resumed. I'd raced here once before in 2012 and had a nightmare with a bike that clogged to a standstill with mud. After heavy rain on Saturday, the race on Sunday was always going to be messy. The drive down the M4 through some torrentially heavy showers on Sunday morning just rammed the point home.

A recce of the course proved entertaining; a real mixture of surfaces and only a couple of sections that promised deep mud. It was going to be mostly wet and slippery rather than thick, clogging mud.

My usual pre-race routine is to recce the course an hour or so before the start, then change into my race kit, have something to eat and drink, and warm up on the road for 20 minutes, leaving 20 minutes for one last look at the course and last minute faffing. As I warmed up in the rain while the youth race took place on the course (and hence churned it up), it became clear that this was one of those days when a lot of the information I'd gleaned in practice was going to be irrelevant, as I'd be faced with a much wetter and muddier course than an hour ago.

I lined up in my now customary 30th or so on the grid and got a rather lacklustre start. After a short sprint, we went more or less straight into a series of slippery switchbacks, where I seemed to be continually on the wrong line. Claire called up 32nd place after the starting loop. Ho hum. I settled down though, and picked a few people off on lap one whilst trying to re-learn the best lines on the now much muddier course. A perfect example of this was a small gravel ditch at the bottom of the course. This was rideable in practice, but a bit tricky, and I'd devoted a few minutes to making sure I could nail it. However, I never rode it once in the race, as the corner immediately prior to it was so muddy it was quicker to run, and once off the bike I may as well run through the ditch before remounting.

Claire called up 28th place at the end of lap one. Slow but steady progress made then. After a few laps things went quiet and I seemed rather on my own, first time that's happened in a race for a while, and it's hard to make sure you keep going hard when you are under no pressure, particularly in tricky conditions. I tried to press on though, while staying focussed and not making any mistakes in the increasingly slippery corners. I found the limit of adhesion a couple of times as my tyres slid sideways, but I always stayed upright.

In the last couple of laps I caught one rider but also came under pressure from behind, and had a good last lap tussle with one rider, right to the line. The lap ended with a series of wide but muddy corners, then a dismount for a set of planks and a short sprint to the line. I held onto the cleanest line through the muddy corners, got to the planks first, jumped back on and managed to do just enough to cross the line ahead. At the time of writing I don't know where I came overall; the judges are probably still trying to work it out having spent the afternoon trying to read increasingly muddy numbers on peoples' backs. They had a difficult job to do today.

It's three weeks until my next race now. I'm looking forward to the break. It will give me a chance to take a week off from training, and give the bike some much needed TLC. Oh, and clean the inside of the car, which looks like someone's been mud wrestling in it.

26 October: Welsh Cyclocross League round 5. Brecon Leisure Centre

The middle round of three Sundays in a row of racing cyclocross, and the half way point in the season, for me anyway. I've settled into the rhythm now of packing the car with bikes, kit and food, and unpacking it all in a much messier state several hours later.

Brecon has a reputation from being a pretty muddy race, not helped by hosting the British Schools Cycling Association cyclocross championships the day before our race (why didn't we do cyclocross in PE when I was at school), meaning the course is well-used by Sunday. However, despite a fairly wet week the weekend was mostly dry, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the course holding up well as I rolled round in practice. I've raced here before and the course was largely unchanged: twisty sections up and down grassy banks, interspersed with a couple of flat blasts across playing fields and two sets of planks to dismount for. A classic grass roots level cyclocross course really, and a good one at that.

I was gridded on the 4th row and got a decent start. Apart from a couple of corners, the first kilometre was wide open and allowed plenty of space to move up. I held on to a place in the top 25 on the first lap - it was reassuring to still be able to see the front of the race for all of lap one and not have the leaders disappear after a few corners. I was far enough up the field to avoid any bottlenecks, but I was in the thick of it and had to fight for position and avoid a couple of the inevitable first lap crashes.

As things settled down, I found myself part of a group of four riders that gradually fell apart and reformed throughout the middle part of the race. One rider kept getting a gap in the more technical sections; two of us worked together to pull him back on the straights. There was very little rest on the course, and I was giving it 100% to stay with the group. I realised this was even more critical when a glance backwards revealed another half a dozen riders breathing down our necks.  If I backed off or made any mistakes I would fall rapidly back through the field. Gradually, our group fell apart once and for all, with me running third out of the original four. I was still working as hard as I could, desperately trying to keep in touch with the rider in front, all the while aware I was being caught from behind. The last couple of laps became a fight to defend my place. Despite riding as hard as I could whilst keeping things smooth in the increasingly slippery corners, one rider caught me. I stayed with him for a few hundred metres, but as as soon he had a gap I was powerless to respond. On the bell lap I was then being caught by another rider, and had to claw out the last of my reserves to maintain the gap I had.

I finished the race feeling completely exhausted, nauseous, and a little dizzy. But I was satisfied with my race - I'd lost the battle I'd been in mid-race, but I could not have given any more effort, and I'd managed to ride smoothly and make no big mistakes despite being on the rivet all race. I'd crept into the top 20 in 19th place.

25 October: Maindy Criterium (4th cat/veterans)

A one-off trip back onto the tarmac. Maindy Leisure Centre in Cardiff boasts an outdoor 500 metre velodrome. This was a one-off end-of-season afternoon of racing. I'd come along for some extra training, and to work for a couple of guys from AJAX who needed to grab a couple of points in order to move up from 4th to 3rd cat. My job was to try and shut down any attacks, and keep the bunch together to ensure they could pick the the points they needed in a bunch sprint.

About 25 guys started, not bad for a road race in late October I suppose. After two laps done practically at walking pace, the first attack came and it all got fast and furious. A group of three got a gap, which I did my best to claw my way across. Once things (relatively) calmed down, I realised team mate James (who needed points) had missed the move and was out the back of the now-depleted bunch. I dropped back to him and tried to help him close the gap. By the time we started to work together the gap was about a third of a lap. Over the course of the next ten laps three of us worked hard and made no impression on this whatsoever, and then watched it start to grow instead of shrink.

After this things are a bit of a blur. James agreed the best thing was to lose a lap so that he could conserve energy in the bunch. As they came round to lap us, there was another attack, which I tried, and this time failed, to close down. In doing so I fell out the back of the bunch. With a cyclocross race the next day to worry about, I cruised round cooling down for the remaining few laps of the race.