2020 Review; The year that wasn't …

Like a lot of people, 2020 just wasn't a great year for me. Luckily, my family had a pretty good run through this whole COVID-19 thing. The restrictions and various lockdown stages definitely had some impact, but nothing that we haven't been able to work through and bounce back from. I wish I could say the same about my bike racing. It has definitely been a year to forget. Some health issues around the middle of the year the main reason for the bicycle adventure going pear shaped. 

The year started out well enough, with fruitful outings at both the Queensland Masters and Australian Masters Track Championships. Not as successful as 2019, but that was a year to remember where everything seemed to go my way. The two championships did have some frustration and disappointment impact on my Individual Pursuit campaign which I blogged about earlier here.  That aside, the championships would bring some solid results with a win in the Queensland Masters 1-4 Omnium for the fourth year straight and a win in the Australian Masters 4 Points Race for the second year running, being the most significant. The Points Race win would end up being the highlight of the year for me:

COVID-19 hit pretty hard after that and racing ground to a halt. Like most Queensland bike racers, I spent the winter training hard and doing a lot of work indoors. I did plenty of online Zwift racing during that time, preparing for whatever racing may appear in the future. 

It was late July before racing kicked off again. The three round Queensland ITT series should have been a great way to get back into racing after a long hiatus. Unfortunately, I had some health issues related to my heart impact on my performance in the series. I blogged about those issues at length here.  An extract from that blog explains the problem:

The diagnosis was in fact Stress Induced Tachycardia. Something that can and will improve with appropriate rest and stress reduction.

The third round of the series doubled as the Masters 4 Queensland ITT Championships. I did manage to struggle to second place with an engine that was badly in need of a service:

The aforementioned heart issues would keep me out of racing for a while. I missed the entire remainder of the road calendar that Cycling Queensland had built for the latter part of the year. This was very disappointing but my health had to come first. I am pleased to report that my issues appear to be completely gone and I am 100% again. In fact in the last few weeks I have set new power records for the 5 min and 15 min durations, which is a really promising sign. 

The very late stage of the year saw an opportunity for me to race the Queensland TTT Championships with my CompNOW Electrolite Racing Team. With an injured team member and me well and truly underdone, it was always going to be a challenge and we finished well outside of the medals.

The final race of the year for me was the Queensland Masters Madison Championships which I raced with Nick Banks-Watson. I was looking forward to this one as I love Madison racing and Nick and I had been working well together in training before the event. We raced well, but had a couple of unlucky events cost us big time. My lack of racing really showed me up as I struggled badly towards the end. We did enough for second place:

Like most inhabitants of planet Earth I am looking to January 1 for a clean slate and a big psychological reset. I have a change of teams for next year as I will be riding for Koiled Cycling power by Littles. The racing campaign starts with the Rocky Cup on Wheels in Rockhampton on January 8 and 9. Australian Masters Track Championships are in early April. Those championships will have an extra challenge now, as current Masters 3 World Individual and Team Pursuit Champion, Ben Neppl, moves up into my Masters 4 division.  Boooooo!!!

Bring on 2021!