2011 Graph

Before I make a start on documenting 2012's cycling larks, here's a graph showing last year's performance set against the previous two years. If you click on the image you'll be able to view it in slightly larger detail.

There's a handful of points I'd make about it.

1. For most of 2011, there wasn't really much in it between the three years. This is largely because I've settled into a comfortable routine of when I go out cycling and where, so I tend to rack up pretty much the same score every week, apart from when this routine gets interrupted by the likes of bad weather, occasional illness or my social life. The latter, sadly, provides only infrequent interruption.
2. If you look at about the week 23 mark you'll notice that the blue line representing 2009 suddenly has a spurt of acceleration. This was due to an attack of spring madness I had that saw me put in four consecutive weeks of 150 miles. The weather was excellent, as I recall. Every year since then I know I'm up against it when May arrives and I'm likely to be chasing 2009's coat tails during the summer.
3. I actually fell behind the previous two years in the summer, as you can see from the graph. It happened from about week 22 / 23, which was late May / early June. Although I was still clocking in weekly scores of 100 miles, I wasn't doing much more beyond that because for a period of around two months I was spending many evenings in the pub when I might otherwise had been out there adding another 8 - 10 miles to my score. Damn that social life. I was almost 200 miles adrift of 2009 by the end of July. Never mind, I made up for it later.
4. In week 33 you can't fail to spot that something happened in 2011 to catapult me into the lead. This was a week-long cycling holiday to the NE of England that I made with my friends Rik and Bryn. I plan to write about it in here immediately after this post. I'll also be able to illustrate it with some photos we took along the way. Once into the lead, I never looked back.
5. The mild weather in October and November allowed me to keep racking up the 100s, whereas I normally start to stumble come November. In the end I posted a record 42 consecutive weeks of 100+ miles in a run that started w/e Sunday 20 February and ended w/e Sunday 4 December. A tremendous achievement! Well, I was impressed, if nobody else was.