2025 Year in Review
Time to put my review of 2025 before 2026 gets away. 2025 has been a year of learning, which I feel is incredibly relevant as someone in their late 50s, because as they saying goes, if you are not learning, you are going backwards. That said, 2025 has been punctuated with many personal breakthroughs as a cyclist and a person. Lots of racing across a range of disciplines and clubs. Taking an active role in organising the Apple Crumble gravel crits at Petty's Orchard and giving people a chance to race a different kind of crit racing has been a lot of fun. There's that word again, fun.
Bike racing is often referred to as type 2 fun. Filled with pain and suffering during but when you look back you think "that was fun". I will use the word fun again from a "game theory" perspective, where I strategise before, during and after a race. how to place well in a bike race by being smarter, rather than riding harder. Rarely does the strongest person win the bike race, unless of course your name is Tadej or Remco.
So a quick summary of my year on two wheels.
Races: 55
Disciplines raced: Road: Track: Gravel: Cyclocross
Clubs raced at or with: Brunswick, Northern, Northern Combine (Hawthorn: St Kilda, Brunswick: Preston: Sunbury), Dirty Deeds, Eastern, Geelong Surf Coast, Eureka, Caulfield and Carnegie, Ballarat and Sebastopol, Seymour-Broadford, Alpine, Bendigo and District.
Volunteer duties: 7. Racing is great, but it doesn't happen without the involvement of volunteers. Fortunately some days I've been able to race and volunteer on the same day and other days just enjoy the race as an official and cheer everyone on.
Events Organised: 2. The Apple Crumble gravel crits at Petty's Orchard in Templestowe, are starting to find their audience and I love working with a great team at Brunswick CC to bring this unique form of racing to as many people as possible.
YouTube and Instragram: I have become more active on social media, posting race and ride highlights on Instagram and YouTube. Recording the closing stages provides insight into what worked and what didn't work. It also provides some insight into some crazy stuff that goes on out there in races and on the road, like the Japanese rider who fell right in front of me at the UCI Fondo after a touch of wheels with the rider in front of him. Footage of that set my Instagram account on fire and was accompanied by some unfiltered comments about not stopping for a racing incident.
International events: 1. The UCI Road Age Group Gran Fondo at Lorne. More on that later.
Blogs posted: 20. Hard to believe, but between race reports, contributions from friends and colleaugues and my 10 part series on Almost Free Cycling Gains, "Becoming a stronger cyclist for less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day", it was a record year for the number of blogs I published.
Inspiring Books read: Ross Edgley The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mind and Body. Ross taps in stoicism, resilience and learning as he writes about his strategies for swimming around the entire UK coastline in around half a year, where he spent half this time in the water.
Key learnings and takeaways from the year
Don't compromise your A race just because you get offered a free entry to a gravel race. I trained diligently for the UCI Gran Fondo and was almost primed to the minute until my mate offered me his entry to Mitch Docker's Dirty Docker, a 130km gravel event. It was 5hrs of on the limit fun on my new gravel bike and resulted in some record net power numbers. However, a week later at the UCI Fondo, I was in a major hole trying to keep up with those, whom I regard as rivals. Clearly I had peaked a week earlier and holding the kind of form I showed a week earlier for any length of time was near impossible. In hindsight, I could have backed it off a little at the gravel event or scaled it back and done a shorter version. In the end, I had to accept the consequences of my actions and put it down to learning. I managed to finish 84/169 in the Masters 6 category, just squeeze into the 50th percentile and manage my highest ever average speed on the course.
Date | Goal/Comment | Result | Achieved |
| A Races - Benghazi Handicap 25th April - Tour of Bright December | 14/89 best ever result in this race 14/43 on GC in Masters 6+ best ever result | ||
01-01-25 | Strength train twice a week. My focus is on two 30-40 min sessions per week, which are done in the afternoon on the hard riding days. The workout is primarily based on TrainerRoad's strength training for cyclists. Rolling this over to 2026 | 5/10 | No |
01-01-25 | Improve sprint power between 1-30 seconds. Rolling this over to 2026 | Improved sprint times from 3-60 seconds. | Yes |
01-01-25 | Do something epic every month As I get older, I like the idea of setting myself mini-challenges. It could be a hike, a ride, run or even a swim. Just one thing which gets me out of my comfort zone. Here's a few that I managed to do. Rolling this over to 2026 | Northern Combine Interclub Competitions wih Northern CC The Hell Ride Gravel crits Dirty Docker UCI Fondo Tour of Bendigo Tour of Bright Cathedral Range Hike State level Handicaps anc Crit Champs | Yes |
01/01/25 | Finish top 10 or top 25% of Masters C or 6 depending on the event. Finished top third (14th) at Tour of Bright in M6+which was my best ever placing Rolling this over to apply to a multi-stage race in 2026 | 3rd on GC at Tour of Bendigo | June 25 |
01/01/25 | Win a handicap. Still to be achieved, but enjoyed a 3rd at Seymour and a 4th with Northern change this goal to continue to focus on the consistent process of training, knowing the the results will take care of themselves. | Training consistently and achieving record power numbers! | |
| Keep trying new things, test more often and document the results Planned training interventions 9 week strength training program Explore the use of cordyceps mushroom powder Increase creatine intake to 10g per day | |||
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