********
Cillian Kelly started watching the Tour de France in 1993 and has been hooked on the sport ever since. He writes about cycling for various online publications and is a complete geek when it comes to stats and facts about cycling. His articles here will cover a wide range of topics including pro racing, the domestic scene, cyclo-sportives and the beautiful machine that is the bicycle itself.
********
One of the best things you can do to motivate yourself for the coming year, is to sign up to a cycling challenge. The simple fact of handing over some of your money, however little the amount, triggers a stubbornness inside of us which results in conjured thoughts like 'sure I've signed up now, don't I have to go through with it?' or 'no, no, I have to get out this weekend otherwise I mightn't be able for it, I'm not letting them keep my money for nothing'.
Of course, these sporting challenges over long distances are an opportunity to raise money for a chosen charity, which mustn't be forgotten. But the parting of a few of your own spondulicks, whether it's conscious or subconscious, results in an innate motivation which far outweighs the financial value of what you've just parted with.
This is something I experienced first hand last year.
I have a condition which over the years I have come to call 'chronic s**t ankle syndrome'. I play five-a-side football on astroturf on a regular basis. On more occasions than I care to remember I have gone over on my ankle (either one at this stage, they're both in appalling condition). I do this on such a regular basis that my friends have taken to calling me Mr. Glass after a Samuel L. Jackson character from the movie Unbreakable.
In November 2012, I performed this act of self destruction once more, but worse than usual. My foot doubled in size and turned a troublingly dark shade of purple which meant about six months before I could play anymore football.
But the wonderful, low-impact nature of cycling, meant it was only about six weeks after the initial injury that I was capable of getting out on the bike again. The fact that cycling is, comparative to many other sports, of a lower impact on the body leads many people towards taking it up later in life or when injuries prevent them from taking part in other sports.
And with ankles like a 90-year old man, I was no different.
The fact that my latest injury arrived just before Christmas was a worry. In a normal festive season, the endless tins of biscuits, boxes of chocolates, nights out on the town and completely unnecessary three-in-the-morning kebabs are enough to see the space I take up in the world increase by a disturbing percentage.
But an entire Christmas spent unable to partake in any physical activity whatsoever spelled disaster for my unsuspecting weighing scales.
So come January 2013 and the queries started arriving 'have you been getting out on the bike much?, ah you have to be getting out', 'are you putting many miles in?' and depressingly the only answer was 'no', followed by promises to myself that I would be regifting all the tins and boxes next year instead of eating them.
With the holiday weight through the roof and having not exercised at all for nearly two months, I signed up for one of the hardest organised cycling challenges in the country – the Wicklow 200, which takes place in early June.
Getting back on the bike was hard. The first spin after a long lay-off is never easy. Adding to my woes, I'm unfortunate enough to live at the bottom of a 500 metre climb which averages about 9% gradient with some sections above 15%. There is no other route which leads away from my house (proximity to the bottom of ridiculously steep climbs will be a much bigger consideration whenever the time comes for me to consider moving).
As I arrived to the top of the hill, about five minutes into my Wicklow 200 training plan, I was hunched over the bike, spitting off to the side, reaching for the water bottle with that awful metallic taste in my mouth, wishing I had just stayed in bed.
But 'no', I thought, 'I've paid feckin' 40 euro for this, sure it's only going to get easier isn't it?'.
And of course it gets easier. That first five minutes was the worst part and probably the worst I felt on the bike all year. Once I was over the hump (so to speak), I managed to do an easy 25km spin and I laughed in the face of the 15% hill as I freewheeled my way over it in the easy direction.
Although 200 is a much bigger number than 25, the distances I was capable of increased regularly. Six months to prepare for a challenge that long when you're starting off almost from scratch doesn't sound like a lot of time, but it is plenty.
I spent about six weeks cycling a distance of 25-40km on the weekend. Then followed six weeks of cycling 40-60km in one go, and finally a stint of doing spins from 50km to 85km. That brought me up to mid-April (even missing a weekend here and there along the way).
At this stage I had been convinced that signing up for some shorter challenges would be a good idea and to treat them as stepping stones to the Wicklow 200. Once Spring arrives, a weekend doesn't go by where there isn't a cycling sportive somewhere in the country. And as is the case with the An Post Cycle Series, there are usually a selection of distances to choose from in order to suit yourself and your own level of fitness. So before the big day I had already completed challenges of 110km and 140km in length.
But for anyone daunted by a distance of 200km, it's perhaps comforting to note that before I headed down to Greystones in June, 140km was the longest spin I had done that year and 85km was the length of my regular weekend spin. These distances sound much more manageable and they were more than enough to get me through the Wicklow 200 in about 10 hours.
The benefit of riding with a big group, in which you tend to end up in big events like that, should never be underestimated. It sounds annoyingly chipper to say, even to myself considering it's January and I'm fat and unfit again, but the first 100km flew past and felt like I hadn't ridden any distance at all.
So when you're taking the Christmas tree down to the local park to be obliterated this weekend and you look down and you're seeing less of your own feet than you could last November, remember that if you set yourself a goal for the year, there is light at the top of that hill. You'll get there.