A year has passed since my dad died.

A lot has happened in this time, some of it terrible, some of it great.

It really has been a mixed bag of emotions and experiences. This is something that we will all have to face at sometime, the death of a loved one. There is no way to convey what happens, I’m sure it is different for everyone. It’s just – not that nice, but you’ll get through it eventually.

Around this time last year I figuratively woke up. I realised that the world I had created for myself, a world of self created pressure, was no longer somewhere I wanted to inhabit. I needed to step away from it it. So I did. I left. Dropped everything and moved on.

I took a year to move away from my professional career path to immerse myself in the bike industry. I bike shop monkey with a PhD – surprisingly common as I’ve found out. This has given me time to think about what I want to become. I’ve toyed in other professional areas and found I’m not a one trick pony, this has been a revaluation of what I can do.

I took a year to ride, rather than train, on my bike. To look around at my surroundings rather than at my power meter. This has brought me to new places and given me time to reflect. Not having something digital to distract you for a ride opens your brain up to itself and forces to you become introspective. Something I’ve needed.

I’ve eaten, drank and done what I want – when I want. No more worrying about it, just fucking do it. Life is too short to care about what society thinks you should be doing. I’m not condoning renouncing my part as a citizen, but rather to just step back and turn on your bullshit filter and do what you know is right.

Cutting out TV from my life was a major factor. My brain is no longer in a slop of media hatred and consumer greed. I build up my own picture of the world as I see fit. I chose what I want to consume rather than what they want me to consume.

I’ve said no more often.

Overall the past year has been good to me. I’ve had many days of sadness interspaced with rays of humility and happiness from those around me. I’ve spent more time listening to others than I’ve ever done, it’s all helped.

Today is my day. 365 days have passed and I’ll mark it with a bike ride. I’ll look up. I’ll see something new. I’ll smile. I’ll tell someone else I care about that they should do what they think they want to do. Mostly, I’ll enjoy the next 364 days until I get to do this again.

People. People are always a reason.

They come to you in times of sadness. They come with you in times of happiness. They give you things for no reason. They do stupid things. They do fun things.

But mostly people are fun. Nice to know, easy to be with, interesting to meet.

Go out. Meet some more. They may not all be for you, but when you find some nice ones. Be good to them.

Winter does this to me. Shuts me down, shuts me up. The unfortunate side effect of this is that I have not much to talk about as my brain ceases to function at its normal capacity. Which in reality, ain’t that much at the best of times.

So, I’ve been failing to ride much. I fell off my road bike on the way to buy a car, oh the ironings*, and did some damage to my wrist. This left me unable to pilot a mountainbike as for some reason I couldn’t hold my wrist in a flat bar position. So I did some road miles and they were fun. Then my back locked up for a few days and it’s only come loose today.

I’m due to ride a 210km audax tomorrow. The weather forecast looks like the apocalypse. I’ll probably not ride. I can’t be arsed getting rained on for 10 hours in January. I have zero motivation for it. On the plus side… something or other.

I don’t need sympathy, I can provide enough of that myself. I don’t need to be told I need the miles, my fat belly tells me that. I just couldn’t care less at the moment.

Sod off reality.

*intended

It was the best of years, it was the blurst of years. A paraphrase that explains it all.

2013 was an tough year. The monkeys that lived in my head finally had time to step away from the PhD machine after submitting my thesis in late December 2012. This led to an easy and relaxed start to 2013 where I could do something other than that document. A change of direction saw me writing about cycling, for money, for fun. Probably one of the best moves I’ve made this year, something I am very grateful to have been given the chance to do. As it made me realise that I can write about things other than science, things that I actually enjoy writing about.

Winter/Spring 2013 was frankly excellent. I was living in Wales, the winter was deep and cold. The ice grew deep and the snow packed it in. I had a great winter climbing season in the gullies and faces of North Wales and probably one of the best ways to come down from the PhD by hitting things. Winter climbing brings everything to the front and gave me a reality check more than once with a slip on ice over some rather big falls. Always good to get reminded that you do want to live.

Spring rolled on, and with a date set for my Viva for my PhD, I decided to take some time away to prepare and relax on an XC skiing holiday (my first in 5 years) in Switzerland. Then my father decided to die. Which was hard to say the least. Back to Ireland, deal with everything and help family, and myself, through it all. Project managing a funeral made it easier at the time, but months on, it is not something that has fully left me – something that probably never will.

At this point another reality cheque had come in, this time about the fragility of life, rather than the importance of life. I stepped back and reevaluated what was important to me – not my career, not my property, but the life I was to lead for the next few years. This, bar anything else, has been the greatest thing I’ve learned from 2013 – do what you want to do, don’t waste your time doing what others want, but be gracious about it. I moved to Manchester – the city that could maybe offer something more than Ireland.

A rather lackluster performance at my PhD viva – as you can understand at the time I cared about other things – saw me with 3 months of hateful work to undertake. I didn’t dive into it, rather took on a job doing something I’ve wanted to do – working in the bike trade. Overqualified yes, giving a shit about your opinion of me and your jokes? No.

The summer took on one focus – to live again. Ride bikes, climb rocks, see new places, do things I wanted to do with those I wanted to do. I rode bikes for money and for fun. I visited parts of the Uk and Ireland I’d never made it to and crashed bikes for fun. It was wonderful to physically hurt and move away from the mental suffering of the past two years. I finally got off my ass and did my PhD corrections – in 3 weeks. I passed and became a doctor. I’ll possibly never use it. Who knows.

The other bright point of the summer was the Highland Trail race. Self supported goodness and an introduction to the suffering that would be needed for the focus for 2014 – The Tour Divide. Something I’d promised myself after my father died was to physically suffer again. To relive the life I had left when I stepped away from mountaineering – put myself in uncomfortable positions and deal with it. Live.

The HTR was all I hoped it would be. I made some wonderful friends who I don’t stay in contact with half enough. I rode some amazing trails in some wonderful places. I suffered and I loved it, even the numb groin and hands for months afterwards. I wanted more. Rides got longer and then shorter as work took over. I needed to recover and I did so, riding for me, not for a race team, not for training. Just riding for riding.

The rest of the year was somewhat of a disaster riding wise. I had to miss a few races due to sickness and injury after a crash in Ireland resulting in 6 weeks off the bike. Not cool. Unfortunately the van then decided to die before our trip up to Relentless 24, and, after the DNF at the 3 Peaks a few weeks earlier, an exploding tub, I decided to call the racing season done. I wasn’t on form and reality wasn’t having with me racing. So I just rode bikes, not that much, but bikes we’re ridden and cycling was talked and written about a lot.

Winter has come and for the first time in 6 years I’ve not raced a cross bike. Initially it felt wrong not to race, but stepping away has been a good thing. In the past few weeks I’ve started to feel a hunger to race again, to go fast, but for longer. Events have been entered for 2014 and a calendar has been drawn up. Hopefully it’ll work out well.

It can’t be much worse than 2013.