Every year I like to note my cycling activity on this site as an aide memoire and virus or no virus, this year is no different. Here’s a summary of 2020 from a riding perspective.

Now 2019 saw me rack up my greatest number of miles ever in one year, with 3402 miles. I was pretty pleased with that after getting into a nice 30+ mile a day commuting habit twice a week (although weekend riding sufered because I was knackered).

2020 blew that out of the water! After pretty much ditching the car from March, and with work confined to home I still managed to rack up a total of 3901 miles. At last, one positive amid all the gloom and doom.

I was hoping to reach 4000 miles but didn’t quite manage it – a bit frustrating really as it was only about a week extra of riding. If only we had 53 week years.

This year I hope to do the same or more, albeit without taking anything for granted. It will help if a turbo trainer ever appears in stock that I can buy (assuming we count turbo miles as miles? Hmmm, tricky one).

Also worth noting is that my longest ride was just 43 miles on the Jeffsy. I cycled 246 times, averaging around 15 miles a ride, some remarkable consistency. In 2021 I’d really like to knock out some longer rides if the chance presents itself.

A breakdown of bike use

Of all my bikes, what’s interesting is the urban bike, my Trek District 1 singlespeed. I have used this throughout the pandemic to get short rides in to the local shops and back. It’s a great way to notch 7-8 miles without too much effort and I’ve bought a pannier to make it ever easier to make it the default choice.

I’ve actually really fallen in love with singlespeeding again because the bike is so quiet. If you are shopping you purposely ride out slowly to stop yourself getting too hot, and you wear ‘normal clothes’ so it has fitted in really well with my lifestyle. I’m on the look out for cycle specific casual trousers and some close cut gravel type shorts which will really help.

Elsewhere, the Jeffsy and the Bird usage has remained fairly stable year on year, while the Topstone gravel bike has contributed the most to my riding. As an all-rounder I’ve really enjoyed it and it’s had plenty of off-road as well as on-road use. The bike that has been neglected really is the Secteur, but if that turbo ever appears, that’s where it will live.

2020 Riding

For all the troubles of last year, I don’t think we can really knock the riding, as I’ve outlined in my 2020 in pictures post.

For anyone lucky enough to stay well, after a dry-ish winter we were treated to a long, dry, warm spring of riding. Of course summer was a bit changeable but by the autumn the stable weather was back in charge for a few weeks at least.

As mentioned, my biggest ride was 43 miles after I decided to ride over to St. Marthas to meet some weekday slackers for a big ride and lunch with a couple of beers. Where they were able to ride back to the car, I had the ride home to worry about with a drag up Colekitchen Lane. I bonked badly, and limped home on my own in a bit of a stupor!

We also managed to meet up for some long South Downs days which I really enjoyed, both our Arundel ride and our Brighton ride were delightful. I still can’t work out how Eliott goes so fast on his Whyte graveller!

Sadly, I missed my fix of French roads. I love riding in rural France so this felt quite a loss and something to remedy at the earliest opportunity.

Weight

Once again, my weight remains at 11st 2lbs or 70/71kg on average. I feel that’s an achievement, in fact on a couple of occasions I was down to 10st 10lbs but that proved unsustainable (and included an element of dehydration!).

Suffice to say that body fat is the key differentiator that I need to address. I don’t feel I need to make huge changes, but biscuits is probably one of them. I could go through a packet in short order so that temptation needs dealing with.

I have found one other thing that has contributed to both fitness and weight balance this year and that is doing very light weight workouts. More on that in due course but I feel it’s really benefited me.

The important thing in the short term is staying safe; after that, let’s see what 2021 brings.

About the author

Matt is one of the founding Molefathers of the Muddymoles, and is the designer and main administrator of the website.

Having ridden a 2007 Orange Five for many years then a 2016 YT Industries Jeffsy 29er, he now rocks a Bird Aether 9 and a Pace RC-627.

An early On-One Inbred still lurks in the back of the stable as a reminder of how things have moved on. You can even find him on road bikes - currently a 2019 Cannondale Topstone 105 SE, a much-used 2011 Specialized Secteur and very niche belt drive Trek District 1.

If you've ever wondered how we got into mountain biking and how the MuddyMoles started, well wonder no more.