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@hoefla
the forum does a lot of leading people to their first centuries and that kind of thing.
I suppose despite not coming on many forum rides, frequently walkengering to beers and so on, it's been my most sociable cycling year, entirely due to the forum. I'm no faster, no better at hills and no fitter. Indeed I recently found I've been gaining weight over the second half of the year to be my heaviest in a decade :/ But then, I'm not really in it for improvements.
Well in 2011 for the first time in my life I own two bikes. And I went to Cornwall and did some hills, cycling up all but 1 on a luggage-laden MTB with no foot retention and discovering my smallest chainring in the process. Like others, the London Classic was a happy memory, although starting out late I only saw the forumengers going the other way en route to the start, and then at the pub where we got the dead last prize. It was the first proper ride I did with my partner, and the first ride of any length he'd done in probably over a decade. We walked most of the hills. I think the quirky pubs ride was the first forum ride I went on, it would be nice to follow it with a second edition at some point.
There were several rides I avidly and enviously followed but couldn't make, most notably Fox's essex rides, and the M25. Some night I'd like to do Dunwich and Avebury. I still feel quite ambivalent about group rides, I don't really like riding in big packs and I'm a little slow. Riding solo or with a few friends is what I'm used to and I'm not sure if the Year of the Forum has really changed that.