For me 2018 was mostly about recovering from a pretty messed-up second half of 2017, particularly from a riding perspective.....
Scroll back to about May/June last year; I was fit as fuck, had the Forrest 10-hour XC Enduro in May which I'd been building up to for basically the whole preceding year, did the race pretty comfortably (in the context of a 10-hour solo effort), riding time was only eight minutes less than total race time, so I was pretty stoked with that and feeling mighty fine about myself, so much so that I went & smashed out another little 6-hour only a few weeks later.
Then my car decided to put a brake on things.... Between June and October it was one problem after another, the nett result of which was that I was rarely able to go far enough to get to nice places to ride. So as far as riding the second half of 2017 didn't happen, and I lost a lot of the fitness I'd built up, and worse, started feeling fat. Now I'm still pretty slim compared to the average population, but when your normal weight is around 62kg, and suddenly you're pushing 70, that's kinda fat! By early November I'd got the old bitch of a car to some degree of decent function, so was getting out again, and even managed a trip up to Lake Macquarie for a sailing regatta just after Christmas, and placed second, crewing with a guy I'd never sailed with before (but had previously won two Nationals sailing against him
).
2018 then began with a bang. The wrong kind of bang. On the way home from the regatta, the engine decided it'd had enough and blew up. Hole in the block, oil & guts spewed all over the road, fire. Full-on terminal. 400+km from home, and I'm meant to be back at work the next day. Fuck.
However, under all that there were several layers of silver lining. First part was that a few mates were planning a Mt Buller trip for the weekend I was heading home, so I nutted out the logistics, figured it was possible to join them for the Sunday, so I threw the bike in and had that with me. Their ride plans ultimately got changed due to the weather (it was a stinking hot weekend), so they cut the trip short, which made my plans very fluid, so I opted to take a very indirect route home. Everything hunky-dory (or so I thought), I decided to make the last leg of my trip via Mt Hotham and the Dargo High Plains. However just as I began the climb out of Harrietville the car went nuts. Lots of noise, rough running, low power, so I immediately decided "fuck that plan", found a spot to turn around and gingerly rolled back down to Harrietville, where I figured I'd see if letting it rest & cool down as much as possible on a 40-degree day would help. With plans of going over the mountains shot, I figured I'd try to nurse it along the valley toward Wangaratta and the main route home. Got about 7km, to the tiny settlement of Smoko, when it erupted. Fortunately right outside someone's house, so they had quick access to a fire extinguisher. That was the end of travels for that day, so on the advice of my very helpful local, I found a spot by the river to set up camp and collect my thoughts over a beer or two. Just as well I had the bike with me, and there was no way in hell I was leaving it on the side of the road in my car while I sorted the shitstorm out, so the next morning I packed the essentials into a backpack and rode the 100km to Wangaratta, and from there was able jump on the train back to Melbourne.
That was the low point of the 18 months.
I was able to get hold of a loan car indefinitely until I could buy a replacement, so at least I was able to get back out to join the local group rides and get riding again, but pretty much all year I've been battling that "fat" feeling; the loss of fitness is demoralising, because I know I've been able to ride better than I can now, and the little bastard thought tries to discourage me from riding because I'll be disappointed with my lack of fitness.... Vicious circle.
Depression has been an unwelcome companion for quite a few years, and this past 18 months or so it's sunk its teeth in a bit harder than it has for a while, but thankfully not as hard as '09-ish when I had a really massive breakdown.
Unfortunately I can't say I've had any particularly outstanding highlights this year, but at least I've been on an upward swing from that rocky start.