Prior to joining twitter and starting to post here I became a regular visitor and sometime contributor to the clinic, over on cyclingnews.com and hence my outlook was dangerously skewed towards the effect doping was continuing to have on both professional and amateur road racing. However, over the past year I have written about music, about depression, and most recently about my own cycling efforts and ambitions.

I started this blog for two reasons:

1. to learn how to use Twitter and WordPress to reach an audience; and
2. to contribute to online discussion of cycling.

I wonder how I did?

1. I learnt a lot about Twitter and WordPress and how they interact. Twitter provides the largest proportion of blog hits, either through followers (such as @abandondedbike and @psyclyst, thanks guys) seeing post announcements, and through re-tweets. The remainder were a range of search engine hits (see below), and  links from other blogs (such as those by Joe Papp and Burt Hoovis). A very small proportion came from comments left on other blogs. Very few people clicked on links in my posts, defeating my intention of providing extensive references to my sources, although I guess that just having them there provides some kind of security-blanket (both for me and for readers). I also learnt that the most popular pieces of writing seem to be those that come from the heart: either because they are about my own experience (depression and cycling), or born of my passion (when I write about doping).

2. I stirred up some interesting responses in relation to two important issues for cycling. I was not surprised that writing about doping (and mentioning names such as Papp, Landis and Hamilton) would generate some lively discussion. However, I was not expecting that writing about my own struggle with depression and the role cycling has to play in helping and hindering me would generate any interest at all, but not a day goes by without a few hits from people searching for information about cycling and depression. The most surprising thing for me was not that searches for a well-known Yorkshire framebuilder would provide so many hits, but that Beryl Burton and Percy Stallard would prove so popular (although that just shows how little I know).

Thanks to all of you for visiting in 2011: I may not be writing so much in 2012 as I have been ‘elevated’ at work to a role of dubious function but endless meetings and data requirements. I do have some posts in the pipeline and hope to enlighten you as to my progress towards LEL and the next PBP…

And  thanks to @accidentobizaro,  whose blog can be found here… she knows why.

I leave you with a man urinating  and calling it art. There is also a bicycle:

Rainer Ganahl’s ‘Alfred Jarry’s Call of Nature‘

That is all…