"Hi, I'm Maciek. In 2015, I made the following kilometers: horizontally - 1 ... .. booooring! "

[dropcap] G [/ dropcap] dy at the recruitment interview a kind lady from HR asks me what I would like to do or where I see myself in 3 years, I answer that I don't know. How did it happen that 2015 was the best cycling year of my life? Case. How to repeat it? I do not know. I did what I liked, and the rest went by itself. Cooperation with SZOSA warehouse, blog and fanpage on Facebook they taught me that if something is done well, sooner or later someone will notice it. The basis, however, is throwing in material that can interest the recipient. So I do not post my daily routes, I do not write that it is hard for me and I can not gather to intervals, and by throwing a photo of the landscape with a short description of the route, my head does not take 30% of the place. I try to put things that I would like to see for myself - I doubt that anyone would like my breakfast, head or 4th week to go the same way.

Thanks to the people I met on Sunday rounds, the adventure started itself, and then it went on in an avalanche. It's enough that one new person will suggest one thing and the whole year will be filled. And the proposals are often epic or even legendary. I can not write off all the great adventures of 2015. Each of them deserves a separate entry or a few, but a certain section below should give as a picture of what was happening.

Why am I writing this? 2015 is a year of work in a large corporation located in Mordor, full-time, probably the worst cycling event in Poland - "Mazovian plateau". At the beginning of December 2015, I still had 25 unpaid leave days, despite all the things I write about below. How? Overtime, weekends, remote work on trips, in the car, in bed, in cafes, everywhere. Can be! All you have to do is want it. Do you do something cool? Do you have something nice to suggest to a cycling company? Write, that's what the marketing departments are for, there are budgets. You just have to have something to offer - everyone will be a plus. A great route in the mountains, an account of an unusual race, or even objective and interesting tests is a much better conversation opener than very good sports results. You have to be able to sell in an interesting way. The result without selling gives little, selling without a result like this. Of course, not everyone has to want it, the priorities are different.
What was the year 2015?

It is a lot of races in Poland and Europe, large as under Stelvio and small as in Góra Kalwaria.

Cyklo Gdynia, Tatra Road Race, Jarna Klasika, will pass through and the mass of others that my brain removes from memory, so that I can save myself for the next ones without any stress. Racing under the house is cool, but I am ready to change 10 races from the ŻTC category in exchange for one foreign Gran Fondo on the great mountains. Thousands of people, huge buffets, excellent organization, countries in which a cycling race is a holiday are doing it just fine. The race is not just an incinerator to tour your friends (although it is also nice, but contrary to the opinion of the Internet, being toured by a friend is also cool and more importantly - motivating). This is the whole process: a trip, food - a lot of food, making senseless so as not to get tired .... Whoever goes on races, despite the chances of winning no, he knows what I am writing about.

It's rides and making Friday with the world champions, the winners of the Great Tour, the legends of cycling.

Riding with Quintana, Majka, Kwiatkowski, Sean Kelly, Stephen Roche and countless other people is always a great experience. A separate post could easily be created about each of these meetings, because with common meals one can learn quite a few curiosities that we can not find on the Internet. Also those from "darker " cycling site.

This is the Tour de France seen from the helicopter and the service car.

Abstraction, really. If there was a questionnaire about a periworld dream, I bet that 86% of responses would show the Grand Tour - preferably the Tour de Frace, there is no more - 12 million spectators on the spot. Somewhere along the route, with a table full of local wine and cheese, see how the column of speeding cyclists is passing one of the small French villages: checked. Accredited from the VIP area, at the start and finish, from the all-inclusive area for journalists: checked. From helicopter flying over the peloton and from a technical car, signed with his name, pushing between thousands of fans: checked. Riding a few hands behind the escaping Rafał Majka, and then watching as he falls as a winner at the finish line: checked. There is no better scenario.

It's Giro seen from the perspective of Lampre's players.

Visits in the town of competition, analysis before and after, catching a cork from the champagne on the box, flia focia with Michael Matthews coming down from the podium in the white leader's shirt, these are the things I recommend to everyone. In addition, observations of how GCN records their new episodes, talks with Lampre players about the upcoming stages and the lightest serial bike in the world. 

These are many "smaller" races with accreditation as Route du Sud.

 
Cheering for cyclists is a specific hobby. Hours of organization, with good winds, a few minutes of observing cyclists, sometimes some lost water bottle. Occupation for the most persistent. The perspective changes a bit when you can talk to players before and after the start. 

These are bike and equipment tests scattered throughout Europe.

Riding on the latest technology achievements is cool. Especially if it is done in interesting places and hotels, which I would rather never decide for myself, because instead of one night in them, I would prefer to live a week in the Canary Islands. Those with a golf course, thumb-sized meals and a stone ceiling hanging from 4 meters above the bed, the size of my little room in Warsaw. In addition, if the bike smells new, and presented to the media was an hour earlier, it is great, regardless of whether Nairo Quintana is driving past us. But if it is just one more time ahead of us at the congress with one hand, because the other is just changing or playing with the phone, the joy is double.

Trips under the most epic mountains on Tenerife / Austia / Włochy / Hiszpania / Frantion / Czech Republic / Slovakia.

Teide, Stelvio, Mortirolo, Gavia, Lisbon, Jeseníky, Tirol, Tatras, Beskydy, Spanish wilderness, French Alps, Cote d'Azur, Pomerania, Mazury, Świętokrzyskie, Bavaria, Podlasie, Kashuby, Silesia, Giant Mountains, Lake Como, around Milan and Bergamo , Slovak Paradise, Pieniny, Wielkopolska.... Some of these places many times, others for a few to a dozen or so days. It has reduced the number of kilometers that I defeat in a year on two wheels, but the quality and memories matter! Although 1500km and almost 30km vertically in December is a result that I did not expect. Despite this:

This is a life-long career in the Lisbon half-marathon, a nozzle in Warsaw and the grandmother's Sunday win.

Vanity, all vanity. What are all these points comparing them to the first, won Sunday roundabout on the Nasielsk round. Only Watts per kilogram and Rondo count in life. I always wanted to win something and just in the season that should be the weakest I improved all my results and shaved the finish with a 5-person escape. Broken magic boundaries 1:30 in half-marathon and 40 minutes for 10km are maybe not very high scores, but I've waited for them quite a long time. Season passed, life fulfilled.

These are dozens of bicycle trips around Poland and the surrounding area.

On average, every two weeks I ask publicly whether someone is writing for a weekend or a little longer adventure. I even planned to start weekend trips for people busy with work. I have 9 people in the car - so far, I have not been able to. The group is always the same - small but the best. Adventures are always unforgettable and memories stay for weeks.

In December, looking for a week-long trip to Tenerife for some PLN 1200, volunteers came to our ready-made warehouse of forty. They asked, they translated, they arranged, they asked again - none of them went. 

These are new sports, especially winter ones.

I respect the entries of bicycle colleagues who, on their profiles, discover with surprise that life is not just a bike. For my part, I recommend cross-country or skitours. During skydiving entrance to Kasprowy (in the link of my pretty cool video) in the gale with life I said goodbye several times. I already understand films where the protagonist says "leave me, I'll lie here and freeze myself". That Kasprowy has to climber like Góra Kalwaria to the real mountains? Sure, it was enough for me.

It's a visit to places I did not think I could ever get into.

There are places that I know must exist, but it's hard for me to imagine them. For example, an operational center (or rather a warehouse) of professional cycling groups. Somewhere between the other halls in the factory district is the one and only one. In it a few people, a bus or two, several cars, a washcloth, a service room. Nothing, but if you add the fact that the bus is a dozen people, showers, washing machine, kitchen and some other goodies, and in the service room hangs hundreds of frames, wheels and endless decks of cassettes and spare parts is starting to make this impression. A visit to the Italian cycling clothes factory you can read about in Szosa, or maybe a visit at a closed party at the Santini family. Surprise.

These are a few chances to say goodbye to life

Not every idea this year was good. Some were remarkably bad. Did you ever wear a bicycle on the roof rack when it got off the highway? Or you came back in the middle of the night in 6 steps, dressed briefly without lights, for several hundred meter mountains? Or maybe again without lamps, at night through the Slovak wasteland on roads that we should ski or skate? Escaping from Gypsies with a dander I also remember quite well. Babka roundabout toughens character. I am not proud of these experiences, but we remember them with a smile on our lips.

These ideas are so stupid that I do not know where they came from

 
Because how else can you name it Everesting on the stairs at the Marriott hotel: 65 times 42 floors. I came in second, all the splendor was won by the first one who overtook me for one entrance ... Only the first counts, no one remembers the other. I have never been so exhausted in my life as after several hours of walking non-stop down the stairs without even pausing. After the end of the event, around 2-3 a.m. I drove to Kebs and returned home. I mean, I almost came back - I parked and for 30 minutes I was unable to get out of the car. Will I repeat it? No way. Do I regret? Only that I finished the second one, not the first one :) The situation in which we were exhausted, we threw cycling and sold bicycles, thawed our limbs, we broke in the dark without lighting or sat with a bomb at the wall in the middle of the route there was a lot.

These are hundreds of unusual stories and dozens of people we met 

Having a hobby is cool. Thanks to the races, the set-ups, the rides ... as he called, he is the chance to meet hundreds of people that normally would not connect me. From the south of the country to the north, in Poland and abroad. From those quite ordinary, to those who in the stories can suddenly surprise, for example, that they are the winners of the triathlon on Lanzarote (one of the most famous in the world). Possibly, the ultramarathons were running somewhere in the Himalayas, deserts or other strange places. You never really know who you are talking to. There are hundreds of photos in the archive that are hard to explain. Looking at each of them I am convinced that cycling and cycling are one of the best choices.

This is a blog that finally managed to launch and catch the first 100k hits.

I started serious activity in the middle of the year, since then the trend is not bad ... Of course, I've already discovered that ranges and likes can be easily nailed because you just have to put in funny pictures and stupid memes, but that's not the point. There is more than one true honesty more than five casually. Sometimes it is enough that the material will go to these one, powerful hands. However, what's most important:

I met quite a lot of people who after my entries decided to visit the described place. Tenerife itself is from 10 people met on camps from Krakow, through Warsaw, to the Tri-City, which mentioned that they already have a ticket and must visit the locations from our photos. It is also dozens of messages about Zwift, Strava, power measurements, additional photos from the competition. I do not always manage to exhaust the topic in the answer, because it takes a lot of time, but I try to make sure that no message is left out.

I hope that 2016 will be better, but it's hard to imagine how I could do it. The only hope is that in January 2015 I did not really know what could happen.

The planned target remained probably only one ... .. cycling by Mauna Kea.