King Of The Mountains

It is a mere 2 degrees overnight and it’s fair to say a bit nippy in the tent but at least it isn’t raining for the sportive.

The professionals are doing Middlesbrough to Scarborough but sadly we’re just doing a small section of that. Well most of L’s 40km is actually on the route but my 85km includes a big loop round Dalby Forest which isn’t. Sadly a lot of these roads are narrow, mud strewn, potholed and spectator free. In fact even the 'on course' sections are largely spectator free as they have set us off so early that no one is in place yet unlike last year when the crowds were fantastic and cheered us up all the hills. Problem was us amateurs almost held the experts up when they caught us up, so I assume things had to change.

The event, while still good, isn’t a patch on last year’s in other ways too. The ‘toad in the hole’ and fresh flapjack feed station isn’t repeated and the finish takes place in total gridlock on the roads into Scarborough. As people head into town in their cars to watch the race the riders slalom in and out trying to reach the finish line. A tad dangerous I think. At least the last 2k is traffic free.

We all do get a crack at the Harwood Dale ‘King of the Mountains’ climb where David Millar has kindly set the time to beat at 3:57.

After the race I head back to camp. L has already finished, had an isotonic beer and gone off to see if we need to reclaim the dogs from the RSPCA. We don’t head in to watch the race and hide in the tent instead from the cold and the damp, we’ll amuse ourselves instead with life's essentials.

In the evening we visit the nearby Scalby Manor eatery for some Black Sheep, a bottle of red and some food. Nothing dark again.

(Sunday 1^st May)

Magpie Tendencies

Daughter moves house today, moving a couple of miles down the road in Sheffield. We moved Son the other week and got all his stuff on one half of the back seat, managing to transport both him, his girlfriend and the two dogs all at the same time. We’re not expecting this to be as easy but one car load should be enough I assume? Wrong.

We seem to be taking all the fixtures and fittings from the old house with us, as advised by the new owners of that property. Which would actually be in direct contravention of the tenancy agreement and so allowing them to keep the deposit... I’m sure they’re not that sneaky and are just using the students as a means to gut the house.

Daughter and I have a lively discussion on the merits of this strategy before we leave some of it behind. The less clutter the better, we are still administering therapy to her bedroom at home, which has suffered from many years of her magpie tendencies.

Her new area of Sheffield, Hunters Bar, is really rather nice, too nice for students. We find a really nice pub, The Lescar, after only a bit of walking around in random directions.

The papers were full of it today. The Sunday Times had him on the front page and then had three full broadsheet pages of coverage inside. What’s going on? Bandwagon jumping of the highest order but not before time. It took a while for the press to wake up to what was happening over in France but they got there in the end.

So today, Bradley Wiggins rolls in to Paris in yellow having become the first Briton to win the Tour de France, in oddly one of the dullest races for some time... no complaints though. Wiggins was the favourite from the off and never looked like not winning. It’s a massive achievement for him, for Team Sky and for Great Britain with Chris Froome second overall and British riders accounting for seven stage wins out of twenty-one.

Mark Cavendish won on the Champs Élysées for the fourth year in a row, with Wiggins leading him out, and won two other stages even without the lead out train that he’s accustomed to having.

The highlight for me though, apart from Wiggins winning and then getting up on the podium to announce he’s ‘going to start drawing the raffle numbers’, had nothing to do with Team Sky. David Millar’s win on stage nine was just superb and I was so pleased for him. Eight years, a drug ban and a reinvention (as a spokesperson for drug free cycling) on from his last Tour victory he tasted victory again and I bet it tasted real good.

(Sunday 22nd July)

She’ll Have To Go To Starbucks Like Everyone Else

Back to the grind today. Back at work and back on the bike. Which as its very blustery and the rain is driving into my face perhaps wasn’t the best of ideas but it was needed.

There are seven of us in work, which is more than usual. L says there’s just one of them, just herself... but her boss is due in later. She could always pop round for tea with the Nuns if she’s lonely.

L carefully plans her evening schedule of gym, dog walking, painting, knitting and reading... Then I offer to come to the gym and spoil it, totally stuffing up her schedule, forcing her to rearrange everything. All so I can do 5k on the treadmill. Which was predictably hard and boring, particularly after 30 miles on the bike today. I’m kind of inspired after reading about the training that Dave Millar put himself through in his book 'Racing Through The Dark' that I’ve started reading.



A Christmas present you know and I’m actually reading it, from a book, made of paper, not listening to it.

I also get to try out my new sport headphones, another Christmas present. Then I do 1k on the rower before I crawl to the coffee machine.

Back home our wi-fi is dipping in and out, coincidentally it appears that this only happens when Son is on his xbox, which is mysterious. Daughter is not happy, not that this is unusual. I thought this was maybe because she has to get several essays in for just after New Year but no it’s because she’s missing skyping her housemates. She’ll just have to go use the wi-fi at Starbucks like everyone else.

(Wednesday 28th December)

Teflon Corner

I have a bit of a bike problem this morning, I fall off it. It happened on the notorious ‘Teflon corner’ at the end of our road at work here on Pride Park. I kind of forgot it was wet, despite the fact it was raining. I went round too fast and leant over too much on a corner that has claimed practically every cyclist in our office and a few others who we've seen hit the tarmac from nearby offices.

The corner is always the first place in the Northern Hemisphere to ice up in winter and we’ve seen many a car spin on it. It has zero drainage and I’ve no idea what it’s surfaced with (we assume Teflon) but it’s a temporary surface to go with the patchwork of surfaces and exposed drains that makes up the roads and pavements around here. We’ve been here three and half years now and all the building work was finished over a year ago but still they haven’t put a permanent surface down. Anyhow, don’t worry, the bikes fine.

With the park now reopened, L and the boys ‘sniff out’ the impressive gravestones that have appeared outside Bruce Wayne’s mansion. I would nip down to get a few photos, if it wasn’t for the massive ‘no photos’ sign and the security guard, although some have appear on the internet. I hope Doggo weed up it.

I take the flatter but freshly stone chipped route home, to avoid putting my bruised body through the hillier route. It's not too bad at first, all the stones have now been swept to the sides by the cars, into the cycle lane of course but by not riding in the cycle lane it's not too bad. Until the downhill stretch into Risley that is, where there's loose stones everywhere. I had a few iffy moments there but managed to keep the thing upright this time.

It’s also a crash strewn day at the Tour de France, so I can feel some empathy with them. Particularly for Tom Boonen who limped across the line some time after everyone else had finished, luckily for him he didn’t have a stone chipped Risley to put the icing on his already bad day at the office.

Much better though from Mark Cavendish, who appeared out of nowhere to the win the stage and on a uphill finish as well, which is far from his natural habitat, making it possibly the best of his sixteen Tour de France stage victories (so far), particularly as the route planners (loads of uphill finishes), the officials (docking him points) and the other riders (blocking him) appear to have it in for him. Then he dedicated it to his dog Amber, who sadly died yesterday. Sob. Bless.

It’s been a good tour for Britain so far, three riders in the top seven and none of them are Cavendish. Dave Millar is fourth, Bradley Wiggins fifth and Geraint Thomas seventh (as well as leading the best young rider category). Heady days.

Dog class tonight, at a hobble. Somehow I manage not to hold MD back, who is simply brilliant this evening.

(Wednesday 6th July)