You Can’t Rush These Things

On the bike today and although the temperature is quite low it wasn’t really cold, the sun was very warming.

The organisers of the Tour de Yorkshire announce that Marcel Kittel and Sarah Storey will be in the line-up. Along with L and I of course.

My old school chum who I meet up with occasionally finally sends his CV to my company, two years after I first told him to apply. I suppose you can’t rush these things.

In the evening L goes over to give her Mum's bathroom a second coat. I have no dog training this week, so sadly there can be no pub rendezvous.

(Wednesday 18^th March)

Season Finale

They say exercising on tired legs is beneficial, so I drag myself on to the bike today. It was either than or a 4-5 mile ‘recovery’ run and personally I’d rather bike.

Then there’s the little matter of tennis to negotiate. Which my opponent has billed as the ‘season finale’, which I think means I can finally put away my racquet until next summer.

It looks like there could be a nice cross court breeze tonight, it's actually quite cold as well, but it should stay dry. Which is a shame really. Sometimes I enjoy drying the court out with the squeegee gadget more than the tennis.

I’m so pleased to get to 5-5 in the first set and particularly to come back from 0-2 0-40 down to lead 3-2, that everything else after that passes me by, including the eventual straight sets defeat. That come back from 0-40 down was very enjoyable, winning five points in a row and containing, as it did, some high memorable double faults from my opponent.

Afterwards he proposes another ‘season finale’ next week, oh no, oh alright then, if we must.

I quick mention of the Paralympics, mainly because cycling is one of my things, so I have to mention Sarah Storey’s very impressive defence of her Individual Pursuit title. Of course we already knew Storey was pretty useful and she has won titles with the full GB squad but tonight she caught her opponent with almost half of the 3km distance still to ride.

Not only that, her time in qualifying of 3:32.170 was a track record for any woman, beating Jo Rowsell’s winning ride at the World Cup event there in February. Though it’s still some serious distance off Sarah Hammer’s world record. It’ll be interesting to see if Storey, at 34, can beat off the younger competition and get a ride in the upcoming World Cup series and maybe even next year’s World Championship.

(Thursday 30th August)

No Stops, No Walking And No Urge To Vomit

I get the bus in and will do a long run after work. Probably a last training run before Sunday, depending on how it goes. Talking of Sunday, plenty of people don’t seem to have got their numbers yet, us included.

Some interesting selections in the British squad for the World Track Championships in Apeldoorn, Netherlands from 23rd March. As expected, no Bradley Wiggins or Geraint Thomas who are back on the road. Also as expected, no Rebecca Romero, the Olympic individual pursuit champion who has been suffering with indecision and then injury. The interesting news is that there’s no Shanaze Reade either, who was outperformed by Jess Varnish in the team sprint in Manchester and no Sarah Storey despite a winning performance in the team pursuit, she’s at the World Track Para-Cycling Championships in Italy instead.

It’s a good run home, well almost home. 10.7 miles from work to Attenborough with no stops, no walking and no urge to vomit. All very encouraging. The only thing that isn’t encouraging is that we haven’t got a race pack yet.

L does her own run and we rendezvous later in a hot bath to compare aching limbs. It’s almost like a Sunday, we even have a curry. The only thing we don’t have is the post-run alcohol. Which we could indulge in... but best not.

(Tuesday 15th March)

Up The Blondes

L goes into work for a few hours whilst I take the dogs for a game of footie on the park. When I drive up to meet her later I notice that there is a lad on almost every road junction wearing a pizza box. There’s nothing unusual in that actually but they all seem to have scarves over faces and some even have balaclavas. Sinister.

We collect my parents and head up to Manchester for the Track Cycling. I’ve thought for some time that my father would enjoy a day out at the cycling, although it’ll be exhausting for me explaining all the various different competitions. What I didn’t expect was my mother to be so keen to join us. The more the merrier.


It’s an exciting days racing but a long one, especially for my parents, we don’t drop them back at home until 1.30am. It doesn’t help that they decide to close the velodrome between the day and evening sessions this year, evicting all the supporters into an area of Manchester where there is nothing to see or do except go to Asda for tea. Unfortunately Asda are yet again woefully unprepared for the deluge of hungry cycling fans. This event has been on the calendar for many a year now, so you’d have thought they’d have got the hang of it by now.

As for the cycling, the Women’s Pursuit Team go very close to the world record in winning Great Britain's first gold medal of the weekend.

Sarah Storey, Wendy Houvenaghel and Joanna Rowsell

Then Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny clash in an all-British semi-final in the sprint and Kenny impressively defeats Hoy. Unfortunately Frenchman Kevin Sireau has too much for Kenny in the final. Hoy recovers to take bronze.

Chris Hoy and Jason Kenny

Geraint Thomas gets the crowd going in the individual pursuit final, storms off into a huge lead over his opponent Australia’s Rohan Dennis and is on course for a world record... Unfortunately he’s gone off too fast, fades and Dennis overhauls him with only a few laps to go.


‘We’re still hungry 4 Vicky’ proclaims a banner, they’re referring to Victoria Pendleton of course, who with Shanaze Reade makes up our potential Olympic sprint team pairing. I’m not sure about Vicky myself, so let’s talk about two young blondes instead. Pendleton and Reade are surprisingly under par and only qualify eighth, and are soundly beaten by our other British pairing of Jess Varnish and Becky James, who qualify fourth quickest and get to race for bronze. Yay, up the blondes. Unfortunately they lose to France.

Jess Varnish

We nearly didn’t stay for the last event, the third part of the Omnium, cycling answer to athletics’ decathlon but with six events. In the elimination race, last place is knocked out every two laps and it was well worth staying for. It’s one thing trying to stay in the lead of a race, quite another to avoid being last. The whole idea was an accident waiting to happen, which thankfully didn’t happen, but was great to watch. With two left GB’s Ben Swift was still there before finally being beaten into second place on the last lap.

Now just for the long drive home.

(Friday 18th February)