Quids In

With no races on Sunday and the Velodrome actually open because the pantomime has finally finished, I get to do my first SQT Session in about six months. My Dad turns up to watch the novelty of it and the way everyone else chews this old man up and spits him out. I enjoy it though and the well earned pint later in the Exeter.

I go to work the next day nursing a locked up right calf. Maybe I’ve been overdoing it. L asks if that’s my dodgy one. No, they’re both dodgy. Not that it stops me biking to work on both Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

MD too is nursing a slight injury because I hit him in the eye with the Lad’s hard rubber ball. Accidentally I might add. It doesn’t stop him either. I book training sessions for both of them on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ll probably be a gibbering wreck after all that lot but I have to go twice as I have so many people to nag for membership fees.

There is entertainment on Dog TV this week with the Lad getting hold of a pair of training shoes. L carelessly left hers drying in the kitchen after she washed them. Clearly they don’t taste very nice as he soon gives up on them.

There is no squash on Thursday but L’s tennis does restart after a two week break which I think she should have complained about because there was no reduction in the monthly fee but she’s not as argumentative as me.

We are also miffed at the council offering 15% off leisure centre memberships for life for new customers. I ring them to complain but I’m rather shot down when I’m told we already pay less than that, a lot less. Apparently the membership price is fixed from the day you join and never goes up. No inflationary increases or anything. We have been paying the same since 2008. Which is great I suppose but also explains why the leisure centres are skint and having to cull facilities. If you're still paying sixpence a month from the 1960s then you really are quids in.

(Thursday 10^th January)

The Full Breakfast Buffet

In an endeavour to stop Doggo losing weight he is now basically being offered full choice from the entire breakfast buffet. He does a pretty good ‘all you can eat’ this morning, at least for an old dog.

I’m in the car today, so L sends me to Sainsbury’s for Brussels sprouts and Mackeson, among other things. I just hope she’s not doing the sprouts for tea, not even if they’re curried.

The reason I’m in the car is so that I can return home quickly, chuck a few balls, then head back over to Derby with my track bike for a session on the Velodrome at 8pm. Due to the pantomime being held there throughout December, options to ride the track are severely limited but tonight they have the first ever (to my knowledge) Vets session that isn’t during work hours. This is aimed at those over 40, so I qualify. What isn’t made clear is that there are no make weights in this session and no newbies. Unless you class me as a newbie in my first Vets session.

It could well be my last too. Honestly it was easier in the Sunday night all-comers session where the young legs of the serious racers and GB squad members are balanced out by a supply of fresh meat from the Accreditation system. Not so in the Vets.

L is back at book club tonight, after a few months off and mainly out of guilt. Unfortunately she re-joins just when it’s fuddle time. Ho ho bloody ho, as she would say.

(Tuesday 12^th December)

Crumbs

I walk the boys this morning so that L can get a good long swim. The boys and I have quite a long walk, over half an hour anyway, and they both ate a hearty breakfast afterwards. Even Doggo who we suspect may be finding his munchies a bit too hard on his old worn down teeth, so we’ve started softening them with water.

In the afternoon I receive an email from Seetickets offering me a ticket for Frank Turner’s 2000th show at Rock City next Thursday and I have two hours to claim it. So I claim it!

I was in the original ballot for tickets and if you didn’t get one you went on the waiting list in case there were any returns or extra ones made available. So my name must have come up. That never usually happens. They were about 10 times oversubscribed.

With the pantomime now in full swing and us track cyclists generally ousted for the duration we have to grab what crumbs of track time we can. Oddly one of those crumbs is tonight from 5pm to 7pm as there is no pantomime performance tonight. As it’s a Friday night this seems rather odd but then the fact they’re holding a pantomime in a velodrome is pretty odd in the first place.

I leave work a little early for what is supposed to be a gentler session than the Sunday one. Not so, particularly when the same coach as the other Sunday turns up and starts doing his six day sixes again (or whatever it is). The overall standard tonight is lower but the pace isn’t which just means there are more bodies to be resuscitated afterwards.

(Friday 9^th December)

The Fit Young Things And The Fit Old Things

This evening I have a track session booked at the Derby Velodrome. My first for months due to all the running I’ve been doing. There’s little point turning up at the Velodrome post-run and getting wasted by all the fit young things and, for that matter, the fit old things. The Sunday night SQT takes no prisoners.

Ironically now that the running calendar has big holes in it, either due to the races not being there or simply full because there's not enough of them to go around, the Velodrome is winding down for the winter.

Yes, I know track cycling is seen mostly as a winter sport but then so is pantomime and the place will be taken over by Buttons, the fairy Godmother and the Ugly Sisters for most of the season. Yes, Cinderella is going to the ball, in my Velodrome, and we don’t even get tickets. Not that I'd actually want any of course but that's not the point.

Tonight, three riders from the British Cycling Academy join our session, which is quite scary. Fortunately they are all doing the sprint sessions rather than the endurance sessions like me. So thankfully attempting to keep up with them (or somewhere approaching keeping up with them) isn’t my problem.

Daughter comes to watch and I don’t think she was too bored.

Afterwards we go for a couple in the Horse and Jockey. Tonight’s dark one is Black Forest Stout from Abstract Jungle.

(Sunday 13^th November)