A simple, but a very very funny prank on youtube.

I organised a bike race on Saturday for the first time in a good few years. It was a really very satisfying experience. The ones I used to organise at Cheltenham - mainly road races and time trials - seemed to be such thankless experiences, where riders expected so much of you and were’nt willing to put themselves in your shoes. Not all the time, but most of the time, this was what it was like.

Organising any event like this isn’t particularly easy. You can be lucky with some things (the weather was near perfect, no-one crashed enough to warrant first aid), and other things you can plan (the venue itself was really good - self-contained non-prescious parkland with a course to challenge all abilities).

What you can’t stress enough though is how you rely on other people so much. My name was down as the organiser, but for Katie, it was just as long a day, and probably more tiring in many ways, because she doesn’t have the ‘things will be okay’ kind of attitude that I have at times like that.

The best bits of the day was the realisation that the North West Cyclocross community is a very strong one - and people were genuinely willing to help out wherever they could without being asked.  It really lifted me up.

So BIG ‘thank you’s go to: Katie, Jean and Bill, Matthew Pixton, Louise Gore, Stuart and Billy Reid, Josh Varty and his marshalling friend whose name I can’t recall, Wheelbase (for the generous prizes), Mick Spiers, Ray Pugh and everyone at Bury Borough Council Parks, especially David Wells.  Finally, thanks, of course, to mum, for babysitting Lily.  The day with Lily at my side not moaning and getting on with things would have been blissful, but utterly unattainable.
Would I do it all again?  You betcha.

The race report and photos can be found here.

Part 1 - the video diary

Part 2 - the race

In a slightly odd and certainly unpredictable series of events, I had the enjoyable and very memorable experience working on a video diary with Sam Bailey of BBC’s Countryfile programme the other week. It was all strange in many ways - not least because I’ve worked for the Countryside Commission and then the Countryside Agency for almost twelve years now and have been keen to promote my work on the programme, but when my turn came, it was because of a bike race!Most of the readers here will know of my obsession with the Three Peaks Cyclocross race, a long, hard, mountainous cycling race every September. Every training ride I do is taken over by thoughts of riding the Three Peaks, and part of my obsession has manifested itself in the race blog I keep. Anyway…. to cut a long story short, it’s because of the blog that, when the BBC heard about the race and were doing a feature on the area, they contacted me to do a video diary.I had a great day filming with them (the five hours or so was useful training and mind-preparation!), and the video diary and race were shown on 8th October. Click on the images to the left to watch the coverage, split into two episodes!