National Trophy, Peel Park Bradford – cross purposes
My favourite venue for the mid season ‘cross races and another fantastic course by Phil Thackery, at Peel Park.
The day took its usual organised pattern and we managed a great outing for Team Wheelbase, but some part of me thinks that all that effort and what felt like a good ride, was worth better than 40th place of the 61 riders. I’m getting old, readers… and the spark’s going!
Still – it’s all fun or we wouldn’t do it!
Wheelbase Cyclocross – organisational skills to the test
It seems to be ground hog day. The torment is the same each year. I plan the course, I rope in everyone that’s needed. I liaise endlessly with the council, I pack the car late at night, I get up early… then – somehow – a bike race ‘happens’. I am not a natural organiser. It’s not me.
But I have to do it. Get those violins on – I can feel a lump in my throat. I honestly feel – at the end of a day organising a bike race – that I’ve done something for someone. I’ve given a bit back. People turn up, warm up, cut up (the park) then grab their money (if they’re lucky and can wait for the crap organiser) and they’re off. I did it for them. Toby (Dalton – director of wheelbase) did it for them. As did Louise, Len, Donna, Katie, Carolyn, Mick, Jack, Alan, Simon, Sue, John, Damian and a few others. They got their bit of bike racing, we got knackered. But boy does it give you a buzz. (more…)
Cooling the blood
Having complained about thinkgs not being muddy enough for my cyclocross preferences all the first part of the season, the muddy conditions have finally come. It’s been a mixed blessing though. I certainly haven’t had things all my own way. (more…)
Half term hols… a Cumbrian secret
We discovered a lovely thing about Cumbria in half term that you mustn’t let on. When we said we were going to a caravan park for four nights near Millom, we were generally met with distaste and grumpiness. Cumbria has in the heart of it a series of incalculably beautiful mountains, lakes and chocolate box villages. No-one’s interested in those bits around the edge, are they? (more…)
Angus’s Seventh Birthday
A lovely day in itself to go and spend the day celebrating my nephew Angus’s 7th birthday on Saturday – and all the fun that this entails, but was was extra special was that we drove less than an hour to their new home in Arkholme rather than the four and a half hours it used to take us to get to their old place in Devon. (more…)