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. Read More
Ozzy – our Ladyboy Rabbit
A funny thing happened this morning. After Lily got a 12 week old female rabbit called Daisy for her birthday in September, our three year old Rabbit to a great interest in climbing on her back – immediately – as rabbits do (all rabbits, it seems). Time came for a slightly pricey but inevitable castration if our two big eared chums were going to be room mates.
On taking Ozzy to the vets this morning for the big op, I was given the wonderful – if a little surprising – news that Ozzy, is in fact a lady rabbit. It’s going to take some getting used to, but we’re £45 better off. (The vet reckoned the immediate ‘mounting’ habit was acommon sign of dominance amongst female rabbits). I wish my face could have been caught on film. Dying to see Lily’s reaction later.
My snaps from before and after
Remembered to put my camera in my kit bag this year – second time running!
Some snaps of the goings-on before and after the race in Helwith Bridge here, including Nick’s very light frame 
Singletrack Magazine article on Cyclocross
Finally got my hands on a nice little article about Cyclocross from Singletrack magazine that they published in February this year, with a quote from me in (I didn’t write the ‘Top 10 UK racer’ bit by my name!!)
Click here to read in PDF format. Also features some great Geoff Waugh pics.
If you’re from Singletrack Magazine and are reading this, yes – I’m probably breaking some copyright rules here. But the link was free, eh? Here’s another.
In Readiness
My previous post on the Three Peaks Cyclocross blog seemed to make out that it was not about the bike or the gear, but more about the training and fitness. I stand by this in general, but there’s a middle-ground – it’s about all-round readiness.
I’ve been training ‘late’ this year – deliberately (so as not to go insane) and it’s all coming together now really – I got myself a decent base fitness that (only really this week) has turned into what I’d call ‘training’. By training I mean doing things unenjoyable and seemingly unrewarding that hurt and in which time stands still. Hill reps, sprint reps… it’s not really enjoying the outdoors (or indoors, on the flipping turbo flipping trainer), but it serves a purpose I suppose.
With this ‘switch’ to training I’m reminded of two things:
1. There’s no training like racing
If you’re in need of pushing yourself really hard, then you can never do that as well as in a race. Whilst I’ve managed to keep myself going with a few crits on the roads this summer, I haven’t raced since the first week of August. That’s nagging at me. This weekend at the Grizedale Mountain bike Challenge I’ll get that racing feeling again for about 3 hours. Whilst it’s technically not a ‘race’ – but simply riding your bike against hundreds of other people as fast as you can over the same course (!) – it’ll still give me that welcome indicator of what it feels like to really push hard one and two hours into something. You just can’t do that in training (or at least I can’t).
2. The fun is in the result, not the process.
I’m not alone in not enjoying hill reps – if you enjoy them, you’re a mentalist – face it. However, a quote that Chris Boardman rolled out a few times during his successful cycling days always comes to mind… something about getting satisfaction from something but not enjoying it. The satisfaction comes from knowing I’m training my weaknesses. There’s little else to train – if you train your strengths, you’re not really getting better.
Back to my initial thoughts… about the balance between ‘gear’ and training. It’s all got to come under the same roof or ‘readiness’ or ‘preparation’. Two lovely new Cannondale cyclocross frames came into my possession last week thanks to the best bike shop in the world and I take almost as much satisfaction from seeing those built up and sitting in the garage ready for action as I do riding them. The special care that goes into getting the bike(s) ready for the 3 peaks is part of the process. Training, building, tweaking, peaking. It’s the readiness thing.
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? Read More »