A flying trip up to the Lakes with my colleague Gareth for a long awaited summit ascent. Dazzling weather meant a good deal of people had similar ideas, but we managed to circumvent the queues on Striding Edge largely by jumping over people’s heads and standing on their hands. A lovely dip in Red Tarn rounded things off superbly for yet anohter memorable day in this seemingly endless British summer.
Clitheroe Grand Prix 2006
The Cliitheroe Grand Prix race is on a bugger of a circuit and saps you. This year’s race was on roads wet from torrential rain. I got into the leading group of six and we made good progress – but then I crashed on a slippy hairpin bend whilst attacking the leaders. (I was a few yards off the front so didn’t bring anyone down!) and fought a frustrating battle trying to get back on to the leaders for the remaining 20 minutes. I finished 20 seconds down in between the five leaders and the unorganised chasing group. Loved the fight though.
Boroughbridge Show
Some photos from the agricultural show we went to at the weekend. Just four shots chosen for upload but I love them all.
Three more pics here:
Ouch!
Tour of Qinghai Lake , China, July 15-23, 2006. That has got to hurt.
Colne Grand Prix – hot, hot hot.
A 7pm evening crit after a mad dash from Sheffield (working) and surreal temperatures (still over 80 degrees on the start line). The race itself felt pretty fast (but that may have been the heat) and was dominated (spoilt?!) by Aire Valley RT riders protecting their sprinter and pulling back every move that went up the road. In the end, and the inevitable sprint, I was eigth, which isn’t bad for someone who’s never been able to sprint. Great race. Bitter? Moi?
The Chap Olympics – none of this vulgar sporting tosh.
Some funny photos on the BBC website of the annual event hosted by Chaps Magazine. The opening ceremony includes the lighting of the Olympic pipe.
Nice prolitariate posters
The Tour de France gathers pace (or rather loses pace) as the race its the mountains today – when the going get tough….
I’ve browsed to these posters (Promoting the Discovery Channel riders) on show in the US at the moment – I just love the style of them. More posters in the series here
5 Olives
Lily celebrated Saturday by putting five olives on her fingers then eating them. The olives, that is. 
… and today, I watched…..
A very simple but strangely compelling and lovely video called Where the Hell is Matt?.
Back on the road
First race on the road this year (if you don’t count a duathlon), the supporting 3rd cat and Juniors’ race for the National championships at Horwich (nr Bolton). I was disappointed a bit – I’ve got high expectations of myself – but I finished in the middle of the whittled-down bunch on a wet but fast course. Probably about 20th place – but the results will confirm that. Sprint finishes in bike races are a bit out of my territory and I was looking for a break to get into instead, but it was too fast a course with easy corners – so there wasn’t much jumping about into and out of tight bends (luckily – the roads were wet!).
Having made my excuses, I must say that I just am not up to that speed of racing yet (26.5mph) after commuting and riding steady since the last cyclo-cross race in January. I’ll get there – as I ride the races at Colne, Clitheroe and Rochdale later in the summer, but I’m going to have to ride more strongly as well as intelligently if I’m going to repeat my podium place at Colne in 2005.
The races themselves were well put together (by Horwich CC) and it’s always much more exciting racing in front of a good crowd. British Cycling’s report here.
A video tour of the house in mid building chaos Autumn 2005
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Wow – it’s wierd looking back on this video of the house building now. Seems like we’ve come so far. What a satisfying struggle it’s been!; |
By George – these flags are doing my head in
RANT: The world cup is nearly upon us and an ever-increasing number of drivers decide that it’s time to stop sitting around and really help the England football team over in Germany by flying small flags on their cars in England. There’s a thin line here – I don’t want to discourage patriotism. The problem is; it isn’t partriotism. I wonder how many of these people know when St George’s day is (or indeed who he was). There was no flag-flying going on when the English team went off to Melbourne for the Commonwealth games this spring.
What’s funnier is that the whole concept of a flag is that it’s a visual symbol recognisable by its patterns to denote a particular country. But that’s not enough for the thickies… they need the word “England” written on – just to be safe in case someone thinks the George cross means Brazil , Paraguay or something. Even the concept that flag drag will boost fuel costs seems to make no impact on the dim whits who fly these annotated flags from their cars. I wonder how many of these patriots think the price of fuel is astronomical in this country?
But my real rant is about how this links to football, and why I like to play it but hate to watch it. Every summer, I love to watch the awesome challenge of the Tour de France, the tennis at Wimbledon, some cracking Athletics meetings and several other sports. But there’s something else in football. Many sports have their passionate fans, but none are so partisan. I don’t really mind whether Lance Armstrong or Ivan Basso win a stage or the overall… it’s how it’s done that makes it entertaining. The England fans I saw watching the last world cup in the pubs of this country didn’t care how it was done – didn’t even care whether England had played fairly – they just wanted them to win. Panache not required. What a dull outloook on life. Rant over.