Danny MacAskill’s rise to fame has been rapid this year due to some great viral stuff involving his Edinburgh street exploits on youtube. Top tune, too… Continue reading “Danny MacAskill’s work on the Doves latest video”
Grizedale North Face loop – a mad evening dash
I grabbed at a small window of opportunity this evening when mum had invited Lily to go to the theatre in Lancaster – to see The Jungle Book. I thought I’d throw the MTB in the car and belt up to Grizedale for a quick dash round the North Face Loop there. With an off-road triathlon coming up at Coniston on Sunday that includes a lap of the loop, I was keep to suss out just how much technical stuff there was to decide how to set up the bike. Continue reading “Grizedale North Face loop – a mad evening dash”
Entry form concerns: Reactions, Context, The bigger picture
I’ve had a good chat with a good number of people over the last 24 hours about the entry form and whole entries issue with the Three Peaks Cyclocross. It’s such a complicated and sometimes subtle ‘system’ that it needs a bit more explanation.
The first thing to understand is that there is no formal ‘system’ for filling / selecting riders for the race. Remember that the race never filled up in advance until 4 or 5 years ago. For that reason it’s never been an issue until the last couple of years. Even two events ago (if we discount the 2007 foot & mouth year) the 2006 event was full in record time of 29 days !
John Rawnsley is one of those salt-of-the-earth good people with a strong sense of morality. He fundamentally does not like to let people down. Bearing this in mind, after what is rumoured to have been 1400 hits on the entry form in a little under 11 hours, John was in no quandary about taking the form down from the site.
Leaving it on there would have also given john the nightmare of opening perhaps 2500 envelopes and sifting through as many entries to try and make a decent field. That in itself is several days’ work on top of what is virtually a full time job for John.
However, it’s important to remember that the entries are not closed until the final list of accepted riders is published on the site. It doesn’t take much to work out that there is a complex and ultimately manual task for John in balancing the right field for the event. This means balancing the race demographics
- old / young / (and juniors!!)
- newcomers / seasoned riders
- male / female
- people who will genuinely turn up, be fit, and finish !
My blog post yesterday was packed to the brim with my usual flippancy – and over-simplifying things here doesn’t help. Yes – it is a race – and yes – there is a selection process taking place alongside a first-come, first-served system. But there is no ‘system’ and there can’t really ever be. As soon as there are rules about who rides, you’ll need to bend them. First-come, first-served is fair to an extent, but imagine the race without Rob Jebb or Nick Craig in it. It’s equally unsustainable.
So, once again, hats off to the likes of John and Keith Parkinson (the official website‘s webmaster – who voluntarily published his phone number on the site when he took the form down and lost another day and evening of his life to this race as a result ) – doing this nightmare of a ‘job’ for the love of the event and the sport.
I hope you get in – and if you do I bloody well hope you turn up and give it your very best shot !!!
Entries online, entries offline.
Well that was fun wasn’t it?! Entry form removed due to excessive demand… so it IS a first come, first served event – I’d always been saying it was a RACE and that John and team had to look at the entries and decide who’s going to turn up AND make a race of it.
I think it’s fair enough to give some credence to those who enter promptly but surely we’ve got to allow some room to pick and choose who rides?
Oh, and I know of at least one seven times winner who hasn’t got to the form in time – and yes – I agree wholeheartedly that John should consider a late entry from him.
A Lancashire Heat Wave? Well – it’s not been bad.
It’s amazing how a bit of warm weather makes life so pleasurable. Home life for the past week seems to have been a perpetual cycle of playing in the garden, going to the park, sitting outside, eating outside, riding bikes and generally not being indoors to do much other than work and sleep. I even heard talk of a heat wave earlier today ont he radio – the very prospect thrills me, I must say. Continue reading “A Lancashire Heat Wave? Well – it’s not been bad.”
An overnight visit to Kirkby Lonsdale
We had our first overnight stopover at mum’s house in ages this weekend. It’s been an odd year with the sleep patterns of a baby and going to someone’s house has generally represented hassle for me since Elsie came along, but she’s been sleeping so well for the last few weeks and Katie & I wanted to get oursleves out for a meal without children – so going to see mum was a really ace opportunity to kill a whole flock of birds with a very small stone.
On top of it all, the sun shone despite a dreadful forecast.
I had two ace bike rides – one on the way up; the ‘usual’ way over Gisburn Forest I ride – and the next morning I opted for a (mildly hungover) hilly and gobsmackingly scenic ride from Kirkby Lonsdale to Barbon, Dent, Deepdale and Kingsdale – on my way to Katie’s family’s house in Ingleton. Continue reading “An overnight visit to Kirkby Lonsdale”
Don’t blog around much anymore
You’ll have heard it numerous times from numerous people, but things are so busy at the moment…
I haven’t fogotten about Minnellium.com and I know that the quality and frequency has really taken a big dive, but the way that social media is heading, I’m slowly coming round to a rethink about the way I ‘do’ my online Dave stuff. Continue reading “Don’t blog around much anymore”
MTB Ride: Mary Townley Loop
Had a lovely day today. My training rides these days tend to be not much more than an hour in length. This has its advantages – you can go out and totally hammer yourself for an hour or so and get all the training benefit; I really believe that if you want to be fit to race well you can gain little from pounding out the miles. Greg Lemond agreed too in an excellent article in one of last year’s ProCycling magazine articles.
However, training theories aside, there comes the odd day when you really just fancy a long ride on yer bike! Continue reading “MTB Ride: Mary Townley Loop”
Elsie’s first birthday – and a mini street party
The sun seemed to shine on the righteous this Bank Holiday weekend, as we had a bit of a houseful to celebrate Elsie’s first birthday. Much as we did the same with Lily – and not being the type of folks for Christenings, we thought we’d get friends, family and neighbours together and have a right old knees up. Continue reading “Elsie’s first birthday – and a mini street party”
A slow recovery
I had my checkup earlier today at the hospital 34 days after my crash at Lee Quarry that gave me a broken collarbone. I’m so intrigued about the healing process that my body has gone through so far. When I first had my X-Ray on the day of the fracture, I was a bit shocked to see how clearly ‘snapped’ the bone was – with the two ‘pieces’ about two centimetres apart from each other.
Continue reading “A slow recovery”
Nick Craig: A Vet, but not done yet
Just browsing through some fell running results and I see that 3 Peaks legend Nick Craig has been posting some of his best ever fell running results this year. This from the supposedly full-time bike rider.
See some of his recent running results here, including second to one of Rob Jebb’s main running rivals Lloyd Taggart a couple of times already this season.
Talking of Rob, most of you may have noticed that the recent birth of his first child – daughter Millie – doesn’t seem to have blunted his sword in any way – with a repeat performance of his 2008 Fred Whitton ride in the Lake District, placing equal first with former national hillclimb champion James Dobbin.
Friends Reunited: Ben Cole visits from Canada
It’s great catching up with old friends. Sometimes it goes far too long between seeing friends. It’s hard enough to co-ordinate good time together with people who live a few miles down the road in these busy days of raising children, let alone people who emigrate to Vancouver. Continue reading “Friends Reunited: Ben Cole visits from Canada”