Do The Right Thing

The triathlon season’s pretty much upon us. What that means at the NE31 Tri Club is monthly time trials in the pool. Every last Monday of the month, we get to swim 400m under the gentle encouragement of the coach, Peter. The time you clock then determines your times for the next four weeks’ interval […]

Filed under: Swim, Friends, NE31 Tri Club | No Comments »

There’ve been a couple of posts in the last few days about short, stupid, pointless cycle lanes - Bike Hugger has one, and so does Slate V (seen on the excellent Bicycle Diaries). The trouble is that both of these examples were from the USA, and as we know, everything’s bigger in America. The thing […]

Filed under: Cycle, Ranting, Newcastle, Silly Stuff, Road Safety, Gateshead | 24 Comments »

A couple of years ago, just after I’d bought my sturdy commuting bike, I was riding along Newcastle’s Quayside with my friend The Irishman. We cycled along the empty bus lane, and at the end were going to continue along the pavement, which is wide & generally used as a mixed bicycle / pedestrian route.
The […]

Filed under: Friends, Cycle, Newcastle, Assassination Attempts, Silly Stuff, NE31 Tri Club | 4 Comments »

I get a bit peeved at the way some drivers treat cyclists on the roads. But of course, it’s not all one-sided. Occasionally cyclists do some pretty stoopid things, that put themselves in danger. And I do include myself in that, though very rarely.
So when Adrian Fitch posted this photo of a lorry on his […]

Filed under: Cycling, News, Assassination Attempts, Road Safety | 2 Comments »

Yet another tough session in the pool tonight - one that involved the full range of toys at our disposal.
After the warm-up, we did 400m of hand paddles, which I’d never used before (did I mention that I’m quite new to ‘real’ swimming?). Interesting things - you get to really feel it when you slap […]

Filed under: Swim, Silly Stuff, No More Excuses, NE31 Tri Club | No Comments »

After my experiments last year with strapping my compact digital camera to my handlebars to film what I see when I’m out and about, I finally took the plunge & bought a helmet camera a couple of weeks ago. Really I wanted this for three reasons:

Insurance. What?! Well, if anything happens, I want a record […]

Filed under: Technology, Cycle, Assassination Attempts | 6 Comments »

The official results for the 2008 race are out. There were 1522 runners to cross the finish line, so probably a few more to cross the start line. That means you could probably take off a little from each of these times to get start line to finish line times

My time was […]

Filed under: Friends, Run, Wind, Silly Stuff, Whitley Bay | No Comments »

Not too much to say about the North Tyneside Easter Sunday 10K, except that it was the toughest race I’ve ever completed!
The  weather from Saturday had only slightly abated, and by the start of the race, the temperature on the sea front was a balmy 0ºC, with a pleasant 22-25mph headwind. My race went pretty […]

Filed under: News, Family, Friends, Run, Where I Shop, Newcastle, Whitley Bay | 1 Comment »

Tomorrow is the North Tyneside 10k - from North Shields to the Lighthouse. It’ll be the fourth year for this race, and I’ve done ‘em all so far. It’s a great event that goes right past my front door, so I get ‘home team’ advantage, with a huge crowd to cheer me on.
And I think […]

Filed under: Goals, Motivation, Newcastle, Wind, Climate Change, Whitley Bay, No More Excuses | 4 Comments »

Nuun: £0.41 for a 500ml drink. This home-made version £0.001!
I probably don’t get enough salt in my diet. I’ve had a couple of leg cramps in the pool recently, and sometimes when I yawn, the muscle under my tongue cramps up badly too. The thing is that we don’t tend to buy many processed foods, […]

Filed under: Fitness, Nutrition, Where I Shop | 3 Comments »