Birthday....

This last weekend saw a veil of mist hamper my riding plans - the murky greyness on Saturday seemed uninviting and I decided on a short ten miler just to stretch my legs. On Friday Gary and I met at our usual spot and enjoyed some fine autumn sun, at least for a while. It was warm and relatively calm as we wound our way around Market Bosworth, the trees are mostly bare now and the fields are barren. The verges have a carpet of rust and faded gold, the last warm colours of the year before the monochrome of winter

We have escaped any sign of frost so far this year. How different then to last year, when by this time we had already suffered with heavy snowfall. By mid November this year I have cycled more miles than I managed for the whole of last November.

My eldest daughter celebrated her 21st birthday last week. It all seems unreal to me - suddenly she is 21 - and so quickly the years have passed. I put together a collection of home-movies for her; as i worked on the task, which I did in real time, I was taken back to all the key moments: bathing her, her christening, first birthday, Christmases, Nativity plays, sports days, holidays, horse riding etc etc - I greedily soaked up the memories, all compiled onto a series of DVD discs wrapped in ribbon. It made me smile but also brought a tear to my eye. She came round for a birthday supper and we sang happy birthday around a cake with 21 candles. I recorded it, it seemed the perfect thing to do.

Catch up.....

I'm aware my postings have been somewhat diminished of late - sorry about that - I suppose, having completed what we set out to do, there is now less to say.  But I miss it - I will try to add things occasionally, and when we decide on our next 'challenge' I will endeavour to spread the word.

In the meantime, what's been happening? - Recently our friend Sean celebrated his 50th - to mark this milestone our band 'Simply Crap' played a spot at his party - he is in the band too so that worked out well - but interestingly he also reformed a band he had played with in the late 70's - a punk band called 'Out of Order' - he made some CD's of this old band using various recordings he had, he repackaged them and sold them to his unsuspecting guests on the night. The great thing was that he donated all proceeds to our LeJog collection - we made around £75.00 on the night which was fantastic - thanks Sean & Helen for all your efforts.

Gary and I went to a social night at Mercia Cycling Club last night. We hadn't attended one of these before but were tempted by their guest speaker - Adrian Timmis who is an ex-professional rider who had competed in and completed The Tour de France, in the year that Stephen Roche won it. These days he makes a living from coaching and a shop that sells high end specialist bikes and equipment. It was an interesting evening, he talked for probably 90 minutes covering nutrition and various training techniques and methods - he also answered questions on what it was like as a young English cyclist riding the Tour. I came away realising that his world was a totally different one from mine - everything he does is related to fitness, performance and speed - I'm in a different place -I'm never going to get to the levels he was talking about. But it was inspiring and there were a few ideas that might help us in the future.

The weather remains relatively warm and inviting - we must make the most of it - I'm going out to ride 25 miles right now.