Sunday Duathlon.

My usual Sunday morning training was sidelined today. Instead of a brisk six mile run and various strengthening exercises with a nearish contempory I had committed myself to a run leg in a duathlon, (run, bike, run). Our team toed the line with a total of 95 years of experience. Most of the years, if not the experience was supplied by yours truly. A world champion kick boxer, a good cyclist and a rather geriatric runner, this was the make up of today's dream team.

 

I had been told that the event would be quite low key, but in the event ninety three individuals were at the start line including a few relay teams.The first leg was run by the son of my usual Sunday training companion. He finished his 3k strongly and passed three individuals in the run in to the changeover to bring us in a very respectable twelfth. The team, "nomme," then set off on his bike ride. No news from the course, so it was a matter of keeping warm and waiting for his arrival back at transition. The first competitor rode in, pulled on his running shoes and headed off on his second run. Some forty seconds later the next competitor arrived. Then my teammate. He had moved us from twelfth to third. It was not going to be a matter of running in the pack!

 

My run was over an out and in course, with the first half being slightly downhill and as a consequence the second half being slightly uphill. I managed to pass the second placed runner within a kilometre and at the turn I could see that I was catching the leader, but unfortunately not quickly enough. He still had fifteen seconds on me at the end and of course he had completed the entire duathlon without any team assistance. One does have to place these things in context.

 

Munchies courtesy of our cyclist's momma followed our exertions. A welcome repast.

 

 

Ballymoney Cyclists Wheeling into Portrush.

The rain stopped not long after I had concluded my training run yesterday evening although the sky remained leaden. I decided that I would stay to watch a cycle time trial which was being organised by Ballymoney Cycling Club. The course took in a stretch of the coast road, passing Dunluce Castle and finishing on the eastern outskirts of Portrush.

To my mind the distance being cycled, (9.8 miles), seemed a rather idiosyncratic mileage. Why not ten miles? Even nine miles would have a better ring to it. The start and finish lines didn't seem to have any particular logic to their selection, most especially the start. To the casual observer, ie me, it seemed eminently sensible to have the would be Eddie Merckxs start their efforts a couple of furlongs back from the starting point that had been determined upon. Even using the multiplicand of an Irish Mile couldn't give roundness to the mileage.

Fourteen individuals sped past me as I viewed them from my vantage point. It is hard to judge the speed of a cyclist but I would have thought that the better ones were travelling at more than 25mph as they zipped by me. All but one of the cyclists were remarkably quiet in their efforts. The exception to the rule and what I judged to be the silverback of the competitors punctuated the air with his grunts and groans.

I do enjoy the notion of being able to cycle at speed, but I fear that I will not be purchasing a racing bike and taking to its saddle. I was most definetely closer to fifty than forty when I taught myself to ride a bike and although I can pedal along on my trusty hybrid it is with some degree of trepidation if not quite fear that I approach any protracted decline. I do not have that blind confidence of youth. The thought of coming off a bike whilst travelling at 25 or 30mph and the likely bony injuries that would result from such a tumble causes me to refrain from purchasing a thoroughbred cycle. I must content myself with my cart horse specimen.

 

No Gold for Houvenaghel.

Not even her third bike!

I see from Tuesday's Belfast Telegraph that Wendy Houvenaghel believes that she and Northern Ireland have been robbed of an Olympic medal by Team GB Cycling. In order for her to have gained a gold medal in the ladies team pursuit in common with her team mates, Joanna Rowsell, Laura Trott and Dani King she would have had to have raced in the first round, the semis or the final. As at the world championships in Australia some four months ago she was a member of the four woman squad. She was not selected to race in Melbourne and her compatriots broke the world record each time they raced there.

We then arrive in London and the trio selected for the qualifying round are Rowsell, Trott and King, the world record holders. They win their race in another world record time. The following day is the semi final and Houvenaghel was told, seemingly by the head coach, that the same line-up was being retained. Surely not a surprise and surely a sensible decision. She states that with less than one hour to the race one of the selected girls was vomiting, but that as the race team had already been declared the line up had to be retained. The result? Yet another win and yet another world record. The selectors then had to decide which three girls should race in the final. Should it be the threesome which had raced five successive world records, albeit that one of their number had been sick earlier in the day, (might that have been nerves?), or should Houvenaghel be brought in?  She tells us that in training, a week before the Olympic final, with her in the line up a faster time was posted than what turned out to be the time in the final. I feel sure that the pros and cons would have been weighed up, but I am not surprised that the ultimate decision was to keep the same line up. The aim for the coaches and selectors was to ensure that the gold medal was won, not that all four squad members should come away with a medal because all four had raced at least once in the competition. In the final the selected threesome raced to yet another world record.

Where I believe GB Cycling have let Houvenaghel down is in their man management skills. She is reported as saying that she was informed that there would be changes after the first round. Clearly there weren't. I suspect that the Upperlands' cyclist may have been seen as a safe pair of legs, someone to bring in if any of the other three didn't perform.

Of course it is bitterly disappointing for Wendy Houvenaghel and her parents. Her feelings of resentment are entirely understandable. We are all human. We all have our dreams but she has been luckier than most in pursuing them as far as she has. I hope that she does stay in competitive cycling. It is by keeping up with and ahead of Rowsell, Trott and King that she will undermine the decision of the selectors and emphasise her contribution to British cycling.

Britain on a Bike

One Man and His Bike by Mike Carter - Ebury Press

John O'Groats is named after a Dutchman by the name of Jan de Groot who established a ferry to Orkney in 1496. This is one of the little nuggets of information  with which Guardian journalist Mike Carter regales us in his recounting of his ante-clockwise bicycle ride around the coast of Britain. There is a bit of the midlife crisis in this book. Pedalling away on his trusty Ridgeback Carter tells us that he is trying to get away from the economic gloom and the crime headlines.

Although he provides us with descriptions of the pain and effort of his cycling exploits, this is really a story of the people he meets along the way. People such as  Jack Kendal the seventy four year old cyclist from Stoke-on-Trent who is also cycling around Britain having agreed with his daughter not to go back cycling to South America or Alaska and Stevie the ferryman plying his trade back and forth across the three hundred metres of the Kingsbury Estuary. They are characters, nice people ,interesting people and it is through them and many others that he highlights the diversity of the countryside through which he is passing.

Carter may not be the Bradley Wiggins of writers but this is a solid performance from a domestique. A book that engages one's mental gears but is not too taxing.