What with the Credit Crunch biting and the inclement weather closing in, it would be easy to be a bit down. The late great Ian Dury had a wonderful song called “Reasons to be Cheerful” Part 3.
Let’s think of 3 modern reasons to be cheerful:
1. Findings published this week in the BMC Endocrine Disorders, show that sprinting for just 30 seconds at a time on a regular basis could improve health by increasing the bodies metabolism – in other words when I go to try Adrians 3K swim session next Tuesday I’ll be able to quote Professor Timnons from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh who says that high intensity exercise such as sprinting or pedalling intensely can help prevent weight gain, heart disease and diabetes. A study followed 16 young men who sprinted on bikes as fast as they could. Each workout was for 4 30 second sprints and this depletes more sugar from muscles forcing them to replace it with stores from the blood. That’s it then, no more 3 hour bike sessions for me. All I need is 4 x 30 seconds...........
2. According to the front page of the County Derry Post, Wendy Houvenaghel is delighted to be pictured beside our very own Simpson McGrath and Wendy can’t wait to cycle with Simpson on Sunday 5th April in a 55 mile run leaving God’s own country i.e. Maghera and going to Portstewart and back. For one £10 you too can ride with an Olympic Silver Medalist. All proceeds are to Wendy’s 2012 fund. Their website is www.carn-wheelers.co.uk. Simpson, you don’t know how pleased I am that, on behalf of Limavady Sports Council, we’re paying to bring Wendy and her husband over for our dinner on Friday 3rd April............... so that she can go out on the bike with you on Sunday! This is yet another cunning plan by the Magherafelt Mafia!
3. After all that 30 second sprinting, you should wind down listening to Bruce Springsteen’s latest “Working on a Dream”. It’s nearly as good as Magic and it’s reminiscent of his last opis i.e. Magic and nearly as good as the Rising. Believe it or not all three albums were produced by Brendan O’Brien, so as well as being an award winning cyclist and duathlete Brendan in his spare time has found time to produce Bruce’s last three albums. What a star. I must remember to ask him about it as I’ll be running with him, along with Roxy of course, this afternoon..............
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
From Benign at Benone to The Baltic at Binevenagh
As my frozen fingers fumbled with the FM dial on the car stereo, I heard the Scottish chanteuse Annie Lennox’s’ “Why” wafting over the airwaves; it was a question that not only needed asking, it was a question that needed answering. Why, oh why, was I in the state that I was in? Mike Jagger and his fellow Stones gave the world “Jumping Jack Flash” – well, this Jack certainly wasn’t flash but he sure was jumping. I was so cold even in the car that it was as if I was suffering from St. Vitus Dance. I wasn’t remotely in control of my limbs, my teeth were chattering uncontrollably and my body was convulsing with the cold. I tried to stay in control of the vehicle but even that was difficult. At least, my befuddled brain cells recalled; I was no longer on a bike in weather conditions which resembled a lethal combination of the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Why? Annie, Why, is it because I should or because I think I should? Is it because I can? - Or because I think I can?
It had all seemed more different more than two hours earlier when I met up with Alistair and Colin at Colin’s house. I told Colin I wanted a few hours of suffering. He smilingly replied that at least he could guarantee me that much. We hammered out to Station Road, Ballykelly where we then started the Myroe sea wall path. This bulwark against nature has only been breached once in the last 50 years and has ensured that many more acres of arable land are available for Limavady. The sea wall, from my selfish point of view, also provided mile after mile of shelter from the biting sea wind. The path ended and we then had to lift the bikes over a fence onto the railway track and waddle on our cleats and our SPDS onto the safety of the second part of the sea wall path. The other beautiful aspect of this path from my point of view was the fact that it was as flat as a pancake. Hills will find out the non cyclist i.e. me, but I can bluff as well as the next guy on the flat, particularly when I am on somebody’s back wheel. Alistair and I however would have needed an engine to stay on the tail of Colin who as Bruce Springsteen once regailed us, was a “Man on Fire”. Another railway line slowed Colin down enough for us to catch him and we soon bunny hoped across the railway tracks (30 secs. later a train came – no children, don’t try this one at home).
I put on a rain jacket, I am not sure why as it wasn’t raining, it was snowing. Big fat flakes of white stuff gently descended upon us as I thought that the prospect of climbing to the top of Binevenagh (today’s goal) was not an appealing one so I decided to chicken out and turn at Swans Bridge but Colin said we wouldn’t be gracing the top of Limavady’s finest mountain with our presence but we would take an easier “option”. I am all for the word “Easy” and quicker than you could say “Get out of Jail for free card”, I quickly volunteered my services to join the back of the Colin – Ali express. We turned right on to the Duncrun Road, then after a few miles of mostly up we were about to turn right – and even higher still. When Colin warned you about a hill that’s coming up you know that the word “Pain” is going to be a frequent visitor to your lungs and legs over the next 30 mins. or so. Colin warned me that I would have to be in the granny gear and that I would have to do some”Dancing” – at last, I thought, something I was good at! Well I am not sure if the pain that descended upon my addled brain could best be described as being “Waltzed” or “Fox trotted” but very shortly, I certainly felt I had been “Tangoed....” I was in the granny gear watching my two mates climb out of sight. The road started as grey tarmac, then it became slushy with the snow, then it became white, all white with the only signs of life on this dead alpine like world being the tyre tracks of the two preceding bikes. I was tempted to fall into the ditch to the right but thought I would never be found.... It was so steep that the front wheel threatened to lift up and throw me off backwards.... Through the thick snow, my eyes just about picked out a buzzard circling above the foot hills of Binevenagh, seemingly keeping a beady eye on this florescent lump far beneath him, a mass that was not quite lifeless but was moving so slowly it seemed only a matter of time before the ditch would claim him.
Every lung bursting frozen minute was followed by another lung bursting frozen minute, suddenly I couldn’t see the guys at all, but I could see their tracks in the snow turning right at the top of the road into the Ballycarton Forest i.e. downhill all the way! Paul McCartney gave us the immortal lines a few years ago “All my troubles Lord, will soon be over” - was relief in sight? Ah now, things were about to get worse, much worse..... The guys bumped (nearly literally) into two blokes who were going in the opposite direction and they seemed to be climbing up to the equivalent of the Matterhorn i.e. the top of the Bishops Road, and even they were questioning their sanity. I had long since lost the power of speech or rational thought, so I ploughed on and started to plunge downwards. If I thought I had been cold previously, I soon discovered that whilst I had been merely in the fridge, I was now in the freezer – and the lid was shut. Going downhill in the cold means you don’t get the chance to pedal, not pedalling means you get colder still.... Every atom in my body was chilled to the marrow; every piece of me was ice blue including my fingers which meant I couldn’t change gear either up or down, big ring or little ring. I was, as Stealers Wheel sang three decades ago “Stuck in the Middle”. Colin and Alistair swooped past and said something, I was on another planet and merely grunted my reply, and although I was still pedalling I heard myself hyperventilating with the cold. The Native Inuit of Northern Canada had thirteen words for the word snow, I had only one word for it and it certainly wasn’t printable in a family newspaper. My core was reacting to the shock by making me breathe hard. The cycling was comparatively effortless but my pulse was at about150. I thought fleetingly of Ben Fogle and James Cracknell, two of my heroes, who had just completed a 45 day trek to Antarctica. How did they face being so cold every day with no respite in sight? I tried to focus on the prospect of hot soup, hot coffee, hot chocolate (no, not the group) to keep me from falling down a ravine and being finally picked off by that buzzard.... I forced my legs to work on the few up-hill sections, albeit I was in the wrong gear. We came to a halt at the bottom of Ballycarton, where I thought my hands were going to drop off. Normally you can put your gloved hand in your mouth and blow on them but as my gloves were covered in muck and all sorts of crud, that wasn’t an option. I fell off my bike and stumbled about the place like a drunk on a raft in the middle of a storm tossed sea, I couldn’t function. Between hyperthermia and hyperventilating I was in a complete mess.
Colin saw how bad I was and told me that we were going to nail it on the way home for the last five or six miles in an effort to get some warmth back into the system which was on the verge of completely shutting down..... Once on the Aghanloo Road, we formed a flying ‘V’ formation where I tried to work hard to get the blood flowing, but the icy wind of the mountain didn’t give me the X-factor, it just gave me a minus wind chill factor instead. I knew this road – and the Ballycarton Forest paths – like the back of my hand but I suddenly didn’t recognise most of the road. It was as if I was a Martian seeing it for the first time, I was beyond cold. Soon the Edenmore Road and Colin’s house loomed on the horizon. I knew however that before things got better they would get a lot worse. I have been in the sea and out on the bike in shockingly cold conditions enough to know that when your body is frozen to the core the warming up is not as easy as it sounds. I staggered to the sink and lay my helmeted head on the kitchen work top then began the agonising job of pulling the gloves off my hands with my teeth as there was no ways my fingers could perform this necessary operation.. Somehow my molars managed to accomplish this dextrous task and I then had to put my icy white hands into the rapidly warming waters under the tap..... Dear reader, I will spare you the unspeakable agonies of the next 10 minutes as my digits tried to cope with a rapid change of temperature but suffice to say I nearly blacked out with the pain. I will merely try and attempt to persuade you that the moisture on my cheek was either beads of sweat or snow which had melted..... Colin had the shower on and was about to throw me under it clothes and all, when I fumbled out the necessary words to make it known that perhaps some hot coffee might do the trick. Ella already had it made. I am sure it was quite a sight watching a guy twitching and jerking as he tried to drink three cups of scalding coffee at once as I simply could not keep my body still. I looked round at the trail of devastation I had left on their kitchen floor, mud, slush, bits of clothes and helmet abandoned as if an air raid siren had just sounded.... black coffee had never tasted as good, nor was it ever as necessary... Alistair lent me a dry warm top and I stumbled out to the car, trying to express my gratitude in the words of “The Frey”, as it had been an abject example of “How to save a life”.... Thankfully the rest of the family weren’t there to see the patriarch stumble in through the back door past a startled – but very warm looking – dog under the hottest shower this side of a Radox ad. I was still numb to the core and it took hours for my finger tips to join the rest of my body in an ice free zone, why, Annie, why, I hear you implore? Normally I would reply that every major expedition that involves a lot of suffering is a big stepping stone on the path to the finish line of Ironman X and therefore is worth it, but I found it hard to justify this savage onslaught on my system.
Gloria Gaynor may have boasted “I Will Survive”; I had barely done so. I resolved one thing however, as I practically lay on top of a roaring coal fire several hours later, my next few training sessions would be in a nice, warm, dry, Gym.....
Why? Annie, Why, is it because I should or because I think I should? Is it because I can? - Or because I think I can?
It had all seemed more different more than two hours earlier when I met up with Alistair and Colin at Colin’s house. I told Colin I wanted a few hours of suffering. He smilingly replied that at least he could guarantee me that much. We hammered out to Station Road, Ballykelly where we then started the Myroe sea wall path. This bulwark against nature has only been breached once in the last 50 years and has ensured that many more acres of arable land are available for Limavady. The sea wall, from my selfish point of view, also provided mile after mile of shelter from the biting sea wind. The path ended and we then had to lift the bikes over a fence onto the railway track and waddle on our cleats and our SPDS onto the safety of the second part of the sea wall path. The other beautiful aspect of this path from my point of view was the fact that it was as flat as a pancake. Hills will find out the non cyclist i.e. me, but I can bluff as well as the next guy on the flat, particularly when I am on somebody’s back wheel. Alistair and I however would have needed an engine to stay on the tail of Colin who as Bruce Springsteen once regailed us, was a “Man on Fire”. Another railway line slowed Colin down enough for us to catch him and we soon bunny hoped across the railway tracks (30 secs. later a train came – no children, don’t try this one at home).
I put on a rain jacket, I am not sure why as it wasn’t raining, it was snowing. Big fat flakes of white stuff gently descended upon us as I thought that the prospect of climbing to the top of Binevenagh (today’s goal) was not an appealing one so I decided to chicken out and turn at Swans Bridge but Colin said we wouldn’t be gracing the top of Limavady’s finest mountain with our presence but we would take an easier “option”. I am all for the word “Easy” and quicker than you could say “Get out of Jail for free card”, I quickly volunteered my services to join the back of the Colin – Ali express. We turned right on to the Duncrun Road, then after a few miles of mostly up we were about to turn right – and even higher still. When Colin warned you about a hill that’s coming up you know that the word “Pain” is going to be a frequent visitor to your lungs and legs over the next 30 mins. or so. Colin warned me that I would have to be in the granny gear and that I would have to do some”Dancing” – at last, I thought, something I was good at! Well I am not sure if the pain that descended upon my addled brain could best be described as being “Waltzed” or “Fox trotted” but very shortly, I certainly felt I had been “Tangoed....” I was in the granny gear watching my two mates climb out of sight. The road started as grey tarmac, then it became slushy with the snow, then it became white, all white with the only signs of life on this dead alpine like world being the tyre tracks of the two preceding bikes. I was tempted to fall into the ditch to the right but thought I would never be found.... It was so steep that the front wheel threatened to lift up and throw me off backwards.... Through the thick snow, my eyes just about picked out a buzzard circling above the foot hills of Binevenagh, seemingly keeping a beady eye on this florescent lump far beneath him, a mass that was not quite lifeless but was moving so slowly it seemed only a matter of time before the ditch would claim him.
Every lung bursting frozen minute was followed by another lung bursting frozen minute, suddenly I couldn’t see the guys at all, but I could see their tracks in the snow turning right at the top of the road into the Ballycarton Forest i.e. downhill all the way! Paul McCartney gave us the immortal lines a few years ago “All my troubles Lord, will soon be over” - was relief in sight? Ah now, things were about to get worse, much worse..... The guys bumped (nearly literally) into two blokes who were going in the opposite direction and they seemed to be climbing up to the equivalent of the Matterhorn i.e. the top of the Bishops Road, and even they were questioning their sanity. I had long since lost the power of speech or rational thought, so I ploughed on and started to plunge downwards. If I thought I had been cold previously, I soon discovered that whilst I had been merely in the fridge, I was now in the freezer – and the lid was shut. Going downhill in the cold means you don’t get the chance to pedal, not pedalling means you get colder still.... Every atom in my body was chilled to the marrow; every piece of me was ice blue including my fingers which meant I couldn’t change gear either up or down, big ring or little ring. I was, as Stealers Wheel sang three decades ago “Stuck in the Middle”. Colin and Alistair swooped past and said something, I was on another planet and merely grunted my reply, and although I was still pedalling I heard myself hyperventilating with the cold. The Native Inuit of Northern Canada had thirteen words for the word snow, I had only one word for it and it certainly wasn’t printable in a family newspaper. My core was reacting to the shock by making me breathe hard. The cycling was comparatively effortless but my pulse was at about150. I thought fleetingly of Ben Fogle and James Cracknell, two of my heroes, who had just completed a 45 day trek to Antarctica. How did they face being so cold every day with no respite in sight? I tried to focus on the prospect of hot soup, hot coffee, hot chocolate (no, not the group) to keep me from falling down a ravine and being finally picked off by that buzzard.... I forced my legs to work on the few up-hill sections, albeit I was in the wrong gear. We came to a halt at the bottom of Ballycarton, where I thought my hands were going to drop off. Normally you can put your gloved hand in your mouth and blow on them but as my gloves were covered in muck and all sorts of crud, that wasn’t an option. I fell off my bike and stumbled about the place like a drunk on a raft in the middle of a storm tossed sea, I couldn’t function. Between hyperthermia and hyperventilating I was in a complete mess.
Colin saw how bad I was and told me that we were going to nail it on the way home for the last five or six miles in an effort to get some warmth back into the system which was on the verge of completely shutting down..... Once on the Aghanloo Road, we formed a flying ‘V’ formation where I tried to work hard to get the blood flowing, but the icy wind of the mountain didn’t give me the X-factor, it just gave me a minus wind chill factor instead. I knew this road – and the Ballycarton Forest paths – like the back of my hand but I suddenly didn’t recognise most of the road. It was as if I was a Martian seeing it for the first time, I was beyond cold. Soon the Edenmore Road and Colin’s house loomed on the horizon. I knew however that before things got better they would get a lot worse. I have been in the sea and out on the bike in shockingly cold conditions enough to know that when your body is frozen to the core the warming up is not as easy as it sounds. I staggered to the sink and lay my helmeted head on the kitchen work top then began the agonising job of pulling the gloves off my hands with my teeth as there was no ways my fingers could perform this necessary operation.. Somehow my molars managed to accomplish this dextrous task and I then had to put my icy white hands into the rapidly warming waters under the tap..... Dear reader, I will spare you the unspeakable agonies of the next 10 minutes as my digits tried to cope with a rapid change of temperature but suffice to say I nearly blacked out with the pain. I will merely try and attempt to persuade you that the moisture on my cheek was either beads of sweat or snow which had melted..... Colin had the shower on and was about to throw me under it clothes and all, when I fumbled out the necessary words to make it known that perhaps some hot coffee might do the trick. Ella already had it made. I am sure it was quite a sight watching a guy twitching and jerking as he tried to drink three cups of scalding coffee at once as I simply could not keep my body still. I looked round at the trail of devastation I had left on their kitchen floor, mud, slush, bits of clothes and helmet abandoned as if an air raid siren had just sounded.... black coffee had never tasted as good, nor was it ever as necessary... Alistair lent me a dry warm top and I stumbled out to the car, trying to express my gratitude in the words of “The Frey”, as it had been an abject example of “How to save a life”.... Thankfully the rest of the family weren’t there to see the patriarch stumble in through the back door past a startled – but very warm looking – dog under the hottest shower this side of a Radox ad. I was still numb to the core and it took hours for my finger tips to join the rest of my body in an ice free zone, why, Annie, why, I hear you implore? Normally I would reply that every major expedition that involves a lot of suffering is a big stepping stone on the path to the finish line of Ironman X and therefore is worth it, but I found it hard to justify this savage onslaught on my system.
Gloria Gaynor may have boasted “I Will Survive”; I had barely done so. I resolved one thing however, as I practically lay on top of a roaring coal fire several hours later, my next few training sessions would be in a nice, warm, dry, Gym.....
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
A Day when Change is Gonna Come
Today is a momentous day, a day, as Bruce Springsteen would sing, for the Rising, a day when Change is Gonna Come.
It’s the 20th January, it’s Inauguration day, a day to savour, a day to celebrate, a moment to remember.
Barack talks of the AUDACITY OF HOPE. What is your HOPE today? - To get better as an athlete, to improve as an administrator, a referee, a coach, a race organiser?
Barack’s inauguration speech was written by 27 year old Jon Favreau in a Star Bucks. Where’s your best work or training done?
Barack’s term is for 4 years. Where are you going to be in 4 years? Will you be seeking re-election? Or will you have been defeated in the primaries or at your parties nomination? Barack has a blank sheet in front of him, you have a training diary. Barack is already filling in his goals for the next 1,460 days. They say the first 100 days of any Presidency will define it. What will be your achievements in the next 100 days? Will you have contributed anything to your club? Will you have become a more professional organised disciplined athlete?
Barack’s campaign started as a whisper in Springfield and it carried across the Cornfields of Iowa..... He gave us his vision at the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston “There ‘s not a Liberal America and a Conservative America. There’s the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There is not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America. There is a United States of America”.
We have 50 members in our club, each with different backgrounds, ages, locations, abilities and a completely different set of aspirations.
Let us remember on today of all days that we are the Triangle Triathlon Club, we are one Club, we are united.
Let today – the 20th January every year - be our Inauguration day. Let today be the day when we celebrate together, console each other for our losses and commit ourselves to our mutual future bound together in the Red and Black, that is, .......
The Triangle Triathlon Club.
It’s the 20th January, it’s Inauguration day, a day to savour, a day to celebrate, a moment to remember.
Barack talks of the AUDACITY OF HOPE. What is your HOPE today? - To get better as an athlete, to improve as an administrator, a referee, a coach, a race organiser?
Barack’s inauguration speech was written by 27 year old Jon Favreau in a Star Bucks. Where’s your best work or training done?
Barack’s term is for 4 years. Where are you going to be in 4 years? Will you be seeking re-election? Or will you have been defeated in the primaries or at your parties nomination? Barack has a blank sheet in front of him, you have a training diary. Barack is already filling in his goals for the next 1,460 days. They say the first 100 days of any Presidency will define it. What will be your achievements in the next 100 days? Will you have contributed anything to your club? Will you have become a more professional organised disciplined athlete?
Barack’s campaign started as a whisper in Springfield and it carried across the Cornfields of Iowa..... He gave us his vision at the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston “There ‘s not a Liberal America and a Conservative America. There’s the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There is not a black America and a white America and a Latino America and an Asian America. There is a United States of America”.
We have 50 members in our club, each with different backgrounds, ages, locations, abilities and a completely different set of aspirations.
Let us remember on today of all days that we are the Triangle Triathlon Club, we are one Club, we are united.
Let today – the 20th January every year - be our Inauguration day. Let today be the day when we celebrate together, console each other for our losses and commit ourselves to our mutual future bound together in the Red and Black, that is, .......
The Triangle Triathlon Club.
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