Mr Consistent

It’s Son’s last A Level exam today. Then he’s a free man, until mid October. The holidays just seem to get longer. He’s also mega confident. He reckons if he doesn’t turn up to the exam he’ll get an overall C but if he turns up and puts his name on the form he’ll get a B. Hopefully if answers a question or two then he might get an A?

It’s the third of the four Grand Prix runs tonight and I notice on the results that I’m in 25th place overall after the first two races. Not bad.

L complains that she meant to bring a sports drink to work but forgot. Blimey, that’s taking it a bit seriously. She says her personal trainer's a tough cookie. Who’s that then? Me? Although she has been talking of two timing me with a more qualified model, a real personal trainer.

I’m on the bus and I notice at the bus station they’ve now put messages on the information screens telling you where to queue. This is after the managers complained that people weren’t queuing in the right place. So the screens now spend half their time telling you what to do rather than giving out bus times. Not that the bus times are right anyway. The screens are not linked to the live bus times service that tracks actual progress of the bus and are currently merely showing the scheduled timetable. This, and not where to queue, should be priority number one to be sorted out. We know the majority of this information is available because a lot of the bus stops in Derby (the Trent Barton ones) and all the stops in Nottingham already show live times.



L gets home with a box of biscuits that were a freebie from work. They'll be coming to me then. Yep. She hands them over. I’m required to save her from herself again and before she does something stupid with them post-race.

Race three, Wollaton Park and a mere 5k. It goes well. After we find the start that is, we both forget that last year they moved it to a different part of the park. It also means we get a good warm-up as we have to leg it to the start.

As ever this is a fast race. A lot of people see this as a sprint all the way from the start to the finish line. My times for the first two kilometres, both around 3:35, suggest I might even be one of them. The second half though is harder as the course gets hillier and is therefore slower. My sub-4 minute times become over 4 minute ones. It’s still a good pace though and my time at the finish is my fastest here, in four attempts, by ten seconds. After finishing in the same position at the first two races, tonight I’m one place higher. Mr Consistent.

Too Busy Keeping Fit

My Kilomathon antics have definitely shamed my colleague at work into action. He’s been cycling into work pretty much every day since, come rain or come shine, well just come rain actually.

He also seems quite pleased with the Nottingham Grand Prix form I gave him. All of which means, that should he do it, I’ll have to start taking it seriously again. No more biking to the races like I did last year.

I meet L at the gym straight after work. Not that I particularly want to or even need to go to the gym. In fact resting the legs before Sunday’s 100 mile bike ride may have been the better idea. Actually in one way I do need to do, because of the council’s bribe scheme. Under the ‘Change 4 Life’ programme, which is supposed to encourage people to get fit, they decided that if you went to the gym once a month for a whole year they’d give you £50 but I’ve been too busy this month keeping fit to go. Still I don’t see any reason as to why I should let them keep hold of their money, hence tonight’s visit.

This incentive is wasted on me obviously, and it would be interesting to see if it has attracted any new gym recruits at all or whether it’s just people like me relieving the council of their cash.

I do a steady 15km on the exercise bike before we retire to the Plough to start topping up with fluids. Which are so vital for a good event.