After the thaw its all gone Potty

Sunday morning was different.

As I lay in bed under my duvet I could not work it out right away, my brain was frozen.

Far too slow to decide on which sense was being stimulated.

But finally it came to me.

It was the sound of birds outside.

Not the joyous sound of Spring, but more of a birdy sigh. The sort of equivalent sound that a human might make when finishing a long journey or completing an unpleasant task.

Of course my curiosity got the better of me and to the window I went, angling the blinds to look outside.

Although I lived on a street , I could be forgiven for forgetting such a fact as the roads, pavements, fields and even local beaches had been covered with thick layers of snow.

Not for the usual day or two but for nearly a month!!!!!!

Birds had stopped singing, they had lost their sense of humour. Even the red breasted robin no longer blushed.

It was too F***ing cold to sing.

If they sold beak balm, I am sure whole aviaries would have been queuing up to buy some.

Like us they just saved their energy to keep warm and look for food where ever it might come from.

Even some of the local stores had run short on bread and milk.

The birds were not the only surprise, the road was silver.

The dampness from the melted snow was shimmering in sunlight and bathed in long shadows.

I could Cycle

My recent cycle training had been confined to reading my colourful Lance Armstrong book 'Up close and Personal' so the concept of actually riding my bike seemed quite novel.

My brother Paddy in Texas has already stolen a march on me going out every weekend and already up to 45 mile sessions.

With Texas and the MS 150 Houston-Austin in April looming , I realised that I had to get my skates on (sorry cycle shoes). Of late I have been pre occupied with alpine pastimes.

So off I went wishing that I had not eaten all that christmas cake as my bike creaked under me, and my Santas sack protruded towards my handle bars.

I decided on a short cobweb blowing, hill climbing route.

The green grass on Beverley Westwood looked bizarre dotted with half melted snowmen and the odd pile of 'Scarf, carrot and coal button combination' remaining isolated and unemployed on barren grass.As I climbed up towards the mast to the north of Little Weighton there was the last remnants of our big freeze defying the morning sun.

Lines of snow framed fields and gullies creating white linear patterns all around like an agricultural chessboard.

The road so familiar to me had also changed since summer months with new unwanted arrivals.

Pot holes.

A month of freeze and thaw had exploited the weakness of the friday afternoon resurfacing. Where workers minds were on pints of ale and fancy girls, not on Mr Macadams compound.

Some parts of the road had more in common with a lunar landscape than a rural highway.
Still it made the ride interesting, a slalom without snow.

I was relieved to get to the top of the climb, the the icy air hurt my lungs as I breathed heavily.

The 20+ mph average from last summer was now a paltry 11mph, I was struggling, really struggling.

The long descent home increased it to 14 mph, whilst my heart beat recovered.

I recorded 16.03 miles, hardly respectable but at least it was something.

When I got home the birds had again stopped singing, I think the novelty had now worn off.

I put away the bike and reflected in front of the fire with a hot chocolate.

Its a long way to go to get cycle fit again, but in every journey there has to be a start.

Mine is now behind me.

Happy cycling

Mr Blue Sky

We are about to find out if the sky really is the limit for British cycling.
The men who have masterminded unprecedented Olympic success for British riders on the track over the past decade are now using the same revolutionary methods to try to conquer the world on the road.
Team Sky, Britain's first professional road-racing team, was launched in a blaze of publicity at the start of January with the aim of providing a first British winner of the Tour de France by 2015 - but how will they attempt to do it?
Ahead of their first major race, the Tour Down Under in Australia which starts on 19 January, BBC Sport lined up team principal Dave Brailsford, team leader Bradley Wiggins and head coach Shane Sutton to find out.

GETTING OFF THE GROUND
After returning from the Beijing Olympics in 2008 with eight gold medals in the bag, Brailsford, British Cycling's performance director, was finally able to switch his focus to forming a British-based professional team that could compete at the highest level on the road.

The Team Sky launch was a slick and stylish event
The main requirement was a partner willing to bankroll the operation but, with Sky already backing track cycling, Brailsford did not have to look far to find a suitable sponsor, one that promises to raise the profile of the sport in the UK.
A five-year deal worth a reported £35m was signed in February 2009 and Brailsford said: "Sky found us as much as we found them. They had plans for a big project around participation in sport and the health of the nation - and decided cycling was something to get involved in."
Since the team's official launch on 4 January, the bulk of the team have been at a training camp in Valencia while head coach Shane Sutton's nephew Chris Sutton and Greg Henderson - who have spent the winter in Australia - have been joined by the other five riders that will form the Team Sky line-up in the Tour Down Under (TDU).
Henderson and Sutton gave Team Sky a dream debut by finishing first and second in their first event, Sunday's Cancer Council Helpline Classic in Adelaide, and hope to continue that momentum in the six-stage, 800km TDU.
"We want to kick off with a bit of a bang," said Sutton senior. "but after all the work to put this team together, it is more a feeling of relief than excitement right now."

THE RIDERS
"If our riders don't gel then they will not be able to work together," said Sutton, as he explained how combining "personality and ability" was behind Team Sky's team-building policy.
With Wiggins installed as team leader and a core of seven other British riders, he and Brailsford seem happy with the blend in their squad.
Sky are not a one man team - Brailsford
But assembling the Team Sky squad has not been without its problems.
Garmin and Katusha were publicly unhappy at the way they lost the services of Wiggins and Swift and, although Brailsford brushed aside talk of friction with rival teams, signing already-contracted riders is not behaviour that will win them many friends in the peloton.
Still, getting Wiggins on board was a major coup. He finished fourth in last year's Tour de France to equal the best-ever finish by a Briton and will be one of the contenders for the General Classification in this year's race.
"This is a British team," said Brailsford. "We are going out there to represent Britain and we needed a British leader. Bradley was the obvious candidate.

TEAM SKY'S BRITISH RIDERS
Bradley Wiggins
Geraint Thomas
Peter Kennaugh
Steve Cummings
Russell Downing
Chris Froome
Ian Stannard
Ben Swift
"Getting him in was a great achievement and, like him, we feel this is where he belongs."
Aside from Wiggins, Geraint Thomas and Peter Kennaugh are both bright British hopes for the future, and Norway's Edvald Boasson Hagen is seen as a major star in the making.
"Edvald is probably the most talented young rider in the peloton at the moment," said Wiggins.
"He is probably the biggest signing by Sky if you look at things overall. He is going to be the future of this team and it is quite frightening to think about what he can achieve."
There is plenty of experience too, with another Norwegian Kurt-Asle Arvesen and Canada's Michael Barry expected to provide a steadying influence as the team settles in competitively over the next few weeks.
But, from a British perspective, there is one notable absence on the Team Sky roster - Mark Cavendish, who is not only the best known rider on these shores following his six stage wins at the 2009 Tour de France but is also rated as the best sprinter on the planet.

Cavendish won six stages at the 2009 Tour de France
It is arguable that Team Sky are better off without him as the effort needed to deliver him stage victories in the manner of the 'train' of his Columbia team-mates could distract from the greater goal of overall victory.
Sutton, however, says he would already have the 24-year-old on board, if he could get him.
"I think 'Cav' could fit in anywhere," he explained. "We have worked very closely with him the past, have a great relationship with him from the track and we would not have to change anything to make space for him at Team Sky.
"We'd love to have him but he is under contract with Columbia right now and very happy with them."

BEHIND THE SCENES
The men who masterminded Team GB's rise to prominence in the velodrome are joined by a group whose background is firmly in road racing.
From British Cycling, Brailsford and Sutton are joined by psychiatrist Steve Peters and Rod Ellingworth, who coached the likes of Cavendish at the British Cycling Academy and whose new role will see him work closely with riders while they are in competition.
The team's strategic and tactical nous in road-racing will come from Sunderland and his sporting directors - Sean Yates, Marcus Ljungqvist, Steven de Jongh - all of whom were long-serving professional riders.
There will also be nutritionists, engineers and doctors at Team Sky's headquarters in Manchester, as well as at their permanent base in Quarrata, Tuscany - where around half the squad will live.

They will have access to equipment at cutting edge of sporting technology, with the team's new space-age bus - featuring individual stations for the riders - a shining example of how they will look to garner an advantage by any means possible.
Brailsford explained: "It's somewhere the riders will spend a lot of time.
"So we got our sports scientists in and said, 'How do we get a competitive advantage out of that space, pre-race and post-race? How do we make sure our guys are better recovered by the time they go to the hotel?'
"We didn't want our team bus to act just as a billboard - we are not just here to ride around and look good. It has to give us an advantage."
Another priority will be demonstrating the team's anti-doping ethos in a sport tainted by too many scandals in recent years.
"We will have our own in-house testing process and it will be done in liasion with the International Cycling Union and UK Sport," said Brailsford. "Our strategy will be to work hand in hand with the authorities and show that this is a clean team."

THE PLAN
"Sky could go out and sign Alberto Contador and win the Tour de France tomorrow but that would divert from our mission to win with a British rider within five years," says Sutton.
In an attempt to achieve that goal, Team Sky will follow the same system as Team GB - leaving no stone unturned in their preparations (or "controlling the controllable" as Brailsford puts it) and doing everything possible to get the best out of their riders.
Wiggins eyes Tour win
They hope to do that by mentoring and coaching them rather than directing and controlling them, using a rider-centric programme that will concentrate on assisting and improving individuals not the team.
It's not an approach that is common in professional cycling, but Brailsford is confident it will pay off.
"Our ambition isn't to change professional cycling but certainly we will approach it in the same way as everything else - we will pay attention to minor details and we will look for marginal gains," he explained.
"The philosophy of how you treat riders and how you treat people will be very much a part of this team.
"We will use technology too and we will look to other industries for inspiration. We will continue looking for fresh approaches but it will be more about us as a team rather than trying to influence the wider sport."
Will it work? Wiggins, who will be given a schedule this year to allow him to concentrate specifically on the Tour for the first time in his career, appears to think so.
"I'm always going to say that this is the best team in the world because I am paid to say it," Wiggins said. "But, honestly, from what I've seen so far we are heading in the right direction because Dave will always listen to what you say.
"I've noticed a big difference already in the way things are done and their professionalism, in a relaxed way, too. A lot of it is just common sense in looking after the riders but a lot of teams lack it.
"He's said right from the start that this is our team and he is not going to dictate to us what to do. Whatever things we think improving along the way, Dave is open to making this the best team in the world and he will change whatever he feels he needs to."

LE TOUR AND LONDON 2012
With the London Games just two-and-a-half years away, could diverting focus to the road team jeopardise Britain's hopes of repeating their incredible cycling success at the Athens and Beijing Olympics on home ground?
"If I had thought that, I would never have started this project," said Brailsford. "My own belief is that this will augment British cycling's prospects at the 2012 Games."

Thomas and Wiggins won track gold in the team pursuit at the 2008 Olympics
Brailsford, who is still British Cycling's performance director as well as Team Sky's team principal, points out that his dual role allows him to organise Britain's best endurance riders like Geraint Thomas so the Welshman can prepare for and compete in upcoming events like March's World Track Championships in Copenhagen, or the Commonwealth Games in October, without fearing a conflict of interest with his professional road team.
"Being able to manage both sides of that equation will give us a competitive advantage in the run-up to 2012," added Brailsford.
"I am totally opposed to the view that I might be diluting my efforts across two different fields. I actually think I am strengthening it."

MEASURING SUCCESS
There were no brash statements from Brailsford or Wiggins about planning to win this year's Tour de France at Team Sky's launch.
Both men know it would be foolhardy to make predictions like that - instead we got promises that Wiggins, and the rest of the squad, would be "the best they can be"... which is not exactly a statement of intent.
Having a five-year target also takes the pressure off the first 12 months somewhat but Sutton insists they are still aiming high in 2010.
"Everyone is going to throw you that line about just being the best they can be but ultimately this is about winning," said Sutton. "We want to win.

KEY DATES FOR TEAM SKY
Tour Down Under (19 Jan)
Paris-Nice (7 Mar)
Milan-San Remo (20 Mar)
Giro D'Italia (8 May)
Tour de France (3 Jul)
Tour of Britain (11 Sep)
"What we want from the season is to get some wins under our belts in one or two of the Classics [one-day races in western Europe] and show prominently in the Giro D'Italia with some stage wins there too.
"We are not putting people under pressure but I still believe in saying reach for the stars and, in our first year, that is getting on the podium at the Tour. That's where I'd like to think we can be at the end of the season."
It is already clear that the Tour is seen as Team Sky's top priority and Wiggins added: "Obviously the other races are really important and they are part of the bigger plan of the team and the development of the younger riders.
"But to be honest it the Tour is the only race that matters and the team is going to be judged on how we perform in it. So it remains the goal, and it has to be like that."

In the bleak mid winter

This time last year I had already completed 500 miles since Christmas day.
This year its a big fat ZERO !!!!!!!

Its not that I don't like cycling in the cold, I just prefer the upright position rather than the ditch, kerb, on coming traffic or snow drift.
All across the UK there must be lots of us annoying the Hell out of family,wives and partners.

Some pubs have recognised this fact

I have just been auditioning for Dr Zhivago and getting FAT

And watching others enjoy the whiteness

There is always next weekend..............

Reach for the Sky

As the New Year dawns, Britain is gripped by Arctic conditions making cycling something that I can only read about at the moment.
Nevertheess, my blog will now continue again and grow in readiness for this years cycling calender.
There will be the usual attempt at humour, related articles and things to read and watch.
This year promises a lot. It is great to have a British cyling Team and some British riders to get excited about.
What a god way to start off the blog.



Bradley Wiggins is confident that Britain's new Team Sky road racing team is strong enough to give him a chance of winning this year's Tour de France.
Speaking at Sky's launch on Monday, Wiggins - who finished fourth in the Tour in 2009 - said: "If I'm ever going to win it, it will be with this team.
"It is a long way off but we can match any other team that will be there.
"To be honest it is the only race that matters. How we get on will be how the team is judged so it remains the goal."
Wiggins, 29, a triple Olympic gold medallist on the track, left Garmin to join Team Sky before Christmas and is already impressed by the new set-up, which has an objective of supplying the first British winner of the Tour by 2015.
Sky are not a one man team - Brailsford
"From what I've seen, we are heading in the right direction," Wiggins explained. "(Team principal) Dave Brailsford will always listen to what you say and he's said right from the start that this is our team and he is not going to dictate to us what to do.
"I've noticed a big difference already in the way the little things are done and their professionalism, in a relaxed way, too. A lot of it is just common sense in looking after the riders but a lot of other teams lack it.
"And whatever things we think need improving along the way, Dave is open to making this the best team in the world and he will change whatever he feels he needs to.
"But, at this stage, everything feels fine. We won't know any weaknesses until we get into the racing season."


Some Sky riders are already taking part in events in Australia and the squad will take part in the Tour Down Under, which starts on 19 January.
And, ahead of the start of the new season, rising GB cycling star Ben Swift has been confirmed as Team Sky's latest member.
Swift, from Rotherham, rode for Russian team Katusha last year but got out of the remaining year of his contract to join the British team.
The 22-year-old was unveiled at the team's launch ceremony and said: "It feels like coming home because I know so many of the support staff and the riders. I will be in the perfect environment to grow as a rider."
Brailsford said: "Ben is a real talent and his future looks bright because he ticks all the boxes that it takes to make it in this sport.
"He's extremely serious, skilled on bike, he can climb and sprint and I really believe he can go far with us.
"We've worked quite some time with him on the track and I think the next years could be a massive breakthrough for him on the road as well."

Swift was part of the GB team at the world road championships
Swift, who won a stage of last year's Tour of Britain, added: "Next year I'd like to ride another Grand Tour, but a big focus for me is the Track World Championships (in Copenhagen in March).
"I want to ride the team pursuit at the London Olympics. Then I'll concentrate fully on the road - that's the career I've mapped out."
Swift takes the total number of Britons in the Team Sky squad to eight.
Sky's start-up cost is reported to be £35m, with 26 riders of 12 different nationalities comprising the roster.
Brailsford said: "We started talking a long time ago about setting up a top-level British team but needed to reach a critical mass of riders to achieve it. Now here we are.
"We're ambitious but the key thing for us is to make sure everything is centred on the rider.
"We want to treat the riders with dignity and respect so that they can be the best then can be.
"People need to be motivated to get the best out of them and we want them to achieve excellence.
"Team spirit is critical to us so the personality of the riders played a big part in our recruitment."

"I am just going outside and may be some time"

As Christmas rapidly approaches, so does my 50th Birthday (Dec 5th) and beyond that '2010'.

'2010' might be 'Next Year' but the formidable Cheshire Cat is only four months away (March)

The MS 150 is in five and so is the Natchez trace (April).

After that there will be other sportives.

I have also decided to do the 'Hotter than Hell' again (August).

After last years 'Cooler than Hell' I am obliged to go back really - to see what all the fuss is about.

I must say we could do with a bit of Hotter than hell here, I would even compromise on a glimpse of the sun, rather than an assorted varieties of grey.

Although I have started light training I realise that I will soon have to abandon the warmth of the Gym and the camaraderie of spinning classes and venture out onto the open road.

I keep threatening to take the bike out but find myself intimidated by driving rain which has recently also contained sleet.......yuk.

In the summer cycling is so easy, it takes me 5 minutes to get ready.

At this time of year its a logistical nightmare. I have to think about gloves, hats, extra layering and keeping dry. By the time I am ready I have eaten into a good chunk of daylight time and look like a cross between The michelin man and the Pillsbury doughboy

Breakfast has also changed from light yogurt and granola, to porridge ensuring that I receive some internal warmth before I venture outside. Like Captain Oates. on his fateful antarctic expedition, however in my case I cant wait to get back !!!!!!

I now have the heating is now on all day and in about three weeks it will be the shortest daylight day of the year.

Anyway a bit about the Natchez Trace

The Natchez Trace is a four hundred forty-four mile National Park, so to speak. It's a highway administered by the National Park Service stretching approximately from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez Mississippi. For thirty-two miles it nibbles a little on Alabama. The highway has only two lanes and no shoulders. However, no commercial traffic is permitted - no trucks, and traffic most times and places is light. In the areas around Tupelo and Jackson, Mississippi, the traffic was notable, but not all that intimidating. Paralleling the highway are nicely manicured grassy areas extending in places several hundred feet to stands of coniferous and deciduous trees. Additionally, many points of interest pop up along the way with placards explaining various aspects of the area's history. It's surely not one long grind to get over with as quickly as possible. Savor it as you ride.
History - what was The Natchez Trace? The answer dates back to the late 1700s and early 1800s. Enterprising men in places upstream, like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, would load rafts with merchandise and float them down stream. They followed rivers such as the Ohio to the Mississippi. Continuing downstream on Ole Miss, the rafters would find a port where their merchandise was needed. They'd off load the cargo, sell the raft's timbers for home building, buy a horse and ride back north so they could repeat the scenario. Natchez was a popular end point for many of them. The roadway on which they began their journey back north was none other than The Natchez Trace.
Initially, The Trace, as many early roadways were called, was a path beaten down by Native Americans, followed by French and Spanish settlers. However, traveling via The Trace was not without its trials. Unfriendly Indians, bands of thieves, floods, thigh-deep mud, disease bearing insects and few amenities were all possibilities if not probabilities along this "super highway." Then, with the introduction of steamboats, circa 1812, transportation methods changed, and The Trace fell into disuse.
The United States government saw merit in preserving this history and in the late thirties began construction of the highway, as we now know it. It's still not complete. There is a twenty-six-mile discontinuity in the area around Jackson, Mississippi. (Download map from the website.) Let's hope that it's completed by the time you try it out.
When riding The Trace, you'll be pleased that there are no billboards. You will see segments of the original Natchez Trace, an original house, Indian mounds, the grave site of thirteen unknown Confederate soldiers, a cypress swamp, meandering streams, waterfalls, modest rivers like the Duck, huge rivers like the Tennessee and the Tenn - Tombigbee Waterway, farm land, French Camp (where sorghum is made in the Fall), miles of trees, wild flowers and flowering shrubs, the delightful fragrance of honeysuckle and (on Saturday and Sunday afternoons) the heavenly bodies sun bathing on the beaches of enormous Ross Barnett Reservoir.

If what I've described gets your juices flowing a little, you may want to check out their website. Use your search engine to locate "Natchez Trace Parkway" where you can download maps and find extensive information. Alternatively, e-mail, phone or write to the National Park Service for a packet of material that they will send at no cost providing information on public transportation, The Trace's campgrounds (no charge, but no hot water or showers), restaurants and bicycle shops not far off the highway, a very useful map of The Trace telling where all the interesting points are along the way, sites of drinking water availability and lots more.

A Change in fortune

For some time now I have been struggling.
Struggling to cycle, struggling to blog....sometimes just struggling to get up in the morning.
If I were a cycle you could say that I had lost a few spokes and my chain had snapped.
One of my excuses for not doing my blog was because I had lost the battery charger for my Camera and was unable to take any pictures. How lame !!!!
One of my excuses for not cycling was that I had lost focus.

Last week my new battery charger arrived and as I plugged it in I heard a 'ping' on my computer indicating that I had some incoming E mail.

On looking it was an E mail from my brother Paddy in Houston.
It was confirmation that he had entered me in for next years MS150 Houston to Austin ride in April. It will be my 4th.
He had also booked my flight and told me that we might be doing the Natchez trace immediately after the MS 150.
For those of you who think that I might be talking about a Gastro tour around the finest Mexican restaurants in Texas - you are mistaken.
The Natchez Trace is a an unforgettable road that stretches 444-miles from the Mississippi River in Natchez through the Shoals area in Alabama across Tennessee's Cumberland Plateau and on to Nashville.
I now have more focus than a zoom lens and a camera to record all of my training.
My bucketful of excuses has run out.........................Off to spinning classes.