The Great North Swim is now only a matter of weeks away. I’ve been swimming regularly but to be honest, the distance is the least of my worries. I pulled the wetsuit out of the cupboard last month, dusted out the moth balls and then attempted the big squeeze…… Not...

swimming

Call that a bike ride….? At one point I thought we were actually going to be walking all the way to Brighton. Experienced L2B’ers had warned me to start the event early but I’m too lazy to get up for a 6am start. I may have had a leisurely 8:30am...

cycling event L2B

I love this event, it is a complete pain to get to, it costs a fortune, it’s almost impossible to get out of South Shields before night fall, but it still remains the highlight of my year. Grubby street urchins high fiving you, toddlers squirting bottled puddle water at your...

event GNR running

I am such a social cretin before an event and watching the city boys arrive at the coach station in their pin striped suits and titanium s-bar bikes didn’t go anyway towards making me feel at home. I cheered up a bit on arrival at Blenheim when friendly faces appeared...

cycling event

How cold?! I eased myself gently into the lake until I slipped on a hunk of plankton and ended up bobbing some where near my ears with a foul expression on my face. The lake was freezing and I had the pleasure of sitting in it for the bizarrely named...

event swimming

OGB may well have left London in search of science but he hasn’t stopped harassing me. The last email I got from him went along the lines of “how do you fancy doing a 10k race in Cardiff?” Cardiff? That’s in a whole different country, why would you bother? He...

swimming triathlon

The Great North Run has got to be the most self-indulgent running event in the race calendar, I personally could handle this kind of ego boost on a monthly basis, I would say weekly, but as I’m still unable to walk so I think that might be pushing it. Look...

event GNR

This time next week I ought to be sitting in a South Tyneside pub celebrating the end of a half marathon. I’m pretty apprehensive about the event, the travel arrangements are just mind boggling and both me and OGB have decided to just arrive and hope we get dragged in...

event GNR running

Despite about 3 months of excuses and general complaining, both OGB and myself managed to get ourselves to the start line of the Nike 10k Runlondon event. I can’t say we were overly happy – we still maintained an air of cynicism which acted as a cover for our fear...

running event

I’ve had a really odd couple of weeks, the new job has kicked in and its been so varied I just don’t seem to be able to get back into a proper running routine. In fact I can’t get into any kind of routine. My first run after the hotel...

running