Wednesday 8 October 2014

One day one photo - 21

Tuesday 30th September

This is the view that I am treated to now when I go to my Tuesday Wattbike sessions at the Manchester Velodrome. This hallowed establishment, the City of Manchester Stadium (aka the Etihad) along with the velodrome both sit within a part of Manchester known as Sportcity. As well as these being homes for cycling and for football (a view that won't be shared by United fans) this area also hosts various other sports such as a national squash centre and the regional centre for tennis and gymnastics.


This area was borne out of the constructions for the 2002 Commonwealth Games that were held in Manchester - a fine example of a sporting legacy. It's great to come here, but I got caught out when trying to get to my turbo session. In Manchester town centre instead of taking the 231 to Droylesden, I had to take the Etihad Stadium bus. The passengers were all males of a certain age, (Don't Man City have any younger fans?), and annoyingly for me the service only went as far as the football stadium, so I had to walk an extra 10 minutes to reach the Velodrome, making me even later for my session. Needless to say the traffic through Manchester was chaotic, the bus was packed, and once I got off the bus I had to run the gauntlet of a mixture of pie/hot-dog sellers and mounted police.

I'm sure there were others like me who wanted to get to their own respective training sessions at Sportcity, but a football match had to take precendent over everything and we had to endure all that is imposed on us by "the beautiful game". I believe Manchester City were playing against Roma as part of the Champions League. I've no idea who won, and since all I was thinking of was giving those Wattbike pedals a blast, I didn't care!



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