One day one photo - 24

Friday 3rd October

Working close to the countryside means that it is possible to get out and do a quick bike ride at lunchtime. I have a couple of regular loops that I do on my road bike around Pott Shrigley or Blaze Hill. Now that it is the cyclo cross season I like to try out some off-road circuits. I must admit that it is not so easy to find bridleways in this area. There are plenty of footpaths, but we all know it's naughty to take your bike along those!

I have managed to find a quick loop that I can do, and this is what I did on my lunch hour. Although it is not 100% off road, there is enough to do which will give you a good work-out and test you bike handling.

There is a section behind Blaze Hill called Oakenbank, where the tarmac abruptly gives way to a pot-holed trail. It's all the more challenging as you carry on uphill for a good mile before negotiating a tricky descent. A sharp left at the bottom takes you up a very steep incline, Kiskhill, for which you'd be thankful that you are on tarmac! Once again the road turns to a messy challenging trail as it levels off, and you reach a trail that leads you back to Blaze Hill and to an area called Hedge Row, close to Bollington.

If there's more time and you want an extra work-out, en-route back to the office there is a steep, cobbled road known as Beeston Brow that you can scale for good measure. Although not officially a trail, it is like riding up the Koppenberg in Belgium. I am quite happy to be on my cyclo cross bike for that rather than a road bike!

So at the moment I am making the most of the dry conditions and riding my cyclo cross bike at lunchtimes before the weather changes and I become a muddy mess.

One Day One Photo - 23

Thursday 2nd October

Browsing around I came across this photo on Carl Sukonik's @thevainphotos Twitter page. The photo was taken by Chris Auld while a group of us were in the press room at the Cycle Show a couple of weeks ago.

After I had done my rounds at the various stands at the show at the NEC I returned to the press room to find Jens Voigt there with TV sports presenter Ned Boulting, and a host of other press and PR folks. They were huddled around Ned's laptop watching live streaming of the World Cycling Road Race Champs. As the race entered the exciting closing stages more of us joined in to watch, and were treated to live commentary from Jens Voigt himself.

It was a little surreal see the Jensie just sitting there hanging out like your bog standard MAMIL who follows professional cycling. Some things never change! Once the race finished Jens got on with autographing a pile of posters and photos, doing a mini photo shoot, and being interviewed (notably by my good self) just as is standard with prominent people.

It was a pleasant surprise to find this photo. I wouldn't say no to coming across similar surprises on t'internet!

Photo courtesy of Chris Auld Photography

One day one photo - 22

Wednesday 1st October

When I need to go to a bike shop in Macclesfield I go to this one - Macc Cycles. It's just on the edge of the town centre at Jordangate. The shop hasn't been open very long - about a year or two - so I like to support new local businesses when I can. And as I have a few bikes and am not very good at mechaniccing, myself, I imagine I give him a healthy amount of business!

The reason I choose one bike shop over another is down to what type of buying experience I will get - as well as its reasonable prices. Cycling is a hobby - something that I really enjoy. So when I go to a shop it's nice to be able to chat to the sales people/mechanics and have a more personable contact with them. If it's just a case of taking something off the shelf and barely saying a hello and thank you, I might as well just go to Chain Reaction Cycles online.

Retailers get upset at cyclists going to such online retailers. But in my opinion there are still enough folks like me around who wouldn't have a clue what to do with a new gear cable, or how to index gears. So we will carry on going to cycle shops. And when we go, we want to feel we have had a positive interaction.

So with Andy, who owns Macc Cycles he serviced my cyclo cross bike and made a few other tweaks to it when I went to pick up the bike. I also asked him about his thoughts on different types of bike kit, like electric gears. And we talked about how the racing season has been. I must admit, Andy can talk for England, and I don't necessarily need to have a lengthy chat when going in just to buy an inner tube, but it's a nice feeling when you go into a shop and the sales people know your name and don't just treat you like a generic bod.   

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!

One day one photo - 20

Monday 29th September

Summer officially ended almost two weeks ago, but given the number of warm sunny days we have had it is hard to believe this is supposed to be autumn. Here is Higg after enjoying a swim session in the lake. I could have shown a photo of both standing together in our wetsuits "his and hers" style but it would've looked a bit twee! Our foray into open water swimming is one of the things that has been a key characteristic of my summer this year. This is an activity I used to do a few years ago when I was competing in triathlons. Back then, open water swimming was something I simply endured. It was that initial long pin-prick that you get at the start of a race before you settle into your stride and engage in the proper competition of cycling and running. Maybe I would have enjoyed this first leg of a triathlon more if there had been places to practice. It was possible to go on bike rides or running sessions as training in between races. But in the late 90s and early 2000s when I was doing these races, opportunities to do open water swimming training sessions were few and far between in London.

 

Fast forward to 2014, and it seems that open water swimming has really enjoyed a surge in popularity as people submerge themselves in this new fad. Wanting to try something new, I decided to renew my relationship with swimming. I was able to hire a wetsuit for the season at a reasonable cost, and even better, I found that there were lots of areas to do open water swimming sessions nearby. In the Northwest there are sessions at Salford Quays, other sessions in front of Media City, and also at Boundary Water Park, near Jodrell Bank (where Higg is pictured). In London there are various places - in the Serpentine lake in central London, in places near Richmond Park, and the place where we went to - Heron Lake, near Staines. 

 

Although I am not a great swimmer, I have really enjoyed my trips to the different open water swim venues. I particularly enjoyed the USwim sessions at MediaCity. It seemed like every triathlete and keen swimmer in Manchester would turn up with their wetsuits on a Saturday morning or Wednesday early evening, pay a nominal fee, squeeze into a wetsuit and jump into the water, all to the sound of a playlist of retro funk and soul music. There's a choice of 400m laps or 750m laps of Dock 9, and sighting is very easy thanks to various landmarks like the quayside flats, the trams, the BBC building or The Lowry. Some people do breast stroke, most do front crawl, and a few do backstroke. Folks swim at various speeds and there are lifeguards nearby in case you get into difficulty. When not swimming there are areas to get refreshments and chat to others. For an activity that used to give me a lot of anxiety, I must say I quite enjoy open water swimming now.  So having to return my wetsuit, and seeing the various venues ending their sessions until next spring is the real sign that summer has ended. I will miss open water swimming. Mind you, I'm not sure I would want to swim in any of those places in November or December either!  

One day one photo - 19

Sunday 28th September



So I was back at the Cycle Show at Birmingham NEC on the final day, which meant even more people were swarming around the exhibition halls.

I was glad to have been there on the previous Thursday for two reasons.

Firstly, because on trade day it is a lot easier to move around the hall since there are fewer visitors than on the publicly open days.

Secondly, I wasn't able to move easily as I sprained my ankle the previous day when doing the Parkrun in the morning and then aggravated it even more at the cyclo cross race later that afternoon. So I had to keep my movements to a minimum, only visiting a couple of stands and then spending the rest of the time in the press room. 

Why couldn't I have just stayed at home and rested up? Well, because I had been accorded some time to interview a certain Mr Jens "shut up legs" Voigt for Cycling Weekly. It wasn't an occasion I wanted to miss. So I gave it a "shut up ankle" and made the trip down to Birmingham.

Now I, and my peers have a lot of respect and admiration for the Jensie and it is fair to say he is box office. But it's easy to say that when you are in a bubble of cycle aficionados who willingly travel to France to stand around for hours just to watch him whizz by in a few minutes - people whose lives revolve around cycling. It can't just be assumed that he is a crowd puller for the large number of lay public who have a general interest in bicycles and have come down to the NEC for a leisure day out with the family.

So I was interested to see how much of a crowd-puller and crowd-pleaser he really would be to the public, for the Questions and Answers session on the main stage.  And indeed he was. It was standing room only to see this event, with people squeezed into every possible space available. The MC said that this was the best attended event of all the Q & A sessions.

The session was followed by a mammoth autographing session on the Trek Factory Racing stand where a very long queue of men, women, children and babies waited patiently to have their minute of fame with the Jensie. Sadly, many people were turned away as he had to go away and fulfil other media commitments. People had also been left disappointed in the morning when the 90-minute photo and autographing session had not been long enough to satisfy the queue of folks who wanted a piece of him.

So I got my chance to talk to Jens Voigt later in the afternoon, not long before he had to dash off for his flight back to Berlin. I must say I actually felt a little bit nervous when I initially spoke to him, which is something I don't normally feel when interviewing people. I definitely had the feeling of being in the presence of greatness!

As ever, the smiling Jensie was down-to-earth, and quite easy to talk to. He really does talk for England and for Germany too! Jens had lots of stories to tell and made me and his entourage laugh with his sometimes out-of-left-field sense of humour.

The thing that struck me most about Jens Voigt was how generous he was with his time for people and he showed no arrogance at all in spite of all his achievements. He was just an all-round nice guy.

I hope Jens Voigt sticks around and maintains his profile in cycling or otherwise. The public appreciates characters like the Jensie. Who knows, if he gets his way we may even see a fly-on-the-wall style The Voigts, showing his family life on TV, or a "cameo" as a murder victim in CSI!

My interview with the Jensie is now on-line. Read it here.

Photo by Ian Homer Photography

One day one photo - 18

Saturday 27th September

This looks a nice place to relax and enjoy the autumn sunshine on a Saturday afternoon - Markeaton Park, near Derby. Apparently there are pretty gardens, a boating late, a new, popular children's playground, donkey rides and even a craft village. Well, I didn't see any of that! I was too busy getting down (though not dirty) in Round 3 of the Notts and Derby Cyclo cross League within the park.

I didn't really notice any particular features since, as usual I arrived with perfect timing to allow me to just sign on, quickly don my kit, go to the loo and arrive on the start line a minute before the commissaire blew the start whistle!

The lack of rain is great in that we are spared from loads of mud, and more importantly we get to ride our bikes for more time than we spend cleaning them! However, when it is this dry it's such a bone-shaker ride. My tyres were pumped up quite high, so the going was even harder.

The great thing about the Notts and Derby League is that the women's category has a good-sized field - bigger than the leagues in the Northwest, Yorkshire or London. In this race there were 23 women. Apparently in the previous week's round there were 40! That is the order of number you get in a national level race. With fields of that size you can actually get involved in a proper duel with other riders. On this day I ended up in a 3-way fight with a woman from Team Empella and another girl from Matlock CC. Unfortunately for me I got a bit carried away and had a rather spectacular crash in the closing lap - typical! No bones broken, just a very grazed elbow from when I slid across the grass and a rather bruised ego since the crash occurred right in the open field where there was maximum viewing potential for the avid spectators!

Anyway, that aside, it was a fun race with a friendly atmosphere. I hope to be back doing one of those league races before long, and would recommend it to anyone starting out in cyclo cross.