… Until now.

I have time – I am currently staying away from home so can write this in the small hours without fear of little people waking me up early (and I can have a lie-in… We’re talking maybe 8:00am).
I’m not tired – I’ve no idea why not. I should be really.
I’ve got stuff to say – … and here it is…

Last week, starting on Sunday, I was part of a group of nine people (here we are…)

who took part in a John O’Groats to Land’s End, relay cycle over 5 days. We would cycle in pairs (or sometimes three) and cover 50-60 miles each over 2 legs (with a rest between each leg) each day for the 5 days?

The journey to Scotland from Nottingham did not start well as this:

Caused this:


And I had enough time while it was being fixed to doodle this:

And even superimpose this:

but a very nice man eventually fixed it and we made it to Edinburgh for a night of restful luxury being woken by snoring, before being greeted by this:

for breakfast and heading on to J-O-G.

The evening before we started, I fancied Going just a little further north than John O’Groats so took a little dip…

which, I have to say, was a bit on the nippy side.
Shortly after that photo was taken it started raining for pretty much 3 days. Scotland should have been full of wonderful views but it was mostly foggy and wet. Here’s a few rare moments of clear and notsoclear-skyness when I got my camera out…

…Have I bored you yet? Well done if you’re still with me. The first days just involved packing away wet tents, cycling, being wet, hardly drying off, putting wet stuff back on, cycling, putting up wet tents, eating, sleeping, and repeating the above.

Then, after nearly getting blown off a bridge…

…the sun came out.

And I got burnt.

See! Blue sky!

I don’t know what to say about the cycling really other than I like the flats or gentle slopes but could easily live without hills in my life. I maxed a speed of 42 miles per hour. Nobody got severely injured and we all made it to the end

Ok… I am tired now. And I must actually sleep or I’ll need to get up before I’ve gone to bed.

Yesterday a posted a picture of “a pair” of cycling shorts. It was a generic cycling shorts picture and so as not to be accosted by the people from trading standards here is a picture of “the pair” of cycling shorts on offer…

…and… because I know you want to see them…

…the washing instructions…

All you need to do to win this pair of women’s medium (12-14) quality padded cycling shorts…

(and I will post them to you at no charge, unless you live in Australia… Or America… Or Antigua… Bermuda… Bahamas …etc basically any place that is not in fact, in the UK)

…is to:

1) just show some remote interest that you’d like them really.

2) write in the comments below completing the sentence,

“Cars have indicators because…”

And 3) read yesterday’s blog post if you haven’t already (I won’t be able to tell if you have or not, to be honest, but I’ll trust you)

If more than one person reads this blog, and completes the harsh entry requirements I shall literally put the names into a hat and draw them out at the end of June, when I will announce the lucky winner. Woop woop

Oh… And for Juneathon today, I played tennis for 3 hours.

I’ll check the size (when I can remember what I’ve done with them) and devise some competition before juneathon is out in case anyone wants them.

Watch this space.

Today I made amends for my poor recent show in the exercise stakes…

I did two and a half hours on the bike and together with my good friend Andy, we covered 40 miles.

Andy has decided to mark his fortieth year (and the London olympics) by organising 10 events to try and raise £10,000 for charities close to his heart that have helped him in some way over the last 9 years.

Andy has 3 children. His middle child, Matt, was born with down’s syndrome, a heart defect (requiring a number of operations as a baby) and although Matt initially communicated well through signs, a few years later he cruelly also developed autism and subsequently lost many of those skills.

Through the various events Andy has organised as part of the COPATHLON over £5000 has been raised.

The remaining event is a John O’Groats to Land’s End bike ride over the period of a week. With the small team of riders taking turns to ride. Hence the reasonable ride out today.

We leave in a month.

Many thanks to plustenner and abradypus who have already kickstarted the fundraising.
If you feel compelled to do likewise then please visit my just giving page. If not, I’m cool with that too… but I feel shameless enough to ask this evening.

Speaking of shame… It’s a shame there isn’t a Julyathon. I might do alright with that. Well… for a week at least.

I have done some form of exercise everyday this past week, be it tennis, running, swimming, cycling or badminton. I had been running with a friend on a Tuesday to help him shift some weight recently but when he was ill this week, I went along to a coached swimming session at a nearby pool.
Billed as a ‘stroke technique’ session, it was actually more like a ‘the reason I quit going to swim club when I was 12′ session. I was so glad I’d only made it for the last 45 mins and not the full hour!
Anyway, I thought I’d put some of my new-found swimming expertise into practise tonight and captured my efforts on one of those whizzy app-type things that my friends keep posting to Facebook that scream, “I’m so very fit – I have run around Britain in 3 hours and cycled to the moon” and you must be a fat, lazy, arse because you have posted nothing.
Well here you are people:

(the GPS route tracking thing is shown in red so you can check out the route I took)

So at the end of this month I shall be swimming 750m, cycling 20k and running 5k in my first triathlon. It’s not quite an ironman, but it’s a start and I am getting better. If I drown, I would just like to say… “help, help, I’m drowning! Save me!”
…but also that I have really enjoyed improving this aspect of my training.

In a couple of months I shall be part of a team doing the JOGLE bike ride to raise funds for the Copathlon charities and I would love to get rid of some weight to make this a whole heap easier. This triathlon thing has really given me a boost towards this but I would love to shift another couple of kgs, not least so I can try to enjoy the experience as well as raise lots of money but also so I could allow myself back into twitter-world following my self-imposed ‘no tweeting if you weigh more than 90kg’ ban.

We’ll see…

Event number 3 in the Copathlon (10 charity fundraising events very loosely connected to the decathlon) got underway on Saturday 22nd October with the ‘shot’ put . Quite how this event title was not the one used for event 2 (golf) what with taking shots and putting and such, I do not know, but Andy Coppins, the man with the overall plan, saw fit to have the recent golf day linked with the long jump! (Cos they both have a sandpit or something :-S ).

Anyway…
Back to the Shot Put – This event was basically clay pigeon shooting… Putting some shot in a gun (ok Andy, I’ll let you off, this is actually quite a reasonable link) and shooting stuff… Or more accurately for some people – shooting at stuff, which is not quite the same thing!

Based at Langar airfield in Nottinghamshire, 17 tweed-clad country types (well not quite… But there was at least one flat cap and one hip-flask present) were given their safety instructions (basically – don’t shoot anyone) and after separating into 3 groups, were taught how to shoot at fast-moving clay frisbees.

Look at the difference a flat cap makes to this man’s confidence…

Before:

After:

Marvellous!

I’d like to say at this point that no living creatures were injured during this activity but I suspect that may not be true as there may be a few bruised shoulders this morning.

The greatest chance of anyone being severely injured probably came from the clubhouse toilets where, perhaps in an attempt to instill an ethos of accuracy in all areas of life, a live electrical feed was placed next to the toilet in the men’s cubicle… Miss at your own risk!!

Back to the shooting…
The staff were great. Skillful, knowledgable and friendly, though I ought to point out that they weren’t as friendly as this photo would suggest! It was just the angle at which it was taken.

Half-way through the shoot, those people struggling to hit the small targets got a chance to hit some bigger ‘birds’ as some parachutists dropped in. However, we were informed that these would not count towards the competition total, so we let them plummet to the earth unhindered.

A great day was had by all, especially as many people, including Mark, the eventual winner, had never done clay pigeon shooting before.

Thanks to all who participated, Andy has informed me that over £200 was raised for the Copathlon charities from this event and things now gear up for the Hawaiian Party on 3rd December (High Jump I think!)

Ahem… one more thing…
one participant…

… even managed to shoot a clay in two with one shot and then deliberately shot one of the fragments with his second shot. Thank you and good night