By admin on 30/10/2005

The Marseille to Cassis half marathon takes you from sea level and the Marseille Velodrome, through spectacular and rugged limestone scenery, up to 327m and the Col de la Gineste and then back down again to sea level in the town of Cassis. It is quite a big race on the French calendar with 12,000 runners taking part. Knowing it would be quite tough, I did my best to seek out hills for training in London, mainly Richmond Park, Crystal Palace and Streatham. None quite matched what was ahead but it was the best I could do! We drove the course on the Saturday, to see the climb for ourselves - needless to say that did nothing to allay my fears. My race strategy was start gently (nothing new there then) and really to pace myself as best as I could all the way to the half way mark. The first few kms were described as "faux plat" (false flat!), there is nothing flat about the 1st half of the race, it starts on a gentle climb and gets progressively steeper as you hit the 7k mark. From 7k to the 10.3k marker is the famous...

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By admin on 29/10/2005

Getting to a race at 7am is never an exciting prospect, let alone at the end of October, but those racing yesterday were greeted with a resplendent Hyde Park bathed in autumn sunshine and an unseasonably warm start to the day. The weather was on our side and after being given a pair of Y-fronts instead of the usual free T-shirt, we also knew it was going to be good fun - especially when given a preview of Christine's Halloween fancy dress outfit. Was she a witch or a fairy? Either way, it was scary. At 8am we lined up; a mix of lycra, witches, skeletons and mummy's, and were given our starting orders.....and then were off for a 7.5k run, or 2 laps around the Serpentine lake. The pace started off fast, almost too fast to enjoy the beautiful surrounding lake, park and slightly mad pigeon woman who seemed to do her best to block our way by feeding the fat little things. A gazelle from Tri London was leading the pack, but Ful-on were holding on close behind.

With the heart rates racing, we shot into T1 and...

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By admin on 22/10/2005

I'm sure I was never this competitive before I started doing triathlon. What started with a quiet social drink turned into a 7 hour drink off which left me with the mother of all hangovers at work and a vague recollection of a squash competition being arranged. Whilst arranging this competition it transpired that two of the original drinking group (myself and Dave Vaughan) were unavailable to play as we'd entered HellRunner, Jo Perriam and Tony Green the other two drinking partners agreed to enter and thus began a new bet who could most accurately predict their finish time. HellRunner is billed as an adventure race consisting of between 10-12miles of cross country running they don't tell you the exact distance and there are no distance markers. It starts at a sensible and social 11am which was handy given that as it was Tim and Shannon's engagement party the night before it was inevitable that Dave would be having a few drinks, I turned up to collect him at 9am to find him barely dressed, barely conscious and...

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By admin on 01/10/2005

With promises of hills a-plenty and over 3200m of climbing in 140 gruelling kilometres, 13 Club members headed off to Welsh Wales to test our mettle in the Autumn Epic ride and prove that London cyclists aren't soft. The race was new on the UK cyclo sportive circuit, and the event centre was based in the small town of Knighton. A small group of us decided to arrive early to make the most of the Welsh Wales countryside and go for a nice walk along Offas Dyke. The influx of more arrivals proved too exciting for most, so an early "Epic" was started at the pub (I snuck off for a sneaky afternoon kip). Needless to say the drinking wasn't the best prep for the race, but proved a lot of fun. The chat about who was going to be dropping whom on the ride the next day, a strong feature with Tony Green and Alan Hanley. Riders were allowed to start on Sunday morning between 8am and 9am, and because of electronic timing chips on our wrists, our times would be taken as we left, and at the various checkpoints along the way....

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