By Tim on 09/10/2007 21:01

I'd heard it was an end of season jaunt - a weekend away in mid wales with a few beers, pub food, and a good bike ride.

Then Stew Ward emails me saying that he had managed to get a last minute entry and that last year "the first triathlete home did just over 5 hours, how would you feel about going hard?". We still had a couple of weeks or so to go at this point so without too much in the way of thought, I agreed. Email banter in the week leading up to it got progressively more stupid, consisting of the usual - "do you think i can get away with my carbon wheels", "what gearing you going for?" to the far more juvenile - Stew's - "i've just bought a 29 campy cassette off wiggle" was met with my - "they only make those for short ginger girls" (no offence intended Natalie....)

I turned up at Pj's on Saturday afternoon to load up the CSC/Cervelo team car. With the roof rack positively creaking under the weight of his new bike (his 2nd in as many months......), we drove across to Knighton and arrived just...

Read More »

By Mark Hayman on 06/10/2007 21:23

..no, this time it's about the boat.

In late August , the crew of Inmarsat Hedgehog,  an International J24 class yacht prepared to defend our European Championship title which we had held for the past two years. Hedgehog has 5 crew and is helmed by Ian Southworth with tactics by his former Olympic-campaign crew Chris McLaughlin who have also had third and sixth places at the previous two World Championships. My role is bowman which means I am responsible for pulling sails up and down, controlling the start , keeping the boat flat and stopping the waves hitting the rest of the crew!



 Hedgehog is a restored 20-year-old boat with a great track record in the class. Found abandoned in a field in 2004, Chris has invested heavily to bring the ‘Hog’ out from under the bushes and return her to her former glory.

Whilst we were clear favourites to win the event again, although with credible threats from German and Italian teams, the unknown quantity against us was a professional Brazilian crew on Bravissimo. She was steered by Daniel Glomb, a match racer who has joined the class in preparation for the Sardinia World Championship in June 2008. His tactician was Brazil's Olympic 470 representative from Sydney and Athens. Although ineligible for the European title they could still challenge for the open event.

...

Read More »

By vix on 05/10/2007 17:32

With a hideous headwind slowing me to a snail's pace, a throbbing left hamstring and another hilly 26 mile bike lap ahead I had plenty of time to reflect on how I ended up doing the Vitruvian Half Ironman last weekend.And I realised I had Charlie Brooke to thank for my current predicament.

At New Year during a discussion about our attitude towards training he decided that myself and Joolz Howe were more like 'ladies who lunch' than committed triathletes. I'm sure to him it was just a casual throwaway comment to make us all laugh, but no, we certainly didn't forget. And when the opportunity arose to raise money for a leukaemia charity after a friend's child tragically died, the Vitruvian seemed not only a suitably mentallist challenge but also a way of proving that I was up to more than the occasional Eton Sprint.

Saying that, it still took some umming and ahhing...

Read More »